Minnesota’s ghost towns are a relic of grand visions gone awry

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It would be easy to drive past Spring Lake Cemetery.

Nestled among fields and farms near Hastings, the 1-acre cemetery is home to weathered stone graves dating to the 1800s. Some stick out of the ground at odd angles, displaced by time.

When Keary Miller of St. Paul would explore there as a kid, it was even more hidden. She also came across what appeared to be abandoned barns, the rafters stacked high with animal pelts.

“The fact that there was something that somebody would put so much work into and then it was abandoned was so interesting to me,” Miller said.

This experience led Miller to submit a question at the State Fair to the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, Curious Minnesota: “How many ghost towns are in Minnesota?”

The cemetery that sparked her interest is less than 3 miles from one of the state’s most famous ghost towns — Nininger.

A ghost town is a community that once thrived but is now empty of all residents. Historians said it is difficult to get a firm grasp on the state’s count of these abandoned places. There often aren’t remaining buildings or proof of settlements. Sometimes, they just slowly shrink, or are absorbed into other communities.

“The ghost towns here in Carver County … don’t really look the same way ghost towns out west do, where you’ve got a lot of, like, abandoned buildings and things like that,” said Jayna Hulleman, the education and exhibits coordinator at the Carver County Historical Society.

It also depends on how you define “ghost town,” said Bill Convery, the director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society.

“Are you talking about old Dakota and Ojibwe villages? Are you talking about fur trading posts? What constitutes a ghost town?” he said. “If you count everything, I would say it’s in the hundreds.”

Of the many former communities that once thrived here, some of Minnesota’s ghost towns do stand out, however. At least one of them was preserved in its empty state and draws tourists.

As a founder of the city of Nininger along the Mississippi River near Hastings, Ignatius Donnelly had grand plans — so grand that he built himself a mansion to compare favorably with Mount Vernon, according to Convery.

Donnelly advertised his vision for the Minnesota city before it was built in the 1850s, targeting immigrants on the East Coast.

It worked. At its peak, Nininger had around 1,000 residents. Many who lived there were from the northeast, places like New York and Pennsylvania. But the town also drew emigrants from overseas, including Germany, Ireland, Scotland and Norway, according to an 1857 census provided by the Dakota County Historical Society.

“It is beautifully situated along the west bank of the Mississippi, twenty-five miles below St. Paul,” read an 1856 ad for Nininger in the New York Times. “There is plenty of timber and water ... and the climate is delightfully invigorating.”

In reality, the spot along the Mississippi was not such a good location, Convery said. The river wouldn’t support a large steamboat port there.

Then came the Panic of 1857, a financial crisis and recession.

“It wiped out any chance of Nininger succeeding,” Convery said. “It was sort of a big economic wave of disaster that hit Minnesota and the rest of the nation. Nininger was already struggling.”

The population of Nininger was roughly cut in half, as many residents moved to Hastings or Red Wing. It continued to fall from there.

Eventually, the only resident left was the Sage of Nininger himself — Donnelly, who went on to serve as a politician and author until his death in 1901.

“He couldn’t afford to leave, so he hung on,” Convery said. “His mansion was ultimately torn down after his death, unfortunately. He was sort of the last ghost of what became, by that point, the Nininger ghost town.”

Two historical markers tell Nininger’s story today, but its last remaining building was moved to Hastings’ Little Log House Pioneer Village.

Over a hundred miles south of Nininger is another ghost town. But this one has been preserved.

Forestville was incorporated in 1854 and had a nice spot along a stage coach route. This made it a prosperous town, according to site manager Matt Eidem.

There were about 150 people living in the town at its peak. There were two hotels and two general stores. But the growing railroads bypassed Forestville, and some people began to leave to find better opportunities in cities with rail stations.

As they left, a general store owner named Felix Meighen and his son, Thomas, began to buy up a lot of property.

“They had 2,000 acres. Most of the people who lived in Forestville then worked for the Meighens in some way, shape or form,” said Eidem.

The advent of rural postal delivery dealt the town its final blow. “When people stopped coming to the store to check their mail, sales in the store plummeted,” Eidem said.

During the town’s final year, 1910, the main store only made one sale. “That’s when they decided to close the store and effectively end the town,” he said.

Forestville ended up having a different fate than most of the state’s other ghost towns, however. Thomas Meighen, who died in 1936, said as a last wish that he wanted his boyhood home to become a park.

Today, the restored empty town is inside Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park and is managed by the Minnesota Historical Society. Visitors can tour buildings, including the Meighen General store, the Meighen family residence, a granary and a carriage barn.

Crow Wing State Park near Brainerd is home to another Minnesota ghost town. Old Crow Wing has only one building left standing, but there’s a trail that brings its history to life.

Old Crow Wing is Convery’s favorite ghost town.

“It’s just a beautiful hike and it’s really my favorite place — just because of the real diversity that took place there,” Convery said. “It kind of represented the promise of Minnesota’s multiculturalism from a very early time.”

The history of Old Crow Wing stretches to before the American Revolution. Originally a Dakota village, it also became an important place for the Ojibwe people, serving as a place to negotiate agreements, Convery said. By the 1770s, European fur traders had moved in.

”During the American Revolution, there was a community there,” Convery said. ”And it was a really multicultural community that included a lot of Euro-Americans, a lot of Ojibwe and a lot of Métis,” people with mixed Indigenous and European ancestry.

For half a century or so, Old Crow Wing continued to grow and thrive. It was a critical stop along the Red River Trail trading route. Two-wheeled ox carts traveled through often.

“By the 1840s, it was [on] such an important ox cart route that it was one of the major communities of Minnesota,” said Convery. It attracted political leaders like Henry Rice and Ojibwe leader Hole-in-the-Day. The U.S. Army chose to build Fort Ripley near the town.

In 1868, however, the U.S. government forcibly removed the Ojibwe people to the White Earth reservation, causing the decline of Old Crow Wing, according to Convery.

The population was depleted. Then, the railroad was built through nearby Brainerd. The writing was on the wall for Old Crow Wing.

“Old Crow Wing could have been the most important city in Minnesota,” Convery said. “It was certainly one of the most diverse.”

Although ghost towns can bring to mind sepia-toned images, Convery warned against thinking of ghost towns as a bygone phenomenon.

“Our economy continues to have ups and downs and booms and busts, and there are all kinds of reasons why a community might really flourish and then decline,” said Convery. “That’s as true today as it ever was.”

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