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GhostsofNorthAmerica.com
Last Days in Monowi, Nebraska: Population 1

Last Days in Monowi, Nebraska: Population 1

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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…

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Readlyn, Saskatchewan
School’s Out in Readlyn, Saskatchewan

School’s Out in Readlyn, Saskatchewan

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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. Readlyn is about 90 km south of Moose Jaw, in Excel Rural Municipality No. 71. Like many of the tiny former railroad communities in this part of Canada, Readlyn…

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Verwood, Saskatchewan
Passing Through Sleepy Verwood, Saskatchewan

Passing Through Sleepy Verwood, Saskatchewan

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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. Verwood is just under 100 kilometers south of Moose Jaw, or 50 miles north of Scobey, Montana. The most interesting structure I saw is Verwood Presbyterian Church (above) which was built in 1916. It looks like it has been vacant for quite some time. Like many of the southern Saskatchewan towns…

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Peace Lutheran Church
Church on the Prairie in RM Stonehenge

Church on the Prairie in RM Stonehenge

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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. I found out about this place by perusing some photos on Google Earth. It was photographed from a distance by someone, and it was referenced as “Lakenheath Romanian Orthodox Church.” When I arrived, I found a plaque designating this…

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Aneroid, Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan’s First Consolidated School is Abandoned

Saskatchewan’s First Consolidated School is Abandoned

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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. Aneroid is a perfectly normal hamlet in southern Saskatchewan, about 150 kilometers southwest of Moose Jaw, or 70 kilometers…

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Courval, Saskatchewan
Almost a Ghost: Near Ghost Town Courval, Saskatchewan

Almost a Ghost: Near Ghost Town Courval, Saskatchewan

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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. It was on the drive from Parkbeg to Courval that I recognized the undeniable truth of how remote some of these communities are. The roads can be very rough in places, there’s barely a powerline to be seen, and the…

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Galilee, Saskatchewan
The Lonely Ghost Town of Galilee

The Lonely Ghost Town of Galilee

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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. A post office was established in Galilee in…

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abandoned saskatchewan bridge
Abandoned 6 Arch Saskatchewan Bridge

Abandoned 6 Arch Saskatchewan Bridge

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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. The bridge was built sometime in the 1920s or 30s (if you know exactly when, please leave a comment) but the highway was realigned at…

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Fine Art Print: Cadillac Hotel
This Must Be a Route 66 Hotel, Right?

This Must Be a Route 66 Hotel, Right?

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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? Actually, it’s not. It’s about as far from Route 66 as you can imagine. This is the Cadillac Hotel, also known as the Range Line Tavern, in Cadillac, Saskatchewan. I’m not sure of the present status, but at one time, it was for sale with an asking price of…

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Neidpath, Saskatchewan
The Ghostly Remains of Neidpath

The Ghostly Remains of Neidpath

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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. Neidpath (pronounced NEED-path) is in Coulee Rural Municipality No. 136, and depending on whom you ask, the population is between zero and fourteen–the number really dependent on who considers themselves…

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Parkbeg, Saskatchewan
A Stranger in Parkbeg, Saskatchewan

A Stranger in Parkbeg, Saskatchewan

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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. The woman I spoke with approached just as I was shooting the building shown above. She…

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Corner Gas
A Long Goodbye for Corner Gas in Dog River

A Long Goodbye for Corner Gas in Dog River

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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. If you’ve never seen an episode of Corner Gas, you can still catch the reruns on…

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Admiral, Saskatchewan
Vanishing Hamlet: Admiral, Saskatchewan

Vanishing Hamlet: Admiral, Saskatchewan

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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…

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Creede, Colorado
A Brief Revival in Creede, Colorado

A Brief Revival in Creede, Colorado

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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…

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Tombstone, Arizona
Tombstone, Arizona Before the Tourists

Tombstone, Arizona Before the Tourists

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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…

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Ridgeville, Manitoba
The Invisible Beaches of Ridgeville, Manitoba

The Invisible Beaches of Ridgeville, Manitoba

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Ridgeville, Manitoba is a shrinking community in southern Manitoba, about ten miles northeast of Emerson, or sixty miles southeast of Winnipeg. The average visitor would never know it today, but about 9,000 years ago, Ridgeville was beachfront property. Glacial Lake Agassiz (one of the largest of all the glacial lakes and larger than all of the Great Lakes combined) created a successive series of beaches in the Ridgeville area as it drained. Today, the soil remains sandy, but Lake Agassiz…

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St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Canada’s First Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Canada’s First Ukrainian Orthodox Church

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It took a year to gather the photos for this post, largely due to my own confusion about two churches named St. Michaels. I stopped in Gardenton, a tiny town in southern Manitoba, just over the international border from Minnesota, because I had been photographing some places in Tolstoi, which is just a short distance away. I hadn’t done much pre-planning or research on Gardenton, but I was pleased to discover some abandoned places I could shoot. Exploring Gardenton, I…

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Union Point, Manitoba
All That Remains of a Manitoba Ghost Town

All That Remains of a Manitoba Ghost Town

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The divided highway which straddles this tiny country church is the only hint that a metropolitan area of more than 700,000 people lies just thirty minutes to the north. Otherwise, this serene spot on the prairie is a place out of time, a remote spot on the table-flat plains that were once the bottom of glacial Lake Agassiz. This church, however, is the last structure from what was once its own metropolitan area. Union Point United Church is all that…

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Struble, Iowa
Daydreaming on Main Street in Struble, Iowa

Daydreaming on Main Street in Struble, Iowa

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Struble, Iowa is in Plymouth County, about thirty miles northeast of Sioux City, and not far from another place we recently visited, the similarly-named Ruble, Iowa. According to the 2010 Census, Struble is a town of 78 residents, down from an all-time high of 327 in 1910. I was fooling around on Google Earth One day when I stumbled upon Struble, and we decided to visit so we could photograph the abandoned buildings in town. In April of 2016, we found…

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Ruble, Iowa
Ghost Town on Broken Kettle Creek

Ghost Town on Broken Kettle Creek

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In Plymouth County, about twenty miles north of Sioux City, stands Ruble, Iowa, a tiny dot on the map near Broken Kettle Creek. Ruble was founded in 1900, and was never really more than a roadside pit stop, with the store serving weary travelers and regional residents under the leadership of H.C. Marbach. The small one-room country school served area students in the early days until a larger school was built on a different site. The store once had a hitchin’…

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