Abandoned Towns
A plain tan brick city hall with a white door and small windows on a gravel street

River and lake town · Railroad and road town

Churchs Ferry

A town of 457 people in 1910 that the rising water of Devils Lake emptied. After a federal buyout around 2000 most houses were torn down or moved, and in 2022 the last six residents voted to dissolve the city.

48°16′07″N 99°11′40″W · ≈1,450 ft

Photo: Andrew Filer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Mostly empty

Churchs Ferry dissolved as a city in 2022 and is now an unincorporated place in Ramsey County with a handful of residents. The remaining buildings belong to residents, the school alumni association and others; the old city hall, gym and Masonic lodge were locked in 2021. Look from the streets.

Overview

The town the lake took

A gravel street in Churchs Ferry, May 2008
A gravel street in Churchs Ferry, May 2008 · Photo: Andrew Filer from Seattle (ex-Minneapolis), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Churchs Ferry grew up in 1883 where Irvine A. Church ran a ferry, on Devils Lake by one account and on the Mauvais Coulee beside town by another; the 1953 USGS sheet shows the Great Northern railroad running through town. It took its present name in 1886, incorporated as a village in 1897 and reached its peak of 457 people in 1910. After that the town shrank slowly: 223 people in 1950, 118 in 1990.

Then the lake came back. Devils Lake began rising in the early 1990s, and more than 400 homes around it have since been moved or destroyed. Around 2000 the federal government gave residents a choice between staying put and taking a buyout. Most people sold. The Federal Emergency Management Agency bought most of the land, fifty-two structures were torn down, and land that was bought could not be lived on again. Wikipedia names Churchs Ferry and Penn as the two towns bought out by government agencies.

Seventy-seven people remained in 2000 and twelve in 2010. In 2012 the holdouts voted 5 to 2 to stay a city, but in June 2022 the last six voted to dissolve it, and on September 1, 2022, after 139 years, Churchs Ferry stopped being a city.

Then and now

Watch Churchs Ferry empty out

Drive the gravel streets of Churchs Ferry today and it is hard to picture a town here: the stores, the churches, a house on nearly every lot. The census counted 223 people in 1950. Two aerial photographs of the same ground make the change easy to see. The first was taken from a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey plane on July 26, 1959. The second comes from the federal farm survey of July 9, 2023, a year after the last six residents voted to dissolve the city.

The streets are still there. Most houses went in the buyout that began around 2000, and lake water now covers fields that were dry and tilled in 1959.

Drag the line across the photo, or use the arrow keys.
2023 aerial photograph: the same street grid, most lots grown into trees and grass with a few houses, and lake water and marsh over the fields to the east and southeastRailroad: Great Northern, now BNSFChurch siteMost lots empty after the buyoutLake water over the fields2023
1959 aerial photograph: houses along every street, the railroad yard by the tracks, and dry farmland all around the townRailroad: Great Northern, now BNSFChurchHouses on nearly every lotDry farmland1959
1959 aerial photograph: houses along every street, the railroad yard by the tracks, and dry farmland all around the townRailroad: Great Northern, now BNSFChurchHouses on nearly every lotDry farmland1959
1959. Houses along every street, the railroad yard by the tracks, and dry farmland all around the town.
2023 aerial photograph: the same street grid, most lots grown into trees and grass with a few houses, and lake water and marsh over the fields to the east and southeastRailroad: Great Northern, now BNSFChurch siteMost lots empty after the buyoutLake water over the fields2023
2023. The same street grid, most lots grown into trees and grass with a few houses, and lake water and marsh over the fields to the east and southeast.

1959: U.S. Department of Agriculture; scan by the North Dakota Department of Water Resources, source, Public domain. 2023: U.S. Department of Agriculture NAIP, via USGS The National Map, source, Public domain. Both photographs cover the same 1.6 by 1.2 km and were lined up on 15 street corners, rail crossings and road bends, to within about 2 m. Labels: the railroad from the 1953 USGS Devils Lake sheet, the church from the 1994 USGS Churchs Ferry sheet, the rest from what the photographs show. The idea comes from Ghosts of North Dakota's "Watch Lincoln Valley Become a Ghost Town" (2017).

Timeline

Ferry, railroad, flood, buyout

  1. A settlement named Ferry starts where Irvine A. Church runs a ferry, on Devils Lake by Wikipedia's account and on the Mauvais Coulee beside town by the Grand Forks Herald's.
  2. The name becomes Churchs Ferry.
  3. Churchs Ferry incorporates as a village (March 5).
  4. Census: 457, the peak.
  5. Drought shrinks Devils Lake to a slough; the lake recovers by mid-century.
  6. Churchs Ferry becomes a city (July 1).
  7. Census: 118. Devils Lake starts rising in the early 1990s.
  8. With water closing in, the federal government (FEMA) offers a buyout. Most residents take it, knowing no one can move back onto bought land. By 2022, 52 structures have been torn down.
  9. Census: 12.
  10. Zion Lutheran Church closes; only its bell tower and slab stay.
  11. Residents vote 5 to 2 to keep the town incorporated.
  12. The six remaining residents vote 5 to 1 to dissolve the city. It ends on September 1, 2022, per the Grand Forks Herald (Wikipedia also gives September 30), and Ramsey County takes over.
  13. The Census Bureau estimates six residents.

What's left

What you'll see

The Masonic lodge, May 2008
The Masonic lodge, May 2008 · Photo: Andrew Filer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

The Grand Forks Herald listed what was left in August 2022: the city hall, a Works Progress Administration building of the 1930s that the city stopped using in 2005; the concrete slab and empty bell tower of Zion Lutheran Church, closed in 2011; a one-room schoolhouse that the alumni association keeps as a museum, with the church bell outside; a monument on the site of the Methodist church; two other houses; and land owned by the alumni association. Prairie Public added in 2021 the old grocery and fire hall, now the alumni meeting place, and found the old city hall, the school gymnasium and the Masonic lodge locked. Old sidewalks and shrubs mark lots where houses stood, and a bridge stands in the water of the lake.

Two travelers who drove through in September 2024, in a video posted in October 2025, found the old road out toward the lake signed closed and overgrown; the narrator, who had driven it to the water's edge in 2005 and 2009, showed his 2009 photo of it running into the lake. They also passed an empty lot where a house had probably been moved away and a building with an old cafe sign. Trains still run through town on the BNSF line, which Amtrak's Empire Builder uses without stopping.

Alumni still gather every summer for an all-school reunion, with suppers, a meeting, horse-wagon tours of town and an auction. The mayor's prediction in 2022 was that a visitor a year later would find everything looking exactly the same.

The 1994 Churchs Ferry sheet below shows a full street grid of buildings north of the railroad, a park and sewage ponds, with the four-lane US 2 to the south. Today's map shows the same streets nearly empty, with marsh and open water around them.

  • City hall (1930s WPA)
  • Zion Lutheran Church bell tower and slab
  • One-room schoolhouse alumni museum and church bell
  • Methodist church site monument
  • Old grocery and fire hall (alumni building)
  • School gymnasium
  • Masonic lodge
  • Sidewalks and shrubs of empty lots
USGS topographic map of the Churchs Ferry street grid between the railroad and Devils Lake marshes
USGS The National Map, topo. Orvis Avenue and 3rd Street cross the old town north of the railroad, with marsh and ponds to the east and south and US 2 below.
Aerial view of the thinned-out town blocks among trees and wet ground
Aerial imagery, same area. Tree-lined blocks with few buildings, the railroad cutting across, and water and marsh pressing in from the east.

Historic maps

Churchs Ferry on USGS maps, 1953–1994

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

USGS topographic map around Churchs Ferry, 1953
Devils Lake sheet, 1953, 1:250,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Map & directions

Getting there

Devils Lake is the nearest city. US 2 runs west from it along the lake to the Churchs Ferry turnoff at ND 281. From Grand Forks, US 2 runs straight west across the state to the same turn.

USGS topographic map from Devils Lake northwest to Churchs Ferry, with routes drawn on it

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

From downtown Devils Lake19.9 miabout 25 min
  1. From downtown Devils Lake, take College Drive North (ND 20) and 4th Street NW (ND 19).0.4 mi
  2. Turn right on US 2 and follow it west.18.7 mi
  3. Turn right on ND 281 (66th Avenue NE), then right on 4th Street, Summit Avenue and 3rd Street into town.0.9 mi
Google Maps directionsApple MapsOpenStreetMap

Road and safety notes

  • The road rating is 2WD. The current USGS topo shows US 2 as a divided highway past town. Prairie Public described gravel streets in town in 2021, and photos from May 2008 show them. A road that once ran out toward the lake was signed closed and overgrown in September 2024, per a road-trip video.

Photos

Churchs Ferry in photos

Visitor reports

Been to Churchs Ferry?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

River and lake

More river and lake ghost towns

The nearest, in other states.

A wooden boardwalk with an interpretive sign crossing a grassy field toward the white Beaulieu House on a pine-edged riseGuide

Old Crow Wing

46.28, -94.34

Crow Wing County, Minnesota

A trading town where the Crow Wing River meets the Mississippi, the leading trade and travel center of its region in the 1860s. The railroad crossed…

Townsite in a state parkRiver and lake
NiningerGuide

Nininger

44.77, -92.90

Dakota County, Minnesota

A paper city on the Mississippi that Ignatius Donnelly sold to the world in 1856. It held nearly 1,000 people within two years, the Panic of 1857…

Little left · farmlandRiver and lake

All 58 river and lake ghost towns →

Nearby

Other sites near Churchs Ferry

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our North Dakota index.

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. Wikipedia, "Churchs Ferry, North Dakota", read October 28, 2026: Ferry in 1883 and the 1886 name, Irvine A. Church, the 1897 and 1967 incorporations, the lake's fall and rise, the 400 homes, the buyout of Churchs Ferry and Penn, the census counts 1900-2020 and the 2025 estimate, the 2012 and 2022 votes, the two dissolution dates, the Empire Builder on the BNSF line, the coordinates.
  2. ghosttowns.com, Churchs Ferry, read October 28, 2026: the 2WD road, summer as the best time, the climate, the flooding expected around 2001.
  3. Ingrid Harbo, "After 139 years, Churchs Ferry, North Dakota, to be dissolved," Grand Forks Herald, August 6, 2022: Irvine Church's ferry on the Mauvais Coulee, FEMA's buyout from about 2000, 52 structures torn down, six residents, the June 14 vote and September 1 date, the city hall, bell tower, schoolhouse museum, monument and two houses, the mayor's words.
  4. Danielle Webster, "Tiny town, big memories," Prairie Public, June 18, 2021: the reunion, the schoolhouse museum, the alumni building, the locked city hall, gym and Masonic lodge, the bridge in the lake, the buyout terms, seven residents.
  5. Travels with Trigger, "Part 15: Following the Empire Builder: Flooded Town, Forgotten History & an Abandoned Grain Elevator", YouTube, posted October 15, 2025 (filmed September 2024, per the creators): the closed, overgrown road and the narrator's 2009 photo of it running into the lake, the empty lots, the cafe sign, the railroad.
  6. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026.

Photo and map credits