Okaton, South Dakota.

Travelers on I-90 might find an interesting photo stop at exit 183 but don’t expect any traditional roadside services or even an open store. Okaton was born in 1906 during the time of railroad construction, the town subsisted until the railroad tracks went into disuse in 1980.

Relying on the Internet to tell me about this ghostly location showed me that yet again, what you see there isn’t necessarily what you get. For example, images on the Internet show this abandoned fuel station as having a “Westlake’s Ghost Town” sign above the awning. In the articles I reviewed, the population was listed as 36 in 2010, so in less than a decade, the ghost town facade has disappeared completely.

The Ghost Town Mall in the opening photo is also gone. It, like all of the property in the town, is private property. There are many “Posted – Keep Out” signs on the old buildings. The dilapidated elevator, below, is certainly no safe place to visit.

The old elevator was once used as a setting in a motion picture, but the movie was never released. Bringing this tourist stop near Murdo South Dakota to fruition was the brainchild of Robert and Evelyn Westlake. Being so close to I-90, their idea had some potential, but the couple eventually sold their interest in the properties and moved on.

Once I discovered that the only sights to see here are from the roads that run through the 5-block town, we didn’t even get out of the car, and I captured all of these photos from the public road rather than encroach on personal property.

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. Clayton, in the comments below, reminded me of what happens when you assume. Crazy Bear is a family name, not a person’s name, as it relates to this house in Okaton. There is no relation between the Belvedere obituary and the folks in Okaton. Thanks, Clayton for setting me straight.

No doubt this building was decorated to be the town jail, given the mural of the marshal sitting at the door, along with the shadow of a prisoner looking through the bars of his cell window missing his freedom.

All of the images for this post were captured in 12000×9000 pixel images on my Samsung S20U and enhanced with Adobe Lightroom and Skylum’s Luminar 4. Of course, I always recommend clicking on an image to enlarge it for a better view.

You won’t find a rest stop or convenience store at Okaton, if that’s your goal, I recommend Murdo at Exit 192, some 9 miles (14 km) east. There you will also find Murdo’s Auto Museum, a worthy stop for admirers of classic cars, historic farm equipment, and of pioneer villages. Public rest areas are available about 20 miles east near Belvedere, but I noticed as this is being written, the westbound rest area is temporarily closed.

Don’t mistake the above paragraph to mean I am discouraging you from stopping at Okaton. Still and all, you won’t waste much time looking around the former tourist attraction, and you may find the opportunity for some worthy photographs of an old railroad town that is now more of a ghost town than ever.

John Steiner