Hankinson, North Dakota, The Town That Moved

Colonel R. H. Hankinson founded the town that bears his name in eighteen eighty-six as a railroad depot in Richland County, but there was a complication. Hankinson had already platted streets and roads around Lake Elsie, planning to build the town right on the lakeshore. The railroad company looked at his plans and refused to cooperate. Building track around the lake was too expensive. They insisted the depot go further north.

Hankinson had to abandon his lakeside dream and relocate the entire project. The town was re-established to the north, the post office opened in eighteen eighty-six, and the railroad made it a regional agricultural hub. By around nineteen ten, Hankinson had reached its peak population of about fifteen hundred. Today roughly nine hundred people live there, making it the last significant stop before the South Dakota border on Interstate Twenty-Nine.