Follow the Tracks: Why Old Rail Lines Lead to the Best Abandoned Places

If you want to find abandoned buildings in the West and the Midwest, stop searching for abandoned buildings. Search for railroads instead.

A remarkable share of the small towns, elevator settlements, and depot communities across the Plains and Midwest either began with a railroad or survived because of one. In mining, logging, and ranching country the railroad often showed up after the settlement was already there, but it still decided which places grew and which ones quietly went away. Either way, the line is the thread. Learn to read the old ones and you stop hunting at random. You start working a list.

The railroads decided which towns would exist

Out here, a lot of small towns were not founded by settlers who wandered in and liked the view. They were platted, by the railroad or by a townsite company working alongside it, on land the company had been granted or bought cheap.

In grain country the spacing was often fairly regular, somewhere in the range of seven to fifteen miles. The reason was the farmer, not the locomotive: that was about as far as a man could haul a wagon of wheat to an elevator and still get home the same day. Railroad operations mattered too — water, fuel, sidings, section crews — but those needs did not line up neatly with townsites, and plenty of water stops never became towns at all.

The names came from wherever. Some lines worked through alphabetical or themed lists. Others named stations for company officials, investors, landowners, a director's daughter, a river, an older settlement nearby, or a town in Europe the promoters hoped this one might resemble.

Then the reasons went away. Diesel engines did not need water stops. Better roads meant a farmer could drive past three towns to reach a bigger elevator. Grain companies consolidated into a handful of concrete terminals. Federal policy shifted toward deregulation through the 1970s and culminated in the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which gave railroads much more freedom over rates and service and accelerated the shedding of marginal branch lines. Abandonment still required federal authorization — it does today — but the economics had changed for good.

Many of the people left. The buildings, at least the ones nobody could move, reuse, or afford to knock down, stayed.

That is the whole reason this works. A rail line is a record of where the money and the people used to be. Follow it and you are following a string of places built to serve something that no longer exists.

What the line leaves behind

The same cast shows up over and over. Knowing it helps you spot things from a mile out.

Grain elevators. The big one. Wooden crib elevators next to where the track was, sometimes bare wood gone silver, sometimes clad in galvanized steel or asphalt siding, sometimes still wearing a coat of red or white paint. You will also run into concrete terminals, flat storage sheds, and annexes bolted onto older houses. On flat country the elevator is visible for miles and it is the single best marker that a dead town is coming up.

Depots. Small combination freight and passenger stations. Many were sold off and dragged into town to become a house, a shop, or a shed, so learn the tells: deep roof overhangs, a bay window where the operator sat watching for trains, wide freight doors, and a long narrow floor plan that makes no sense for a house.

Section houses and bunkhouses. Crews lived along the line in company housing, usually built from standard railroad plans, so the same building turns up town after town on the same system. Not every stop had them and not many survive.

Water tanks, coal chutes, and stock pens. The tanks are mostly gone, but concrete footings, stone foundations, old pipework, and shallow depressions where the reservoir sat still show up. Stock pens are a different animal — they were for loading cattle, not servicing locomotives, and they lasted well past the steam era.

Everything the town built afterward. Schools, churches, a two-story brick bank, a hotel that had ten good years. These are the buildings that photograph best, and they are all within a few blocks of the track.

Finding the lines before you burn any gas

The research is the part most people skip, and it is where the good locations come from. Most of what follows can be searched and viewed online at no cost, though high-resolution downloads, reproductions, or full coverage sometimes cost money.

Historic USGS topographic maps. The single most useful tool. Use topoView at ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview, which covers the Historical Topographic Map Collection — every scale and edition of USGS printed topo maps from 1884 through 2006, more than 178,000 sheets, free. Downloads come as GeoPDF, GeoTIFF, JPEG, or KMZ. Grab the KMZ and it drops straight into Google Earth on top of modern imagery, which is the fastest way I know to see where a vanished line ran.

Old sheets show rail alignments, sidings, stations, and town street grids. Whether they show individual buildings depends entirely on the scale and the edition, and not every area has an early sheet at all. Pull the earliest useful map you can find and compare it to later editions and current imagery. Anything that appears on the old sheet and not the new one is worth investigating — but a missing symbol is a lead, not proof. Modern US Topo maps are compiled differently and simply carry different feature classes.

Sanborn fire insurance maps. Building-by-building maps of towns, showing footprints, what each structure was made of, and what it was used for. The Library of Congress collection covers roughly 12,000 communities. If you can line a Sanborn sheet up against surviving streets or landmarks, you can often work out which pile of foundation stones was the hotel.

Library of Congress railroad maps. The Railroad Maps, 1828 to 1900 collection holds 623 maps pulled from a much larger collection: government route surveys, Pacific Railroad Surveys, General Land Office maps showing land grants, right-of-way surveys, and promotional maps the companies put out themselves. You can browse by location or by railroad line. The promotional maps are worth a look on their own — they were sales pitches, drawn to make empty country look like opportunity.

Railroad valuation maps. The deepest well. After the Valuation Act of 1913, the Interstate Commerce Commission produced the most complete set of railway maps ever made in this country, now at the National Archives as Record Group 134 — roughly 125,000 right-of-way, tract, and station maps. Railroad engineers drew them between 1915 and 1920, inventorying every structure and parcel mile by mile. The engineering field notes that go with them describe the right-of-way to the nearest foot, and the bridge and building notes sometimes include photographs and blueprints.

Start with the Archives' Railroad Map Index, arranged alphabetically by railroad name. Digitization is uneven and ongoing. Some maps have been scanned by archives, universities, railroad historical societies, and private researchers, but coverage is patchy and a good deal of it is still request-only from the research room in College Park.

Surface Transportation Board Railroad Map Depot. At stb.gov/resources/railroad-map-depot. The Abandoned and Railbanked Rail Lines Map shows lines fully abandoned or railbanked since 2004 plus some older ones — not a complete historical record, but it will tell you the current legal status of a corridor, which matters more than most people realize. There is also a network map of active lines and a rail heritage map of rail-related properties on the National Register.

Employee timetables and track charts. Topo maps show where the tracks were. Railroad paperwork tells you what each spot actually was. Employee timetables, station lists, track charts, and official guides identify sidings, water facilities, junctions, mileposts, and division points that never show up on a topo.

County plat maps and land records. These separate railroad property from adjacent parcels and turn up original townsite plats, railroad additions, elevator lots, vacated streets, and current ownership. If you plan to ask permission, this is how you find out who to ask.

Historic newspapers. Digitized papers will tell you when the depot burned, when the elevator closed, when a building was moved, and what the townsite promoters were promising in 1911.

Google Earth Pro historical imagery. Desktop only — the mobile and browser versions do not reliably give you the time slider. Scroll through every available date. In some places an older frame preserves a building that has since collapsed. Coverage and quality vary a lot in rural country, and some areas have only a handful of usable dates.

Aerial photo archives. USGS EarthExplorer, USDA historical aerial photography, state GIS clearinghouses, county assessor and planning offices, university map libraries, local conservation district files, and HistoricAerials where it has coverage. Mid-century survey photos will show you a live town where there is now a field.

Reading the ground from the driver's seat

Here is the trick that makes this work in the field, especially in the Midwest and the eastern plains.

Much of that country was surveyed on a square grid, and county roads mostly follow it — dead straight, a mile apart, running with the compass. Railroads were built under different pressure. They cared plenty about land ownership and what right-of-way cost, but grade, curvature, and water crossings came first, and that pushed them across the grid instead of along it.

So look for the diagonal. A long line cutting across the section grid at an angle is worth investigating. It may well be a rail grade. It may also be a canal, a drainage ditch, a levee, a pipeline, a transmission line, an old stage road or highway, or a former interurban. Rivers wander, which rules most of them out quickly. The rest you sort out on the ground.

Roads follow the survey grid. The railroad cut its own line, and dropped a town every few miles along it.

Even where the rails and ties are long gone, the grade usually stays. Watch for:

• A raised berm running through a field, often a few feet high — though some farmers have leveled or plowed straight through

• A strip of unusually dense brush or trees, sometimes because ballast is underneath, sometimes just because nobody has cultivated it in forty years

• Cuts through low hills with sides steeper than anything nature would make

• Bridge abutments on both banks of a creek with nothing between them

• Culverts, or a row of culvert headwalls, lined up along the grade

• Telegraph poles, pole stubs, or evenly spaced depressions where poles were pulled

• Concrete mileposts, whistle posts, or signal foundations

• Broad, gentle curves — too gentle for a farm road

• Property lines and fences that jog at an angle for no visible reason

• Triangular or wye-shaped parcels near a former junction

Then look for a public road that parallels the grade or crosses it repeatedly. In farm country there usually is one, because the county built its road alongside the track. In the mountains, on big ranches, on reservations, and across federal land, there often is not, and some lines simply cannot be reached from a public road at all.

Shooting it

Use the line itself. The track, the grade, or the road beside it gives you a lead-in that most landscape subjects will not hand you for free. Back off and shoot long down the line and you stack elevators, poles, and buildings into a tighter frame than the eye sees on its own.

Wait for side light. These buildings are mostly flat gray boards and rusted steel. Midday sun makes them look like nothing. Low light from the side brings out every warped board and nail line.

Get the scale. A grain elevator on the plains is a hundred feet of wood standing alone under a huge sky. Back up further than feels right and let the emptiness do the work. Then go the other way and shoot the hardware, the ladders, the painted town name fading off the side.

Shoot the whole town, not just the best building. The empty street with three buildings left tells the story better than a single hero shot.

Go back. These places are falling down on a schedule. A building I photographed a few years ago may not be there next spring. A place that was boring in flat light is worth a second visit in a snowstorm.

And no frame is worth parking on a grade crossing or standing in a roadway.

The legal part, which matters more than you think

Assume the corridor is private until you have confirmed otherwise. Pulling up the rails does not make a right-of-way public, and this is where I see people get themselves in trouble.

Who owns an abandoned corridor depends on the original deed, whether the railroad held the land outright or only an easement for railroad purposes, state property law, whether federal abandonment was ever legally completed, and whether the corridor was later sold. Where the railroad owned only an easement, that interest can extinguish on abandonment and the ground goes to the adjoining owner. Where the railroad held it outright, the company keeps it and can sell it to anyone.

Then there is railbanking. Under a 1983 amendment to the National Trails System Act, a corridor can be turned over to a trail sponsor for interim trail use and is deliberately not treated as abandoned. It does not revert to adjacent landowners, the railroad keeps the right to bring service back, and federal jurisdiction stays in place. So a grade with a gravel path down it and no rail in sight may still be a live railroad corridor in the eyes of the law.

The practical upshot: the adjoining farmer may own it, the railroad may still own it, or it may belong to a county, a state agency, or a trail group. Stay on public roads until you know, and get permission before you set foot on a grade or in a building.

Ask the right person. Knocking on the nearest farmhouse is a fine way to start a conversation, but the person who answers may not own the ground. Ask locally who does, then get permission from the actual owner or manager. In small towns people are generally glad someone cares about the old elevator, and you will often come away with a story and sometimes a key. Permission gets you better access, better history, and a much simpler day.

Never enter a rail corridor without authorization. Only walk one if it is a designated public trail or you have explicit permission. Shiny rail is a sure sign of use, but rusty, weed-grown rail can still carry occasional freight, seasonal grain traffic, stored cars, maintenance equipment, inspection vehicles, or a tourist train. The Federal Railroad Administration treats unauthorized presence on a railroad right-of-way as trespassing, and it is one of the leading causes of rail-related deaths in this country. Shoot active or uncertain lines from a legal public spot.

Leave the artifacts. Spikes, date nails, signs, bottles, hardware, paperwork — photograph them where they lie and leave them there. On federal and state land, and at archaeological or Native American cultural sites, removing material can be a serious crime. Historic cemeteries deserve the same treatment.

A town that looks empty may not be. Two or three families still living in a place does not make it a ghost town. Treat occupied buildings as homes rather than scenery, keep out of yards, don't photograph people without asking, and think hard before publishing precise access details for a fragile structure without the owner's blessing.

The physical part

Old grain elevators are genuinely dangerous. Floors rot from below and look fine from above. Ladders and manlifts are eighty years old. Interiors are confined spaces that can hold oxygen-poor air, and residual grain can engulf a person. There are open pits, auger wells, live electrical gear, and fire-weakened framing. Grain dust is explosive. I do not go inside them and I would not recommend that you do.

Don't disturb rodent-infested interiors. Hantavirus is a real risk in the dry West, and the danger is inhaling contaminated particles after dry droppings and nesting material get stirred up. Never sweep, vacuum, or kick through that material. CDC guidance is to wet it down with disinfectant rather than dry-clean it, but the better answer for a photographer is to stay out.

Don't disturb asbestos, either. Old insulation, siding, and pipe wrap may contain it. A dust mask and gloves are not protection. Leave it alone.

Watch the small stuff. Rattlesnakes like warm foundations. Nails, glass, and unstable roofs are everywhere. Boots and gloves are cheap.

Tell someone your route and when you expect to be back. Carry water, a spare tire, first aid, and offline or paper maps. In genuinely remote country a satellite communicator is worth the money — much of this ground has no cell service for an hour in any direction.

A note on using these maps in your own work

If you want to post the maps themselves, most of what I have listed is free and clear. USGS maps are federal government work and carry no copyright. The Library of Congress states that content in its Geography and Map Division digital collections is free to use and reuse unless a rights advisory notice says otherwise, and asks that you credit the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. National Archives holdings are federal records on the same footing.

Check the item page before you publish anything, credit the source, and download the highest resolution offered. A 1913 topo sheet next to a current satellite view of the same square mile is one of the strongest before-and-after pairs you can put in front of a reader.

Where to start

Pick one line and work it end to end instead of scattering across a state. A few worth the effort — with the caveat that you have to check each segment individually, because "abandoned railroad" almost never means the whole thing:

• The Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension. The company went bankrupt in 1977 and in 1980 walked away from roughly everything west of Terry and Miles City, Montana, through Idaho and into Washington. It was the largest single railroad abandonment in American history, and it left substations, bridges, tunnels, and townsites behind. Ownership and access now vary enormously — trail here, private ground there, an operating railroad somewhere else.

• Great Northern branch lines off the Hi-Line in northern Montana. This is elevator country at its best. Note carefully that the Hi-Line main itself is a busy active BNSF corridor. The branches and the towns are the subject, not the main line.

• Chicago & North Western branches through the Dakotas and Nebraska, keeping in mind that successor railroads still run a fair amount of the old system.

• Rock Island branches through Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. The company shut down in 1980, but many of its better routes were bought up and are still in service, so verify a segment before you plan around it.

• Narrow gauge country in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, where the grades climb into terrain that makes the engineering itself the subject. Some of it is very much alive — the Cumbres & Toltec runs as a heritage railroad — so know which grade you are looking at.

Pull the old topo sheets, mark every town name that no longer appears on the current map, and plan a route that connects them. That list will keep you busy for years.

The railroads drew the map. All we are doing is reading it backward.