The Story of my quest to photograph every town in North Dakota aired today on The Story from American Public Media. To hear my segment on the show, download the audio, and head to 31:00.

I’m still busy posting all the dots I’ve shot to my Flickr photostream. I wasn’t sure which day the episode would air until I got an email from Flickr user ForgottenSpaces about my photographs. He also mentioned a photography project of his where he photographed billboard environs all over the Midwest.

For more background on my Everydot project, read my mnartists.org interview. To see some dots, go to my Flickr photostream or Everydot page.

Photos mentioned in the interview:

• The house in Ambrose
• Petrel, which consists of a sign
• De Sart, a spot in a field, with an abandoned house not far away

Dots across the state of North Dakota. I plan to have photographed every town in North Dakota by the end of this summer. I’m currently in Jamestown, North Dakota, at a coffeeshop called Babb’s Coffee, “A Taste of Seattle”. There’s a 10-foot metal space needle in the corner, and the sandwiches are named after neighborhoods in Seattle. The coffee tastes like something I might have in Seattle, though not at Vivace.

I’ve spent hours driving to nearly unfindable places, like Three V Crossing, which somehow merits inclusion on the DeLorme map of North Dakota. Google Maps and MSN Maps both know where it is, but only MSN Maps actually bothers to give it a dot on the map.

The DeLorme North Dakota Atlas has become my official standard for defining “every dot on the North Dakota map”. If it’s on there, I will photograph it. The MSN maps are somehow even more detailed, but I don’t feel too bad about neglecting to photograph a place that’s too small for DeLorme or Google Maps. If I were feeling particularly meticulous, I’d also include data from my SPV railroad atlas. That, however, would probably double the time it would take me to finish this state. When finding all these tiny dots on maps, I’d originally assumed that they all came from the USGS place name database. What I’ve found, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be some master set — USGS might not have a place that MSN does, or vice-versa. Therefore, I get to look at five different places (DeLorme, Google Maps, MSN Maps, SPV railroad atlas, and the USGS database) if I really want to find every single dot.

Missing municipalities. Checking my map near Beach, North Dakota, I noticed that the usually 6-mile-square civil townships that blanket much of the Midwest and Ontario were larger than usual, ten to twelve miles square. Then I noticed that some counties appeared to be missing townships altogether. It made me wonder just how relevant the township is in an area with a rural population density of 0.8 people per square mile. As it turns out, many townships in North Dakota have disappeared. The US Census Population Estimates Boundary Changes reports dissolution of six township governments and one city from 2000-2006. Five cities and thirteen townships were dissolved in the 1990s.

Now today, I find out that the county I’m photographing in is experimenting with ‘voting centers’ for today’s primary election. Instead of voting in small town(ship) halls, people vote in the larger city or cities in the county. It appears that one of the last visible functions of townships may be disappearing in North Dakota. In some ways, this makes sense, since these buildings are small, often quite cold on the first Tuesday in November, and an expense to repair. On the other hand, driving 60 miles round-trip sounds a lot less appealing with $4/gallon gas.

Unincorporated dots. Nearly any dot on the map with more than a couple streets is an incorporated municipality, called a “city” by the state, regardless of size. I started wondering just how big a place could be and not be incorporated. One of the larger and better-maintained unincorporated communities is New Hradec. The town has a Catholic church, a Catholic school, and a Catholic workmen’s hall. It seems as though a large Catholic church ends up drawing enough people in to keep a tiny place surviving, as is also the case in Fried and Leo.

Hotel Calvert. I saw the Hotel Calvert in Lewistown, Montana on a trip across Montana earlier in the year. I really wanted to stop to stay there, but it was only 2pm. I got a chance this time, and I’m glad I stayed. The hotel was originally a dormitory for those attending the high school across the street. I’m sure that was a useful thing, given the great distances some kids had to travel just to get to a school, and given the horrendous winters in this part of the continent (both of which can be seen in the movie The Slaughter Rule). The Hotel Calvert website says that the dormitory opened in 1917, and it was sold and conversion to a hotel began in 1928. When I showed up at around midnight the hotel, there was no one at the desk, but there was a couple phone numbers given to call. I called one, and got no answer. The second one finally got me someone, who then apparently had to drive over. He apologized for having no rooms with a bathroom available, but I was actually glad to get a room that probably hadn’t been renovated in the last half-century. This turned out to be mostly true, except that the walls had been covered in wood paneling, presumably in the 1960s or 70s. Presumably the doe-eyed clownchild was added around then as well.

Moccasin, Montana is the closest to a ghost town that I’ve ever seen. It’s not completely deserted, but it’s close. There’s still a post office and grain elevator, but that’s about it.

Trainspotting? Though I’m many forms of geek, railfan isn’t one of them. Then why would I pick up SPV’s Comprehensive Railroad Atlas - Dakotas & Minnesota? I picked it up because most Everydots that I’ve photographed were built along rail lines, and some of the tiniest dots only have signage thanks to the railroad. The SPV atlas shows current and former rail lines, and current and former stations and sidings. Since the existence of many of these tiny towns was defined by the railroads, these maps end up being pretty comprehensive. It also helps explain why some maps would list some of these basically nonexistent spots and others would list different ones — the data for those must have come from railroad maps. For me, this means that if I want to be comprehensive, I now have even more dots to visit. While I expect that most of them will have nearly nothing that indicates they were a town, sometimes finding the smallest piece of evidence that they existed feels like a great discovery.

Everydot: North Dakota. Earlier this summer, I drove to and from Minnesota. The route passes through North Dakota, of course, and so I had to work on my project of photographing every town in that state. I spent a solid day photographing dots on a diagonal path from Marmarth, North Dakota to Lemmon, South Dakota and North Lemmon, North Dakota. The most challenging dot to photograph was Petrel, North Dakota, which I reached by driving along US 12 in South Dakota, taking a gravel road back into North Dakota, and then walking half mile along a grassy path.

The next day turned out rainy, so I headed in the direction of home. On my eastward trip, I’d really hoped to find some big old brick hotel in some downtown where I could get a cheap room with a bathroom down the hall. I knew such a thing had once existed and figured it might still. I saw a brick hotel in Lewistown, Montana, but I didn’t feel much like quitting for the day when it was only 2pm. In Sand Springs, I saw a billboard for the Northern Hotel in Winnett, 44 miles in the opposite direction. I ended up driving to Miles City, since I new there was a big old hotel there, the Olive Hotel. I went to the counter and was delighted to find that they still had rooms available. I was less delighted when I discovered I’d be staying in the Olive Motel across the street.

On the way back to Seattle, I passed up an old wooden hotel in Scobey and passed by an old brick hotel in Plentywood that I only now discovered existed. Instead, I ended up a hundred miles down the road in a smoking room an icky 1980s hotel. The next night, however, I ended up at the Ryan Hotel in Wallace, Idaho, purely by chance. It was exactly what I was looking for, and was unrenovated except for the added convenience of a toilet and shower in the room (in place of the next room over’s giant closet perhaps?).

Everydot: Douglas County, Washington. This past weekend, I drove across the Cascades into eastern Washington. I exited I-90 at George, Washington and drove northward. I was again on a search for old brick hotels, and this time I vowed to stop and get a room no matter how early in the day. Early in the evening I hit Waterville and came upon the striking Waterville Hotel. I met Dave and Amy, who run the place, and Dave gave me a tour of the place and directions to Alstown. On the way there, I passed a very dry cemetery surrounded by miles of stubbly fields. The next day, I photographed almost every town in Douglas County. I returned to the Waterville where I sat out on the porch, recalled the day’s adventures, and had some wine and cheese (all of which was a nice change from sitting on a smoky motel bed and eating a microwaved sandwich).

Another Secret Crush. Back in April I discovered a 20+ year old Orange Crush bottle inexplicably sitting in a flower box. This weekend, while looking to see if anything remained of Matthiesen, Washington, I found an old garbage dump. Whoever was dumping their garbage there was a fan of orange soda, and in particular, Orange Crush. I had to grab a fairly well-preserved Crush can just because it was such an odd occurrence.

Geodata. On my Douglas County trip, I brought along my old Garmin eTrex Legend handheld GPS unit. I hadn’t done anything with geotagging before, but I figured I’d haul the unit around and see if I could get anything out of it later. Before I left I went to the tracklog menu and saved what was already there, hoping that I might be able to get geodata from past trips where the GPS rode around in my car. A few days after I got back, I decided to pull off the tracklogs. What I ended up with was about 2/3 of my most recent trip timestamped and ready to be synced with my photos, plus the trips I saved (from 2003, as it turns out) sans timestamps. Rather counterintuitively, saving the tracklogs on this unit preserves some data while destroying others.

The timestamped tracklogs got synced perfectly thanks to gpsPhoto.pl. Since I’d already uploaded the photos to Flickr, I synced those separately, with GPSTagr. This was great, because I ended up with all the photos I took on a map.

Now I wanted to do this for the other 6000+ Everydot photos I’d taken. I figured I’d be able to get geodata for them by connecting the tags I’d put on them with a place name database and adding that via the Flickr API. I downloaded the database from the USGS’s Geographic Names Information Service. For places in Canada, I used Natural Resources Canada’s Geographical Name Search Service. All this was glued together with a Ruby script, and before long, nearly all of my 430 or so Everydots were geotagged.

Spooky School. This former school building sits unloved but not abandoned, in Lockhart, Minnesota. It seems massive for a town of this size. There are three floors of classrooms. The top two have roofs and floors collapsing into them, but the bottom floor is yet uncrushed. A sign scrawled where a chalkboard once was exhorts (other?) vandals to get out now.

Downtown Cow Town. Melvin, Minnesota has sidewalks, which is rare for a Dot this small on the map. What’s even more rare is that it also has curbs. Unfortunately, anyone trying to walk on the sidewalks is met with 25,000 volts, since this part of town is now a cow pasture.

More Dots. This day, I visited Melvin, Greenview, Beltrami, Hadler, Anthony, Heiberg, Flaming, and Sundal. Greenview was identified only by business (once a grain elevator?) alongside the railroad. Flaming seemed to be nearly nonexistent and was only on one of my two maps. A different map used in 2005 made me conclude that Sundal was also nonexistent, but I revisited it and found I’d been in the wrong spot. Sundal, near Rindal, does exist, in the form of a church and an abandoned creamery.

New Everydots. Following a trip from Seattle to home (northwestern Minnesota) and back, I have a few new photos. Wallace, Idaho is a mountainous town under and along I-90. It’s interesting in that it appears to have a tourist draw, but at the same time it’s still got some nice stale 50s and 60s-ness to it. Hebron, North Dakota is the Brick City and home to, of course, Hebron Brick. Killdeer, North Dakota, on Highway 200, feels a bit like the Wild West, except for the well-paved streets. Florian, Minnesota is not much more than a crossroads, but it’s known for its church and park. Girard, Minnesota is quite literally just a wide spot in the road, near Crookston. Finally, there’s Eldred, Minnesota, not far from Girard, but still with a few visible bits of town, plus, most importantly, a sign.

More Everydot photos,including a trip through the Emerson area, and another from Thompson to near Fargo. Favorites: Hunter, ND,Crookston, MN, Erskine, MN, and Dominion City, MB. Oh, and remember, that Salada Tea is Delicious and that Sportsman Cigarettes are rolled with ALLWEATHER waterproof paper!

I also have a new Groceterial sort of section called, unsurprisingly, Groceries. Here you can see glimpses a land where Cheez Whiz comes in something smaller than a #10 steel can and there is no olive bar, sushi, or soymilk.

I have lots of new photos, some in semi-new categories, and some scattered about in the existing categories. Go to photos to see ‘em all. Some examples: