Tag Archives: SD Drift Prairie

Abandoned Hunting: The In-Between | MN, SD & ND

This is the follow up post to Abandoned Hunting | MN, SD & ND.

We were afforded quite a variety of scenery and subjects in our travels.  The wildlife was plentiful and spectacular.  The sheer number of geese that will congregate in one area can be quite the spectacle.  We were reminded how nature can often be raw and brutal.  We witnessed a bald eagle ripping away at a deer carcass and another that dispatched Fluffy on the side of a road and then proceeded to carry it away.  The Whitetail deer were seemingly as numerous as grains of sands.  There were three different occasions that we spotted entire herds milling about in the middle of the day.  I very much enjoyed the small towns we passed through.  I could have spent a lot of time photographing their character, but per usual, we were on a mission.

Abandoned Hunting | MN, SD & ND

Cyndie and I had time last weekend to do some abandoned hunting.  We drove through West Central MN (212), NE South Dakota and SE North Dakota.  We were amazed at the number of abandoned farms and homes still standing.  The first two images are two of many that “got away.”  The snow was somewhat of a hindrance.  Minimum Maintenance roads are nothing to mess around with this time of year.  The roads to several properties where minimum maintenance or simply were just not plowed.  GPS coordinates will come in handy for a return trip 🙂

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The next few images are of an almost abandoned town in SD called Hammer.  There was one home there still occupied – not quite a complete ghost town yet.

Further along you will see that we did find a couple of abandoned homes that we could actually explore (Montevideo and Big Stone City).

 

We both would have liked to get inside the 1911 brick schoolhouse in Louisburg, MN, but that just wasn’t possible.

A few more abandoned places we encountered.


It was a great few days to get away and capture rural decay and commit historic visions to pixels.  The post to follow will include all of the photos of all points in between the abandoned places.