Badlands 2022: Ghost Towns Okaton and Owanka · 7:47pm Sep 21st, 2022
The badlands are named such not for their beauty or danger, but for the fact that they are almost entirely agriculturally useless throughout this continent's recorded history.
When the government was giving out 160-acre squares in the late 1800's to whomever would live and farm the land after paying a small fee, every single one of the plots was bought up.
In the following years, 90% of the homesteaders returned to where they had come from. The Badlands and the surrounding area get about 15 inches of rain annually; nowhere even remotely close to being able to sustain crops or human lives.
When the railroad came through in the early 1900's, small settlements popped up to host and house railroad workers. As students of history know, the railroad boom wasn't to last, and while Okaton saw a very brief resurgence as a tourist attraction, Owanka's death was slower and far more scandalous, including a never-solved bank robbery, a murder, and a school superintendent marrying a 9th grader.
When the railroads ceased to be used, and Interstate Highway 90 all but passing them by, nothing besides photographers and urban explorers brings traffic to these roads.
Okaton is 1/4 mile south of I-90, east of the badlands, and Owanka is 5 miles south of I-90, west of the badlands.
Disclaimer: photographers are tolerated, but Okaton and Owanka are entirely privately owned property. Both towns have extremely sparse populations remaining, usually a single household. I didn't approach any structure that looked lived-in or otherwise populated.
Okaton, SD
Owanka, SD
Interesting information & absolutely beautiful.
I hoped you where careful for Changelings when you visited the region.
It is the "Badlands" after all.
I'll see myself out...
I've always wanted to go on a ghost town tour. I had been to one on my way back from an SCA event in New Mexico. Only one old couple living there (I really wish I could remember the name but it was over 25 years ago) I remember hearing about a mine in the area, but me and my buddy got full run of the little town because we shared some of the drinks and steaks we were taking back home with the couple. Camped out one night in their backyard and it was incredibly spooky, I loved it.
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Or by dudes with swords working for Barons
Good photos, they would make for good hangable pictures or desktop wallpapers.