I’m Troy, and You Can’t Find Me
I’m hiding in places you’d never think to look.
Greetings fellow Globetrotters! I am Troy and I’m hoping to be your tour guide through something a little different. I don’t have anything to report on hotel accommodations or nightlife or dining options. In the places I chose to visit for over 20 years, those things did not exist.
Beginning in 2003, a good friend and I spent countless weekends and holidays driving all over central North America, visiting abandoned and nearly abandoned places. We visited locations in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. In most of the places we visited, crickets were the only nightlife, and accommodations sometimes meant a tent. Dining options consisted of snacks we brought along for the ride and whatever we had in the cooler.
Our project continued for 16 years until life took us in other directions in 2019. Many of the photos we took in my home state of North Dakota can still be seen at Ghosts of North Dakota. However, the rest of my photos need a home, and I look forward to sharing them with you here.
An Abandoned 6-Arch Saskatchewan Bridge
This abandoned Saskatchewan bridge, a concrete arch bridge, also sometimes referred to as a “bowstring arch” bridge, is in southwestern Saskatchewan, just over two kilometers west of Scotsguard. The bridge spans the former line of the Great Western Railway and Notukeu Creek and was once the primary crossing of this coulee for traffic traveling along Highway 13.
I didn’t find a lot of information available about this bridge. It was built sometime in the 1920s or 30s, but the highway was realigned later, and this bridge was left disconnected and abandoned.
The view from the top was an amazing vista. The wind hissed across the prairie and the occasional bird or cricket called out for attention. Barely a tree in sight. Just a neverending landscape of grass.
On Google Earth, you can still see a faint outline of the highway in the adjacent land, but in person, the bridge is the only real sign that traffic once crossed here — a crumbling concrete and re-bar span which points off into a green oblivion, at the nexus of an unending sea of prairie grasses and azure blue sky. I was amazed that I couldn’t pick out the remains of the highway on the surface.
This bridge turned out to be my westernmost point on this trip through the Canadian prairie. In the end, it was a serene place to visit and relax, even if only for a few minutes.
Thanks for having me! Until next time, Globetrotters!
Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Mastodon and on Twitter.
