Russell Lee took this photograph from inside the general store in Ray, North Dakota, in October 1937 — from the side of the counter where the real business of a small town happened. Groceries, dry goods, news, and credit, all under one roof and all within walking distance of everybody in Ray, up in Williams…
On February 16, 1942, John Vachon photographed snow being shoveled in front of the hotel in Hettinger, North Dakota, in Adams County. On the northern plains, winter wasn’t a season you watched through the window. It was work — done with a shovel, in front of the town hotel, in the middle of a North…
In November 1940, Election Day in Beaver Creek precinct, McIntosh County, North Dakota, looked like this: a white frame one-room schoolhouse, the first patches of snow on the ground, and the farmers’ cars lined up outside. There was no courthouse and no civic center to go to. In farm country, the polling place was the…
