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August 1941. "Hotel on main street of town. Lone Tree, North Dakota." Medium format acetate negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
Help us, Dave, where did you notice the hotel's name?
[In front of my eyeballs. - Dave]
One must employ the singular stick in the case of Lone Tree.
Here in Texas, where Everything is Bigger®, we even have a bigger nothing. Notrees (accent on first syllable) way out yonder in Ector County, is almost the last word in desolation. The first word is subject to controversy and, in the abundance of caution, we won't presume to go there.
The town's namesake is just peeking in on the left.
What on earth happened to the hotel wall above the windows?
And I am getting slower as I age, and I usually "get" Shorpy's witty photo titles, but to what does "The Walther" refer?
[The name of the hotel. - Dave]
Trees, that is. The town must have been named some decades earlier.
Lonetree ND (or Lone Tree) is a little place on the railroad not too far from Minot that's now a ghost town with a surviving grain elevator. It was never big enough for the collection of stores shown in this picture.
The neighboring town of Berthold appears to be the location of this photo. Proof?
https://books.google.com/books?id=LtswAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=wal...
This references a Hotel Walther being built in Berthold in 1907. Which, given the somewhat derelict condition of the property, seems possible
I count at least seven trees, maybe more. False advertising.
The excitement and cosmopolitan splendor of this part of North Dakota must have overcome Marion Post Wolcott when she was labeling these photographs, as I'm fairly certain that this shot is of the main street of Berthold, ND, the next town to the west of Lone Tree.
Heed the warning sign -- it's not a parking sign! Might have helped to include on the sign: "Falling Bricks".
A mattress for a window blind. Also just maybe a vacancy or two looks to be available.
I definitely see MORE than one tree in that photo!
. . . to the exercise room and pool?
Building on the right...it looks like the bricklayers quit and the owner had to finish the job himself. Before "This Old House" was on the air.
They must have hired someone's 5-year-old kid to do that repair work at the top of that hotel.
A search on Google Maps returned a site of "Lonetree" about 20 miles WNW of Minot. No evidence of a former town -- just a couple of farm homes with numerous outbuildings.
The surrounding countryside appears pockmarked with ponds. Some evidence of oil drillings.
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