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Great Northern Roadtrip, Day 2

By Jeffrey Lee 

Day 2: Devils Lake, North Dakota

We leave pretty early, eager to flee this doomed and demon-infested place, and as we pause briefly for coffee we are given a hint of the town’s accursed nature: from where we sit, the first letter on the municipal water tower cannot be seen, so it reads “EVILS LAKE”. Without even stopping for fuel, we head out on Route 2.

Geographical Center of North America

Geographical Center of North America

I hope the citizens of Devils Lake can mend their ways and make their peace with the spirits that bedevil them, I really do. If not, they could easily go the way of Gardena, Omemee, Lostwood, and other ghost towns we search for on the wide open North Dakota prairie, to little avail. Even this year’s edition of the DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer seems not to have been updated since sometime shortly before the Great Depression, and boldly depicts roads and highways which are in truth mere tractor lanes petering out in seemingly endless fields of yellow sunflowers. Our task is further complicated by the fact that nearly all of the roads themselves are unmarked by signs; I suppose the highway department figures if you don’t already know where you are, you don’t belong here.

Depending on how you measure it, Rugby, N. Dak., is the self-proclaimed “Geographical Center of North America.” A tall fieldstone obelisk marks the spot, near the junction of US Route 2 and North Dakota Route 3.

north-dakota-sunflowersWe finally manage to spiral inward to the junction of two rail lines, where there once stood nine grain elevators and a soda factory. Seven hundred people used to live here in Omemee, but most packed up and moved to nearby Bottineau, and now all that’s left are some overgrown sidewalks and a single ramshackle house that most recently was home to small livestock.

There is something sadly poignant about this abandoned little town, and we can only wonder about the people who lived here, and what compelled them to literally haul their houses away down the road to start new lives elsewhere.

Omemee, North Dakota

Omemee, North Dakota

This sidetrip to look for towns that time forgot has led us astray from our main route, so we catch Hwy. 5 here, then US-83, the “Road to Nowhere”, once the only entirely paved highway running all the way from Canada to Mexico. We try to make up some lost time, but are bucking a strong headwind now. Toward evening we finally pull into Williston, North Dakota, and take a site at the Buffalo Trails Campground.

Ready, Set … Q: What's the only thing slower than a diesel Westfalia? A: A giant turtle, riding a snowmobile. Tommy the Turtle, mascot of Bottineau, ND, marks the entrance to the nearby Turtle Mountains where, among other activities, you evidently may drive a snowmobile …

Ready, Set …
Q: What’s the only thing slower than a diesel Westfalia?
A: A giant turtle, riding a snowmobile. Tommy the Turtle, mascot of Bottineau, ND, marks the entrance to the nearby Turtle Mountains where, among other activities, you evidently may drive a snowmobile …

The place is filled with behemoth motor homes and fifth-wheel campers—a disturbing campground trend lately—and hardly any tents. Or people, for that matter. I suppose with the lush shag carpet and satellite TV channels found in most large RVs, who needs to go outside and see the world? Heck, with full bathroom and shower facilities onboard, you don’t even have to visit the campground restroom to pee and to meet your fellow travelers. All of which serve to make the place one of the loneliest on the planet.

Sitting outside at our campsite picnic table, eating our dinner alone while the suspicious neighbors peer out their RV windows at us, we feel as out-of-place and incongruous as someone clipping his toenails in Aisle Three of the local supermarket.

After dinner we, like everyone else here, hide away in our own mini-motorhome and get some sleep for an early start.

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1 Comment
Categories : Great Northern, Journeys

Comments

  1. B Hydesmith says:
    July 13, 2020 at 11:02 pm

    Cool journey. It is sometimes even more interesting to add in some relatively recent, and very lively, political history. If you’re interested in a bit more about Devil’s Lake, you may want to read about its cross-border controversy with Canada.

    There’s a long history, but this might be a good primer: http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~rparis/CIPS_Devils_Lake_Feb2008.pdf

    Here is a bit of text from there…

    Devils Lake is an isolated water body in North Dakota that has no natural outlets. Rising water levels in the lake caused flooding in local communities from the early 1990s onwards. To reduce the danger of further flooding, the State of North Dakota constructed an “emergency outlet” from the lake in 2005 in order to transfer some Devils Lake water through a series of canals to the nearby Sheyenne River, which flows into the Red River and eventually into Canada and Lake Winnipeg.

    The governments of Canada and Manitoba had long opposed construction of this outlet, on the grounds that transferring Devils Lake water might introduce harmful invasive species and chemical contaminants into the surrounding watershed, which might in turn cause environmental and economic damage downstream in Canada. When construction of the outlet neared completion in early 2005, the Government of Canada launched a comprehensive diplomatic effort to prevent North Dakota from opening the outlet without first taking all reasonable and necessary steps to address Canada’s concerns.

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