Life…Death…Iron

My family roots are tied to the Black Hills region of South Dakota and Wyoming.  I still have quite a bit of family in the area, and a couple weeks ago I decided to take my first trip as an adult (and I use the term “adult” loosely) and see what there was to see.  I’ve been there several times, but mostly as a bored kid, strapped in the backseat of whatever Chevy sedan or wagon the parents owned at the time. Back then, the trips to South Dakota to visit the family seemed like long, endless, journeys to a far away land filled with dust and hot wind.  I didn’t have much interest in those childhood trips. This time around, I left Colorado with an open mind and a tank full of gas, and set off for the dusty roads of the Black Hills to see what there was to see…

Ardmore was one of the stops I made.  Just north of the Nebraska state line in Fall River County, Ardmore was the quintessential “town where time stood still.”  Most of the “ghost towns”  today have at least some small resident population- Hermits and recluses hiding from the rest of the world, or the elderly still clinging on to what once was.  Ardmore had neither.  This was perhaps the most ghostly of ghost towns I’ve visited recently.

Ardmore was clearly a beautiful town at one time, and had a small main street and several side streets that housed businesses and residences. The railroad still passes through, but they don’t stop anymore.  As far as I could tell, no one lives in Ardmore. From the appearance of the town and the cars in the yards, it looks like time came to an abrupt stop in Ardmore sometime in the 1970s.

The hot South Dakota wind I remembered from my childhood visits whipped through the tall oak trees that lined the streets. Antelope stared at me curiously from the surrounding fields. A few black birds crowed at me from high above as they roosted on dilapidated buildings or towering oaks. I stopped in the middle of “Main Street” which, evidently at some point in time, was two-lane  blacktop, but today was a series of asphalt chunks with tall, bright green prairie grasses growing through the cracks.

Ardmore, distant, vacant, and remote is a ghost town worth the trip for anyone visiting this sleepy corner of South Dakota. You can stand in the streets of this abandoned town and imagine how it must have been in the 1940s and 1950s. Just be careful, the rattlesnakes in this part of the country are plentiful and big, and Ardmore is one gigantic playground for these venomous critters! Watch your step and don’t go reaching for anything!

      

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