North Dakota's state highway 43 runs parallel to the Canadian border for about 53 miles from the Turtle Mountains to a point near the small town of St. John near Rolla, forming the Turtle Mountain Scenic Byway. Visitors leaving the International Peace Garden might easily miss this delightful drive unless they know about it in advance. My previous post described the western end in the Turtle Mountains ending at Mystical Mountain. Now lets head east along the byway to North Dakota's stone castle on the prairie, the Coghlan Castle.
It would be easy to miss the sign marking the Scenic Byway turn a few miles south of the Peace Garden.
The drive east passes through rich farmland unlike the forest to the west. Once a visitor reaches St. John, it can still be a bit difficult to locate the Coghlan Castle. The scenic byway route turns off ND43 to the southeast and passes through St. John reaching its eastern end at this buffalo and turtle marker, halfway between St. John and Rolla.
Fortunately, we saw that the buffalo was looking intently at a picture of the Coughlan Castle on a nearby sign and were convinced that it does exist!
It turns out that the castle is nearby on ND 30, just not on the byway route (byway shown by green line).
Upon reaching the castle, we found a paved parking area just off the road constructed to provide a view of the building, with explanatory signs for the castle and its builders. The building itself is on private property and not open to the public.
The unique Coghlan Castle was constructed from local granite stones and completed in 1909. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. (National Registry entry for the castle can be found here.)
We continued on to the east beyond Rolla and followed U.S. 281 through Langdon toward Hallock, MN, until reaching Interstate 29 for our return home. We had only one more scenic stop to make!
More pictures can be found at this Flickr Album.
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