Where the Roads End in Water: The Lake That Won't Stop Rising - Lisa M. Hamilton - Life - The Atlantic

For 18 years, North Dakota's Devils Lake has been flooding non-stop and turning farms into resorts—this year as badly as ever. The first installment in a three-part series.

The lake itself is not shocking. In fact, to eyes like mine, seeing it for the first time, it looks unremarkable, benign even—flat, blue, shallow around the edges. What's unnerving are the signs that the land beneath was dry not long ago. Every few miles along the highway, a cross-street leads straight into the blue, the yellow center lines almost beckoning drivers to follow and submerge. In the town of Minnewaukan, just past D Avenue, Main Street itself disappears into the water.

Around the corner, the playground in front of the local school awaits the water without defense. The football field across the street is already gone, transformed into a wetland with little mounds of grass where marsh birds nest. A wire cage still stands where the baseball diamond was, but on a Saturday afternoon in April, the only people near it are a man and a woman in rubber boots—fishing. [...]

Full article at theatlantic.com

 

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