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: