'We always said it would be a happy day when we could say one of these towns turned the corner and starting coming back. The pair was surprised to find about 30 recreational vehicles and trailers set up behind a shelter belt that once guarded the town. When they arrived, they found a recreational vehicle and semi-trailer parked in front of the building, ruling out a photo shoot.Īnd then there's nearby Appam, which was featured in the first edition. Circled: This photo provided by Terry Hinnenkamp shows an abandoned one-room school house in Clear Lake Township in Kidder County, North Dakota, featured in the book 'Ghosts of North Dakota Volume 2' Witching: Leann Pelvit searches for forgotten graves using an ancient method called 'witching' along the Dakota-Montana border to protect them from being disturbed in the explosion of development spurred by the region's oil boom

One of the images that Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp had hoped to capture for the second volume of 'Ghosts of North Dakota' was an abandoned church in Fortuna, near the borders of Montana and Saskatchewan. /pagead/js/adsbygoogle.Some of the 'ghost' towns had come back to life, thanks largely to the oil boom. Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC We’ve been told Murphy’s Fine Food and Spirits was quite the hangout back in the day. We didn’t know for sure, but this looked like the old Larson school. The people in this house had the best TV reception in town. We’re told it is still busier than it was before, though (see comments). Larson was quite sleepy for decades, went through something of a revitalization during the height of the oil boom, then slowed down again as oil prices dropped. The kicked-in front door told us vandals had already been there.Ĭan’t you just imagine classic American automobiles coming and going at this old filling station on the corner of Division Avenue and 2nd Street? The former church was the first place that caught our eye. We arrived in Larson at the same time a storm front was moving in which made for some dramatic skies as a backdrop. There’s a good-sized concentration of residents with Scandinavian heritage in the area. Larson, and the nearby town of Columbus, were named for Columbus Larson, an early postmaster. It was established in 1907 and had a peak population of 114 in 1920. Larson is a near-ghost town in Burke County, about 38 miles northwest of Kenmare, or sixty miles northeast of Williston.

Ghosts of North Dakota by Troy Larson