Max, North Dakota

Max, North Dakota sits in McLean County, founded in nineteen oh six as the Soo Line Railroad pushed across the Missouri Plateau. Like dozens of villages strung along these branch lines, Max sprang up almost overnight: grain elevator first, general store second, post office third. The surrounding prairie had been homesteaded just a few years earlier by a mix of Scandinavian and German-Russian families who had crossed the Atlantic in search of cheap land.

The railroad gave them a place to sell their wheat. Today Max is home to a few hundred residents, its grain elevator still the tallest structure for miles, a quiet landmark of the homestead era that built the northern plains.