Schafer

Schafer is a ghost town in McKenzie County, North Dakota, that once held the distinction of being the county seat before that designation moved to Watford City. Its fate as a living community was sealed by a land dispute between the Schafer family and the Great Northern Railway — a conflict that prevented the railroad from ever laying tracks through the area, even though grading work had already been completed all the way to the Missouri River. Without a rail connection, the town could not sustain itself.

Today Schafer is an unincorporated and largely abandoned locality. Visitors come for the historical curiosity of a once-prominent county seat reduced to a ghost town, and for photography opportunities in a spare, open landscape.