Sims

The story

Sims was one of the first industrial towns in Dakota Territory. Founded in 1883 where the Northern Pacific Railway needed coal and water, it boomed almost overnight on coal mining and a brickyard that turned the local clay into building material; more than a thousand people lived there within a year. It was also a deeply Scandinavian place, and in 1884 its Lutheran congregation built a church and parsonage — the church is said to be the oldest Lutheran church in North Dakota west of the Missouri River.

The boom was brief. By 1890 the population had already fallen to around 400, and Sims dwindled steadily for the next half century until the post office closed in 1947. The town is essentially gone.

What keeps Sims on the map is its church, still holding services every other Sunday, and its ghost. Locals tell of the 'Gray Lady' — said to be Bertha Dordal, a young pastor's wife who died in the parsonage around 1917 — seen wandering the rooms and heard playing the organ, with a 1930s minister supposed to have moved out over it. We pass that along as the folklore it is. The restored parsonage now houses the Sims historical museum.

What remains today

The 1884 Scandinavian Lutheran church (still in use) and its restored parsonage-museum, with a few other buildings on the open prairie.