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According to the 1955 road map, Buttzville is located approximately 5 miles northeast of Lisbon in
Ransom County. About 4 miles north of Lisbon on 32 you turn right on a dirt road. You take that road to the next dirt road
and turn right. You will hopefully find Buttzville. The road to take and the town do not appear on the newest roadmap. It's
about 4 miles down the dirt road to the turn.
We ended up going to Buttzville because my wife's grandmother lived in Lisbon, and they would always
go by the Buttzville sign to exit and she said as kids they always wanted to visit such a differently named city. There is
no signage today leading to the town.
We ended up driving down quite a ways, coming back and then asking a teenage boy who was mowing in
the ditch of the dirt road if he could tell us where Buttzville was. and he indicated the turn we had to take. The house above
is the first structure on the right that we saw.
According to the North Dakota Place Names book by Douglas Wick, Buttzville founded in
1881 and platted in 1882. It's named after a Major Charles Wilson Buttz, a veteran of the Civil War originally from PA. The
population reached about 100 in 1920 and in 1955 had declined to approximately 15 in 1960.
None of the usual businesses, other than the elevator, ever established theselves in Buttzville,
according to Geneva Roth Olstad, author of Main Street North Dakota, Volume II.
Looking above, I believe the slab on the right of the railroad is probably where the old depot or
elevator was. One can see these tracks are not used anymore.
There appears to be at least two inhabited homes right in the town, and a number of the old buildings
of the town seem to be used for storage of some kind. They do appear to be kept up to some extent.
The picture below along what might have been the "main" street at one time shows that some of
these old structures. One small one even has an air conditioner in it, though it does not seem to be used as a dwelling.
Old storage structures and slabs for old mobile homes abound. I did not take a picture of the abandonded
trailer. I saw at least one old washing machine and tons of scatter junk, mostly of a scrap metal nature.
The home below looks like it was abandoned within the past ten years, and is becoming steadily overgrown.
There is a large structure behind the "main" street area that appears to be storage for tractors and farm equipment.
The map below is pretty much drawn from memory and looking at the pictures, but gives you an overall
idea of the layout of the town. This was a neat town to visit, but a little unnerving, as it is really isolated and though
there were people living there, we saw no one for the approximately one hour we were there.
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