We photographed this solitary Haynes Township school back in 2013, and although we featured it in a video, we never posted the actual photographs until now. It is in Kidder County, Haynes Township, just off Highway 3, about 11 miles north of Steele, North Dakota. A little further north are a few other places we’ve photographed, including the Tuttle School, two Clear Lake Township schools (here, and here) and true ghost town Arena, North Dakota is about 15 minutes northwest of this place.
Lake Williams, North Dakota is a small town, an unincorporated community, in Kidder County, about 30 miles southwest of Carrington.
Lake Williams had a population of over 80 residents in 1930, but the town shrank slowly over several decades and the post office closed in 1971. Continue reading “Abandoned Lumberyard in Lake Williams, North Dakota”
We first visited Crystal Springs in 2005, primarily to photograph the abandoned school which is quite visible from the Interstate. We didn’t find out until later that we had neglected to photograph a portion of Crystal Springs which waits just north of the highway. So, on Memorial Weekend of 2013, we returned to Crystal Springs.
While many towns suffered when they were bypassed by an interstate, Crystal Springs’ decline was hastened when it was bisected by the interstate, effectively cutting the town in two. Continue reading “Return to Crystal Springs: A Town Cut in Two by the Interstate”
This is a lonesome country school on County Road 3, about eight miles southeast of Tuttle in Kidder County. Unfortunately, it was boarded up tight and there was very little to see.
Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
This is one of two schools in Clear Lake Township which we’ve seen referenced as simply “Clear Lake School.” This one sits near the junction of 26th Avenue SE and County Road 36, about two miles east of Tuttle in Kidder County. The other is several miles east. If you know the official name of either of these schools, we would appreciate your insight. There is also a cemetery right across the road which we chose not to photograph due to some extremely wet conditions.
This part of North Dakota is teeming with wildlife. We saw a bald eagle fly right over our car on the way to this school, a coyote on the side of the road, plus multiple deer, geese, and pheasants. There was a roadkill deer carcass lying in the grass right near this school as well.
The school was locked up tight, but Terry managed to catch a shot of the inside by holding his camera up to a broken out window high on one exterior wall.
Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
This one-room township school is located about fifteen miles north of Interstate 94 in a very sparsely populated part of Kidder County, surrounded by farm fields for miles in every direction.
We featured this school in our second book, Ghosts of North Dakota, Volume 2.
We visited on Memorial Weekend of 2013, and in the coat room, we discovered a log book. The first entry on the log book reads: “These are the names of people who visited here, and left their names on the black boards. I copied them as well as I could.” — Ruth
The first few pages are in Ruth’s handwriting, and then eventually people started signing the log book themselves when they visited. The oldest entry we saw was from 1984, and the most recent was from January of 2013. What incredible foresight on the part of Ruth to log the comments on the chalkboard in a longer lasting medium.
Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
This is one of two rural schools we photographed in Clear Lake Township, and we’ve seen it referenced simply as Clear Lake School. Kathy Wilner emailed us to say she’s been documenting one-room schools for the North Dakota Historical Society and had the following comments:
It was [originally] located on the south side of a body of water called Long Alkaline Lake, straight north of Highway 36 on 31st Ave SE… This would be east of Robinson. It was moved from North Merkel Township in northern Kidder County. The person I visited with told me it was called Barton #8 and he attended 8 years of school there.
Today, it rests all alone in the middle of a farmer’s field, about four miles west of Robinson in Kidder County, right off County Road 36.
Photos by Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
Crystal Springs was founded in the Dakota Territory in 1873 and the Post Office opened with the name “CRYSTAL SPRINGS” in 1884–named for nearby Crystal Springs Lakes.
We were cruising west on the interstate one day and the Crystal Springs school, perched beautifully atop a hill along the highway, practically jumped out at us, and we stopped to get a few shots. Now arriving at Crystal Springs, North Dakota. Continue reading “Now Arriving at Crystal Springs, North Dakota”
Ghosts of North Dakota 