Okaton, South Dakota.

The railroad created Okaton in 1906, and the railroad abandoned the town in 1980. For a time, “out-of-towners” moved to the small community (population 36 in the 2010 Census), and started a series of projects that would turn Okaton into a “ghost town” attraction just a block or so off Interstate 90 a few miles west of Murdo. The project wasn’t successful and the family moved on to bigger and better things.

An Internet search found a match to the building above in a photo published in 2006 referencing the house belonged to someone named “Crazy Bear”, and a further search referenced the obituary of a woman born in Belvedere, SD who lived in the Okaton area. Her nickname was “Crazybear”. A wild assumption on my part tells me that this was her house at some point in her life.

About the photo: As we drove through the town, I put my Samsung S20U to work capturing the old buildings. I processed the image via Lightroom and Luminar AI. It is posted on Flickr, and you can get a better view of the image and see the pertinent metadata there. Just click on the image above.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner