Numerous ghost towns exist across the state of North Dakota. These were often communities that sprang up when the railroad pushed through during territorial days and the early days of statehood.
Often times, nearby towns were born that were more convenient, became county seats or were often on a road to and from a larger city.
The Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia names 23 ghost towns in North Dakota. These places are classified as completely barren sites. I know there are more, perhaps many more, because two of them in my home county of Emmons are missing from the list.
The two I’m referring to are Williamsport and Winona. The community of Williamsport was in northern Emmons County and held the county seat for a time, and when the railroad was built three miles west, people moved there and started the community of Hazelton.
Winona was in the southwest and was directly across the Missouri River from Fort Yates. It was once a major stopping point on the stage coach from Bismarck to Sturgis, but when Linton was established in 1899, the town quickly died out.
One of the communities on this list is Old Sanish, in Mountrail County. Another is Elbowoods in McLean County. Of course these two places are barren because they are both at the bottom of Lake Sakakawea. Many of you will recall that before Garrison Dam was built, these two towns were moved to higher ground to a place now called New Town.
There was another place submerged by Lake Sakakawea that many of us don’t know about and that was Beaver Creek in Williams County. It was located east of Epping and was completely abandoned in 1955.
Independence, Lucky Butte, Nishu, Red Butte and Shell Creek were additional small communities that were flooded when Garrison Dam was built.
Baden, Brisbane, Charging Eagle, Dogtooth, Hample, Ives, Leipzig, Lynwood, Mose, Petrel, Pierce, Sanger, Schmidt, Sully Springs and Three V Crossing are all places that truly are ghosts. Nothing remains but history, no buildings, no roads, although in some cases cemeteries remain.
Hollywood tends to portray ghost towns as those that have buildings and are abandoned. North Dakota has some of those too. Those places are classified as abandoned sites as a subcategory of ghost town.
If you’re on of those people out there who actually like to chase ghosts, you might consider the following; Old Fort Rice and Fort Buford. Old Fort Rice is in Morton County, south of Mandan and has quite a history as a U.S. Army reservation. Even more so is Fort Buford, in Williams County. There’s an historic fort there now, but if you dig into the history of the actual Army post Fort Buford, you’ll find Soldiers didn’t just die in prairie raids, more of them died from disease and mental health issues than from bullets or arrows.
When those two forts existed, there was a lot of uncertainty with Dakota Territory, communities and doctors were far apart and winters were more brutal than anyone could have imagined.
There’s another place, not a military post, that is supposedly haunted and that is San Haven, in Rolette County. It was a tuberculosis sanatorium and later state hospital north of Dunseith, near the Canadian border. It was built in 1913 and closed in 1987.
There, you have a massive building with broken-out windows, asbestos contamination and can you imagine the number of people who died there in the 75 years the place existed?
There’s one place on the ghost-town list that has perhaps as much civilian history as do the two Army posts previously named.
Schafer was the McKenzie County seat before Watford City existed. The town may have still existed had it not been for a land dispute between the Schafer family and the Great Northern Railway. Watford City was founded in 1914 leaving Schafer with nothing more today than the old McKenzie County jail.
There are a lot more, Temvik, Tagus, Baden, Banks, Carbury, Clyde, Hartland, Heaton; in effect, too many to mention. But if any of these places could talk, oh the stories they could tell.
