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July 18, 2005

Soon On EBay

Few things are as fascinating - and occasionally depressing - as driving past some of North Dakota's many tiny, dying little towns.

100 years ago, many of these towns throve; a town that today has ten residents and four occupied buildings and a 40 mile drive to the nearest shopping center might have had five hundred people, a high school, a city hall and a town band within the living memory of some of the people who cling to what's left of the towns. The changing farm economy is emptying these towns, creating endless strings of near-ghost towns across what used to be the throbbing rail lines of the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific.

Guthrie is one of those towns - with a twist.

In yesterday's Strib, Bob Von Sternberg tells Guthrie's story, and that of the man who bought it, hoping to turn it into his own family colony:

Markos Janavaras has spent much of his long life selling everything from nylon stockings and Army surplus boots to lawnmowers and dishwashers.

But none of that experience has prepared him for what might be his last sale before he retires: a little town on the North Dakota prairie.

Guthrie, N.D., is a moribund railroad town with only two houses still occupied. It once was going to become a grand Janavaras family compound, complete with grape arbors that would recall Janavaras' native Greece.

On the one hand, it'd be a feat of either engineering or stagecraft; few places on earth resemble the rugged hills and compact vistas of Greece less than the northern drift prairie of North Dakota.

And yet...well, read it for yourself. It's a fascinating story.

Posted by Mitch at July 18, 2005 05:48 AM | TrackBack
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