Ghost Towns...Series...Baker, South Dakota

     Welcome to Baker, a ghost town in the midst of God’s Country. In awe and silence I stand staring at the hundred -year old location of the small active town of Baker that had its beginnings in the end of the century, and I wonder what it was like out there on the prairie. There must have been cabins, homes, stores and stables for the livestock. Men were working in the fields and washed clothes blowing in the wind to dry. Today there is only tall grass being rippled by the wind, fences, a well - groomed cemetery, and groups of trees on the rolling prairie. The narrow dirt road leading to the cemetery passes what was once Baker’s baseball field. The only visible remains of the town are the tombstones in the cemetery. From what I have heard and read the baseball field was located between the town of Baker and the cemetery.
     Baker was located two miles southwest of the current junction of South Daktoa highway 18 and Nebraska highway 281 where the firecracker stand sits. To reach the vacant town site of Baker coming from Spencer, Nebraska, take the last gravel road leading west from highway 281 before going into South Dakota. Drive west until you see a country road (about a fourth of a mile) and take a right hand turn on to an overgrown road which leads directly to the Catholic Cemetery. From the Catholic Cemetery and looking west, you can see where the Lutheran Cemetery is located in a grove of trees. To get to that cemetery, go back to the gravel road, turn west and continue to the four way intersection and take another right hand turn. Proceed until you reach the grove of trees and the Messiah Evangelica Lutheran Cemetery.
By Marita Placek
​Read the entire story in the latest edition of Living Here magazine. 
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