Minnesota woman on a quest to preserve stories of disappearing towns
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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. That's the theme of our series “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
There are thousands of towns across Minnesota that time forgot. Many are little more than faded buildings, remnants of lost hopes and dreams. They are unincorporated communities, places that have no local government.
Laura Grisamore loves them all.
She lives in one — Huntersville in Wadena County — and about three years ago, she started photographing the faded buildings around her. It lit a fire under her. She decided then to make it her mission to preserve the memories of other towns in their twilight.
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With her husband and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, she set out in a camper to photograph 33 little towns in five northern Minnesota counties, stopping at communities that were often just a wide spot on the highway.
As she stopped to photograph buildings, she found herself falling into conversations with the people who lived there. Capturing those memories and stories of small-town life became as important to her as capturing photos.
“Even though when you drive by it, it doesn't look like there's much of a town there, there is this whole world and this history and these amazing stories and people,” said Grisamore, 49. “I found it very important to pay attention to that.”
‘Time to get back to Basswood’
A second grant this year expanded Grisamore’s work, taking her down back roads across six more northern Minnesota counties.
In Hines, north of Bemidji, she stopped to photograph a former grocery store, now an antique shop. The owner, a man named Marvin Freyholtz, showed her a 70-year-old flyer for the grocery’s grand opening.
“It says free coffee and donuts, cookies and ice cream,” she said, looking at one of her photographs. "What's cool about this, and why I took a picture of this is because Marvin went to this. He remembers the taste of the ice cream.”
Stopping in Luce in Otter Tail County, she found brothers Donnie and Loren Greenwood, who grew up there and told her a story about why Luce remains unincorporated — residents voted on a question of becoming a village, but the votes never made it to the county seat in Fergus Falls.
South of Luce, she ran into Jesse Olson in Basswood. He raises cattle and told Grisamore his family loves living there. He told of a trip to a “big town” with his 12-year-old daughter.
“She's like, ‘Dad, you know, this town's OK but I think it's time to get back to Basswood and the smell of cow poop. I just miss being in the country.’”
An elderly man named Glen Pederson told her about growing up in Oylen in Wadena County where as a child the general store proprietor regaled him with a story — an unlikely one — about the day the outlaw Billy the Kid rode up to the store.
“And she was telling me all about that, people were staring and kind of scared but nobody said anything. He pays for his merchandise and rides off,” Pederson recounted to Grisamore.
Grisamore takes all of the stories at face value. This isn’t about a deeply researched history, it’s about memories that bind people to places.
“Why are these buildings still here?” she said. “Why hasn't somebody come in and bulldozed them down? I think that a lot of it is because these buildings are tied to memories.”
‘Don’t forget our stories’
The fate of many of the state’s unincorporated towns was often tied to industry or seemingly arbitrary government decisions.
Towns sprang up to support the northern Minnesota timber industry and just as quickly faded when the lumber mills closed or moved on. A shift in highways or rail lines could doom a small town.
“Edie Smith in Ponsford (Becker County) said to me, ‘This town used to be a hoppin’ place,’” Grisamore recalled.
Then a new state highway routed traffic away from the town and it faded. “She said, ‘Had they not put in that highway, I wonder what this town would be today.”
Trained as a photojournalist, Grisamore moved to Park Rapids in 2013 and switched from photo documentary work to conceptual photography and portraits.
The Iowa native’s work was on display in several northern Minnesota galleries, but a “deep calling” led her back to documentaries and the need to preserve voices and images.
She plans to continue capturing stories across northern Minnesota. She said she’s been amazed by the pride people feel in communities that are mostly memories and she vows to respect those memories.
"What is it about us humans that we want to leave things, like reminders of us,” she said, and then answered her question. “You know, ‘Don't forget us. Don't forget our stories.’”
Correction (Oct. 27, 2025): The captions in a previous version of this story misstated when Laura Grasmore’s photos were taken. The date has been corrected.
