Across the plains stand the remnants of towns that time and the timetable passed by — a leaning elevator, an empty church, a main street returning quietly to grass.
For every plains town that thrived, another faded, and the countryside is dotted with the remnants of settlements that time passed by. A leaning grain elevator beside an abandoned rail grade, a white church with its doors long shut, a cracked sidewalk leading nowhere through the grass — these are the ghost towns of the plains, and they hold a melancholy fascination for those who seek them out.
What the Grass Takes Back
The causes were many: a railroad that pulled up its branch line, a highway that ran the other way, farms that grew larger and fewer until the town had too few families to sustain a store. The drift to the cities did the rest, emptying the countryside a household at a time until the town was a town no longer.
From the almanac's reckoning:
- Lost branch lines and rerouted highways doomed many plains towns.
- Larger, fewer farms left too few families to sustain the stores.
- Abandoned elevators and churches mark the sites today.
Yet even the ghost towns are not quite dead, kept alive in the memories of those who grew up in them and return to tend a cemetery or a church. The almanac counts them among the plains' most poignant landmarks — monuments to the hopes of a settling generation.
Elsewhere in the Almanac
Statehood at Last: North Dakota Joins the Union in 1889
After decades as a territory, the northern half of Dakota entered the Union as a state in 1889, its admission so entwined with its southern twin that the order was deliberately obscured.
The Métis and the Red River Carts of Pembina
At Pembina in the north, the Métis people forged a distinct culture of the buffalo hunt and the trade trail, their squealing wooden carts once a familiar sight across the plains.
The Powwow and the Living Culture of the Plains Nations
Far from a relic, the powwow endures as a vibrant celebration of song, dance and community among the plains nations, drawing dancers and drums from across the continent.