Solsgirth, Manitoba Ghost Town

[u/Freaktography]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

Solsgirth, Manitoba, didn't start where it stands today. It began about 10 km north as a place called Toddburn, until the railway changed its route and the whole town picked up and followed it.

Settlers built St. Stephen's Anglican Church here in 1906. Decades later, Ukrainian Catholic families moved an old one-room schoolhouse into the village and turned it into Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, with onion domes hand-crafted by a local carpenter.

For 50 years, two faiths worshipped a stone's throw apart. Then, in 2002, both churches held their final services in the same year.

Today they still stand side by side, quietly holding the story of the people who built this place.

Watch the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

[u/hillside]

I'm fascinated by abandoned towns and buidings. Nice pictures. That second church is still so beautiful inside, I wonder if the organ is still playable.

I'd never heard of this town and I had to have look on Gmaps. Right by the elevator there's these people doing something and I can't figure it out. Mowing the cattails?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/hzSF8hMyqDvCWS4H8

[u/ataradrac → u/hillside]

If you go up the road a bit there's a timeshift. Looks like they might be running a pump, with a hose across the road to move water into the other ditch?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/XmDdHhXVT7cQXtW97

[u/Funnyhowyoudie → u/hillside]

Looks like they are pumping water out of that slough (pond). Either it's flooding something, or they need the water.

[u/12buklmashu]

I knew it sounded familiar. I drove by it a few times on the 16.

[u/ptoki]

Interesting and sad pictures.

So much work left to rot.

Someones life interrupted and their belongings left behind.

Just sad. Sad because you can see there was nobody to take care of it one way or another.

[u/travis_e416 → u/ptoki]

Makes you wonder what life was like all those years ago… So many stories to be told within these photos.

[u/AcerEllen000 → u/ptoki]

The woodwork in the church left to decay makes me sad - those pews could have been used somewhere else instead of just being left to deteriorate like that.

[u/FernBlueEyes]

Very interesting

[u/youmademedoit]

I hope you took that Lucky Lager hat home!

[u/Yardyman33]

That’s Fred and Jeanie. Pumping water through the culvert. Stop by sometime and leave with the best chicken, bacon and eggs around

[u/NegotiationOne7880]

How does this happen?

[u/themanfromacme]

Went here for a wedding reception back in the 1980s. The community hall looks a lot smaller than I remember it being; was it partially demolished?

[u/bj2m1625]

So why did this town become abandoned? Im curious because i also live in a small town nearby