LAKEVIEW AND PUREWATER

NAME: Lakeview and Purewater COUNTY: Todd ROADS: 2WD GRID: 3 CLIMATE: Typical for the Dakotas: hot and dry in summer, cold and snowy in winter BEST TIME TO VISIT: Dirt and gravel roads make winter travel difficult

COMMENTS: These towns are located 10 miles north and one mile east of Crookston, Nebraska, right north of the state line (at which the Nebraska paved road ends and becomes gravel in South Dakota). The towns are accessible only via dirt roads. REMAINS: Purewater has nothing remaining except the old church and parsonage. Lakeview's parsonage and church are still in use, but all other buildings have crumbled to their foundations. A new school has been built near the old Lakeview site to serve the scattered farming population.

These were originally Dutch farm towns serving the Dutch immigrant farmers north of Crookston. Lakeview was the larger town and had a Reformed Church in America congregation, a school, stores, and a post office; Purewater was much smaller and had a Christian Reformed congregation. The two church buildings still exist though the two congregations merged in 1959; the CRC still uses the old Lakeview church for worship services. When the dust storms hit the great plains during the 1930s, the land north of Crookston became unsuitable for farming and became ranchland. The Christian Reformed Church, which at the end of 1999 counted 48 adults and 51 children, accounts for about 1/3 of the remaining population of the surrounding area. In driving through the area, a few of the old farm buildings are still in use as ranch houses, but most are in a state of disrepair and disuse and all buildings in the town proper except the churches and parsonage have crumbled to their foundations. (The Purewater CRC building is currently a storage building for the family living in the old parsonage.) There is still a small school operating near the site of Lakeview on the dirt road that used to be the main street of the town; the old high school is in ruins south of town and the old elementary school in Lakeview has crumbled to its foundations. Submitted by: Darrell Todd Maurina

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