Ghosts Towns along the Hi-Line

Ghosts Towns along the Hi-Line

In 1984 I began my statewide fieldwork on the Hi-Line with Toole County being among the first stops. Here I encountered Devon, a town name that denotes rural beauty from Great Britain, but here along the Great Northern Railway and U.S. 2 it had become a forgotten place. I soon discovered that many other Devons existed in the region, and I talked about a good many of them in the “Travelers Companion to Montana History” book. Since that time, Don Baker has written “Ghost Towns of the Montana Prairie” that documents even more of these places. Three decades later, my basic question is: how many of these ghosts have now blown away leaving only scattered foundations behind? Those that remain are powerful physical documents of the Homesteading Era, which 100 years ago still held such hope and promise for the region.

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