SHELL CITY

NAME: Shell City COUNTY: Wadena ROADS: 2WD GRID: 3 CLIMATE: Snow in Winter. Warm Summers. BEST TIME TO VISIT: Site open: May to October

COMMENTS: Directions to Accommodation from Nearest Town/Intersection: From Menahga, MN, on US Highway 71, take Stocking Lake Rd. east, 4 mi. to Co. Rd. 23; turn left (north) 1 mi. to 380th St.; turn right (east) 3 m to 199th Ave; turn left (north) 1 mi. REMAINS: building foundation depressions, cemetery and wagon tracks.

The site of the town is currently known as Shell City Campground and is located on the Shell River in the northern part of Wadena County, Minnesota, on the edge of the fertile Shell Prairies of Hubbard County, MN. This historic 60 acre site was once the flourishing settlement of Shell City, which was founded in about 1880. The town once boasted a button factory that made buttons from the clams in the river, a hotel, post office, school, a stagecoach barn and numerous other establishments. Foundations are all that remain of the village. Visible are the faint trails from the wagon trains (up to 100 wagons in each caravan) that carried wheat from Shell City to the Northern Pacific railhead at Verndale, MN, 40 miles to the south. A stagecoach line also traveled between Shell City and Verndale. The town died when the Great Northern Railroad took a route seven miles to the west. Today there are signs locating all of the original buildings. Submitted by: Devon Dougherty

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