Every Dot

This article from The Atantic magazine was popular with my Facebook friends a earlier this week...

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/10/all-the-small-places-in-north-dakota/100390/

This photographer named Andrew Filer is fascinated by rural America and small towns and is working on photographing every named place in the rural states.  He has already done North Dakota, quite a bit of MN, and some other states and also Canadian provinces.  If you click on the link and than click on the "everydot" link in the article, you can see the lists of places.  The places, I believe, the places listed on a geological map, so not every place is on a current highway map. 

I have been obsessing over this all week!  There are so many to click on and so many beautiful pictures.  I am kind of dissapointed that the pictures of my town are pretty old and feature a vacant lot that has been turned into a really nice garden now but Mr. Filer said himself that he didn't necessarily photograph the prettiest places or places representative of the town but instead the details he personally likes and finds interesting.  Fine with me, I guess...his photos I have seen are beautiful even if they just picture a road where a town stood long ago but has vanished.  My favorites are the photos of abandoned school buildings that so many towns used to have.  They just make me sad to see them standing alone, even if they have been maintained by someone.  Many of them are just ruins now.  Schools are places that hold alot of memories, good and bad, for anyone who wasn't homeschooled, of course!  They just seem so lonely when they have been abandoned.  My favorite school photo was of Denbigh, ND.  I have no idea where that is, but the photo is a majestic school standing there in the grass and it looks nice and cared for. I wish I could see it in person!  Maybe I can, one of these days...maybe it's closer than I think!  I will have to look it up...by the way, I would share the photo but I don't want to steal Mr. Filer's photos. 

My very favorite "place" was also somewhere I had never heard of...San Haven, ND.  I clicked on the link and it was pictures of a huge complex of buildings overgrown with trees and weeds.  It looked huge, like a hospital or something!  I did some additional research and found out that San Haven is an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium which was later a state hospital for problematic patients of all kinds (mentally incompetent, deformed babies, you name it...).  It housed over 900 patients in its busiest years and the campus was so big it was given its own zip code, which is how it is on the list of named places, I guess... 

There are pictures of San Haven all over the internet so I will share one...



This is from Ghostsofnorthdakota.com, which is also a very interesting website.  In the 1980's, traditional state asylums, where patients were sent to be "out of the way" were reformed to the benefit of patients everywhere.  I saw a presentation about it during law school, although that presentation focused on another hospital in ND and not San Haven.  If you know anything about the history of mental illness you know that what went on in these places was not always good so of course this place is well known as a haunted place.  I have studied North Dakota history pretty extensively during school and on my own and I can't believe I never knew about such a fascinating place!  You learn something new all the time!

So, if you get a chance and have any interest, check out Everydot!  I'm jealous that he has seen the whole state and I haven't even seen the whole state!