Appam, North Dakota

Appam, North Dakota, is an unincorporated community and virtual ghost town in Williams County, North Dakota,[1] in the northwestern corner of the state near the junction of U.S. 85 and ND Route 50. The town was founded in 1916 on the route of the Great Northern Railway, and Appam well water was considered exceptionally good for steam engines.[2][3] The meaning of the name "Appam," allegedly bestowed by a surveyor from Texas, is unknown.[4]

Abandoned Lutheran church near Appam, North Dakota, 1994.

Appam was settled largely by Scandinavian immigrants, and at its height the town had a population of perhaps a hundred, as well as businesses appropriate for its time and place, including a bank, a hotel, a garage, a blacksmith shop, two general stores, two hardware stores, and a post office.[5] Most residents attended the town's Lutheran church.[6] The frames and facades of some buildings survived into the 21st century, and a few people moved back into the area during the Bakken oil boom of the 2010s.[7]

Short story writer Carrie [Adhele "Peggy" Berg] Young (1923-2017) wrote several books of fiction and the memoir Nothing to Do but Stay (1991) about life in the Appam area between the coming of the homesteaders and the end of the Great Depression.[8]

Church interior, Christmas, 1920.

References
  1. "Appam". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. Retrieved November 16, 2018.
  2. Larson, Troy (August 5, 2016). "The Old West Charm of Appam, North Dakota". Ghosts of North Dakota. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  3. Golden Jubilee of Alamo, Appam, Corinth, North Dakota, 1916-1966. privately published. 1966. p. 158.
  4. Eide, Marlene, coordinator (1975). The Wonders of Williams: A History of Williams County, North Dakota. Williams County Historical Society. pp. I: 331."The Old West Charm of Appam, North Dakota."
  5. Golden Jubilee, 158.
  6. Carrie Young, Nothing To Do But Stay (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 44.
  7. "The Old West Charm of Appam, North Dakota."
  8. Young; Golden Jubilee, 191-92; Young obituary, Troy (Ohio) Daily News, November 6, 2017.

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