​How far you can go from Fargo

Fortuna and Alkabo are the farthest towns you can drive to from Fargo and still be in the state of North Dakota.

Seven hours away in the northwest corner of Divide County, the two towns have fewer than 30 residents combined, Fortuna at 22 and Alkabo at 7. They lie as the furthermost outposts in North Dakota, but make no mistake: Interest and adventure still find outlets in the northwest corner.

Writing Rock

An extreme outlier of the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s historic sites, Writing Rock sits in a hillside park between Grenora and Alkabo.

Two granite boulders covered in petroglyphs rest under a stone shelter, protected from the battering wind and other elements on this patch of prairie.

The boulders, sacred to Plains Indians, are said to have had clairvoyant properties before whites moved the rocks a century ago. Take this story from a Works Progress Administration travel guide to North Dakota, written in 1938:

“Many years ago a party of eight warriors stopped for the night near this rock, and just as they were falling asleep they heard a voice calling in the distance. Fearful of an enemy attack, they investigated but found nothing. The next morning they heard a woman’s voice calling, but still they found no one. In their search, however, they saw this large rock with a picture on it, showing eight Indians, themselves, with their packs lying on the ground. Unable to understand this mystery, the warriors went on their way.

On their return they again passed the rock and noticed that the inscription had changed, and appeared to hold a picture of the future. When they reached home they told their people of the mysterious rock, and the entire village moved near it, only to find that the picture had changed, this time showing the village with its tipis. From that time on the rock was believed to foretell the future until white men moved it; whereupon it lost its power.”

Fortuna Air Force Station

Between Alkabo and Fortuna is the Fortuna Air Force Station, a remnant of the Peace Garden State’s part in the Cold War. Activated in 1952 until its total deactivation in 1984, Fortuna AFS was a ground control intercept base tasked with guiding interceptor aircraft to unknown objects in U.S. airspace.

The sprawling facility featured several radar sails and radomes, the former of which toppled a few times in the northern prairie winds.

The base had extensive officers’ quarters, two nightclubs, a bowling alley, a motor pool and other amenities. Entertainment was hard to come by, and veteran airmen have shared stories of watching Crosby High School basketball to find some fun.

In July 2013, Ghosts of North Dakota filmed and photographed Fortuna AFS before Divide County began demolition on the base in August 2015 at a rate of a building a day.

The five-story radar tower will continue to stand and one smaller building too as a testament and memory to the work done in the Cold War in North Dakota.

Also, wireless Internet and mobile phone coverage for rural customers are both programmed from the radar tower today. Previously the tower held a three-story computer to operate its radar sail.

North Dakota Highway 50

Outside of southwest North Dakota, some of the most depopulated places in the state have to be the towns along State Highway 50.

The stretch of road takes travelers by Corinth (population: 3), Alamo (population: 54) and Hanks (population: 1), towns all shadows of their former selves but not necessarily ghosts.

Why, the towns of McGregor, Hamlet, Wildrose, Corinth and Alamo all have schools, yet only Wildrose’s appears to be in use these days.

Abandoned buildings line the streets. Alkabo’s business district is three abandoned storefronts, a crumbling bank vault and a sidewalk losing the war with nature.

Appam, N.D., especially strikes a chord of loneliness as its former downtown businesses are marked in memorial by wooden signs noting that a dance hall stood here, a garage there and a post office there.

“It used to be a busy place a 100 years ago, they say,” one Appam resident said as he collected his mail on a clear afternoon April 2.