North Dakota

When we see abandoned buildings, it's our natural instinct to wonder why they have been left behind to the intense elements of North Dakota. Come along with author, Katherine Rose Bingham, down a dirt road to see the workmanship of the past. Walk into a room and discover layers of wallpaper, the years peeling away one at a time. Drive by an old barn and look inside to see a treasured old vehicle left covered in dust. Observe a steeple towering over the trees, the cooing of pigeons the only noise coming from the choir loft.

Katherine Rose Bingham moved to a North Dakota farm in 2014. The farm had been in the family since 1938. She has always believed she was born in the wrong era, and these old pieces of history hold a fascination and wonderment for her. Katherine finds joy in capturing a town that was once a booming oil field, seeing the hills divided where a train once trudged, and trying to preserve what once was in these vastly changing times.

A curtain flutters in the window of an abandoned farmhouse. Textbooks from the 1940s lay scattered on the floor of a one-room schoolhouse. Receipts for a load of grain sit on the desk of a ghost town grain elevator. If you are a person who likes exploring these abandoned places with camera in hand, North Dakota is a target-rich environment. Drive down any gravel road, and soon you will come across a relic from the past. This is why author John Piepkorn loves North Dakota.

John Piepkorn is a photographer who has had a lifelong interest in abandoned places. On multiple trips across North Dakota in the last twenty-five years, he has documented hundreds of places that were once filled with life. Today, those places stand empty. John has made an effort to document the churches, schools, and abandoned farms that dot the North Dakota landscape. Each place has a story to tell, and even in the decay, beauty can be found.