This old township hall stands alone beside a gravel road in Lac Qui Parle County, just a few miles east of the border with South Dakota. I found it particularly beautiful, on top of a hill, with purple blooms in the prairie grasses.
Photos by Troy Larson, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
This is a mirror post from GhostsofMN.com. See the original here.
This is the former US Highway 10 near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. It was closed in the seventies when Highway 10 was widened to four lanes, leaving this stretch blocked-off and abandoned. Today, deer and snowmobiles are the only traffic. These photos were taken on a day trip from Fargo in the fall of 2010. The hike through here is effortless and the photo opportunities in the fall are incredible. I had to ask around for directions, but it was pretty easy to find with a little help from Google Earth, once I knew where to look.
This visit to the lost highway was in the fall of 2010 and I was unaware of a deeper history waiting to de discovered. In the spring of 2011, we would find out this was much more than simply a closed section of blacktop. Continue the story here.
Photos by Troy Larson, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
Noyes, Minnesota is the most northwestern settlement in Minnesota. It sits right on the Canadian border, and just across the Red River from Pembina, North Dakota, two miles west. Although there are inhabited farmsteads in the area, there are very few residents (we only saw two inhabited places) in the actual town, largely due to the closure of the former Port of Entry station from Emerson, Manitoba.
In 2003, the Canadian government closed the Emerson Port of Entry. Three years later, the United States closed the Noyes station, shuttering this border crossing for good and moving operations west to Pembina. Near the end of its life, this station handled three trucks, three trains, fifty vehicles, and 154 passengers per day.
The old Port of Entry building is for sale.
Within sixty seconds of our arrival at the border, a US Border Patrol truck showed up and checked us out. We don’t really know if it was just a coincidence, or if they’re really that vigilant.
Looking south from the Canadian point-of-view.
We’d be willing to bet that despite this border station being abandoned, those cameras are still feeding video.
Whoever buys this is gonna have a sweet eight stall garage
This small stone obelisk marks the US/Canadian border.
A locked gate blocks the road to Emerson and a closed Canadian port.
Three steps through that gap and we would be illegally in Canada.
Fargo resident James Sprague explained these ‘tracks’ in the road to us: These tar covered lines in the pavement are likely from inductance sensing loops. They detect the changes in magnetic field caused by a vehicle, person or anything with iron/steel content crossing over them. Most common applications are ground loops for traffic control signals and perimeter monitoring in security systems.
This former roadside garden and flag pole is barely recognizable after only seven years of abandonment.
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In your mind’s eye, you can imagine the vehicles that once lined up on busy holiday weekends with their windows down and the radio playing, families heading to a favorite destination across the border… now only a memory.
Back in the day, this probably would have been your last chance to get gas before entering Canada and paying by the liter.
The Noyes depot is still in operation under the command of the Pembina Port of Entry staff. Trains coming from Canada are processed here.
We don’t really have an explanation for it, but we left with a jittery kind of uneasy feeling after visiting Noyes. It’s not hard to imagine you’re living post-apocalypse when visiting abandoned government facilities like this. It also reminded us of another closed border crossing we once visited — Northgate, North Dakota.
Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
This is a mirror post from GhostsofMN.com — see the original here.