The Smith Mine is near Bearcreek, Montana, in Carbon County, not far from Red Lodge, and it’s the site of the deadliest coal mine explosion and fire in Montana history. At 9:37 on a Saturday morning, February 27, 1943, there was an explosion of methane gas in the mine. 74 of 77 miners died, either from the blast itself, or from suffocation in the ensuing fire. One rescue worker succumbed days later as well, bringing the death toll to 75.
A visit to Devils Tower National Monument gives one a sense of mysterious contentment; a degree of spiritual calm instilled by few of North America’s natural wonders. The tower is located in the Black Hills of northeast Wyoming, not far from Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore in neighboring South Dakota, and just down the road from another place we visited — Aladdin, Wyoming. It is a rare honor to visit a place like this and bask in the grandeur of the…
We visited Capa in July of 2015, near the end of a four day trip to explore some abandoned places in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota. So many times, when visiting vacant, out-of-the-way places on the high plains, we find a regular, criss-cross grid of gravel roads, intersecting every mile or two, and we can easily drive right up to our desired places, but that was not the case in Capa.
In Klamath County, Oregon, southeast of Medford and just a joyride north of the California border, the United States constructed the Keno Air Force Station in response to a 1953 request from Air Defense Command for more radar coverage in the Pacific Northwest. The 827th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron started here in 1957 and in 1958, the installation became known as Keno Air Force Station to serve a Ground Control Intercept mission — track incoming aircraft and guide interceptors. The…
Mondak, Montana was a place built for drinkin’. When the state of North Dakota became one of the first to enact prohibition, this tiny spot on the dry, chalky prairie, near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, but just over the border in still-wet Montana, began to boom. It was little more than twenty years later when Mondak’s last real business, the bank, closed in 1925. A combination of factors–changes to prohibition laws, fires, and at least one…
Officially known simply as the Great Northern Railroad lift bridge, this place is most commonly known as the Snowden Lift Bridge, after the tiny railroad stop of Snowden, Montana, and sometimes the Nohly Bridge, Nohly being another former railroad stop in the steam locomotive days. Snowden Lift Bridge is located on the Missouri River, in Richland County, Montana, about two and a half miles west of the North Dakota border. Snowden Lift Bridge is also just miles from Mondak, a…
With the advent of satellite navigation, we’re never truly lost anymore, but there are those times when we run across a former road that’s now underwater, or has fallen into disuse, and we’re forced to take an unplanned route to our next destination, and it frequently turns into a blessing in disguise, because we often run into out-of-the-way places that we didn’t know about beforehand. This former prairie farmstead was one of those pleasant surprises. We were just tooling down…
Monowi, Nebraska is a near-ghost town in Boyd County, Nebraska, about 75 miles northwest of Norfolk. We first discovered Monowi when I ran across a story from 2011 about Monowi’s status as the smallest incorporated city in the nation with a population of only one. Reuters photographer Rick Wilking wrote a nice piece on that one resident, Elsie Eiler. We were in Monowi quite early in the morning, so we did not feel comfortable knocking on anybody’s door, but we’re…
Where pupils once filed in with their lunch pails for a day’s learning, there is now a relic that leaves no doubt, school’s out in Readlyn, Saskatchewan. This old school is thoroughly fenced however, and the grounds are in use by the property owner, so I wasn’t able to get any closer.
During a trip to photograph some Saskatchewan places, including Cadillac, Neidpath, and this abandoned bridge, I found myself passing through sleepy Verwood, Saskatchewan, and stopped to grab a few photos.
This is Peace Lutheran Church, a church on the prairie in the Rural Municipality of Stonehenge #73, in southern Saskatchewan, about 105 kilometers southwest of Moose Jaw, and just 2 kilometers south of the farm at the site of Lakenheath, Saskatchewan.
As I was planning a trip to photograph Saskatchewan places in July, 2016, I didn’t have plans to stop here until I found out about the former Aneroid Consolidated School. Like so many rural communities on the Great Plains of North America, Aneroid is shrinking. Young people are now going to school in nearby Ponteix, and the former consolidated school is abandoned.
After leaving Parkbeg, Saskatchewan, the next place on my list was the former St. Joseph’s church in tiny Courval, an unincorporated hamlet about 55 kilometers southwest of Moose Jaw, on the west end of Old Wives lake in southern Saskatchewan.
The day was done and I had finished photographing the places on my agenda on this day in July. I was on Highway 36 in southern Saskatchewan, enjoying the scenic drive north to a hotel in Moose Jaw, when I unexpectedly spotted this place right in front of me as I crested a rise in the road. I had no idea that I had stumbled upon the lonely ghost town of Galilee.
Parkbeg is about 50 kilometers west of Moose Jaw, right along an unusual stretch of the Trans Canada Highway where the two divided sides of the highway are so far apart in places that you can’t see one side from the other. I was a stranger in Parkbeg, Saskatchewan, so as I was photographing my first place, a local resident stopped her car for a quick chat.
You won’t find Dog River, Saskatchewan on any map, because Dog River is a fictional place–the setting of comedian Brent Butt’s “Corner Gas,” a hit Canadian sitcom that ran from 2004 to 2009, and a crowdfunded movie of the same name. In reality, the remains of the set for Corner Gas is located in Rouleau, Saskatchewan, on Highway 39 between Weyburn and Moose Jaw.
Admiral, Saskatchewan is located in Wise Creek Rural Municipality No. 77, about 195 kilometers southeast of Medicine Hat, Alberta. Until 2006, Admiral was an official village in southern Saskatchewan, but in August of that year it was reorganized into a hamlet (analogous to the dissolution of an incorporated town in the United States). It was the end result of more than eight decades of dwindling population for this quiet settlement on the prairie. As of 2006, Admiral had a reported…
This abandoned Saskatchewan bridge, a concrete arch bridge, also sometimes referred to as a “bowstring arch” bridge, is in southwestern Saskatchewan, just over two kilometers west of Scotsguard. The bridge spans the former line of the Great Western Railway and Notukeu Creek and was once the primary crossing of this coulee for traffic traveling along Highway 13.
This must be a Route 66 hotel, right? A hotel borne of car culture, a lonely stop among the cacti on the most famous two lane highway through the American southwest. Right?
Founded in 1909, Neidpath is in southern Saskatchewan, about 40 kilometers southeast of Swift Current, or 190 kilometers north of Saco, Montana. The Canadian National Railway arrived in 1924, and today, Neidpath is a relic of that simpler time when the railway was a primary means of transportation for people and goods.
Nestled among the mountains in Mineral County, about 130 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, lies Creede, a mountain town originally founded on the silver boom. The end of the boom led to a rapid decline for this picturesque little burgh in the San Juan Mountains, but a wartime need for metals in World War II led to a brief revival in Creede, Colorado. The first silver discovery in this area was at the Alpha mine in 1869, and Creede started…
Tombstone, Arizona is forever embedded in American Old West lore for its status as an outpost for scoundrels and heroes, and as the site of the infamous 1881 gunfight at the OK Corral (the actual gunfight happened near the OK Corral, not in it, but we’ll leave that subject for others to cover in-depth) in which the Earp brothers gunned down Tom and Frank McLaury (McLowrey) and Billy Clanton. Before the gunfight, however, Tombstone was a town like many others…