Prairie ghost ...

When people think of Montana ghost towns, it's always the legendary mining camps of the Rockies that come to mind. But eastern Montana has them, too, and the prairie towns have stories that are every bit as fascinating and poignant as those up in the mountains.

I shot this photo last month at a place called Bowdoin, which is up in Phillips County a little east of Malta. Bodowin was founded in the late 1910s by the Great Northern Railway, which for some reason decided that it needed to build a huge new roundhouse and repair facility at that particular spot. They spent vast amounts of money there, and a town developed nearby to house the workers ... and then a few years later the railroad shut everything down. All that's left is a grain elevator, a single collapsing house, and a sea of foundations out at the old railroad yards.