Valley City — North Dakota

A river town draped across the Sheyenne River valley on a string of bridges, seven of them still standing from the days when the Northern Pacific needed the tallest trestle in the state to cross it. Lia and I spent a slow afternoon walking bridge to bridge, which turned out to be the best way to see a town this size.

Valley City calls itself the City of Bridges, and after an afternoon there Lia and I agreed it undersells the claim — the Sheyenne River loops through town in such tight bends that engineers just kept building, leaving behind a small city of about six thousand people crossed by more than a dozen bridges, several of them a century old. We parked downtown and walked, which is really the only way to understand the place: Main Street sits up on the bluff, the river winds below, and every few blocks another iron or concrete span carries you back and forth across water that seems determined to be everywhere at once.

The Hi-Line Bridge

The one you can’t miss is the Hi-Line, a railroad trestle completed in 1908 that rises nearly four hundred feet across the valley and, for years, was the tallest such structure between Minneapolis and Seattle. It’s still active — we stood below it at the riverside park and waited almost forty-five minutes hoping for a train, and when one finally rumbled across, the whole structure seemed to hum. Lia said it looked like something out of a Wes Anderson film, this improbably grand steel arc over a quiet little prairie river. At night it’s lit, and the reflection in the Sheyenne below doubles the effect.

The Hi-Line railroad trestle bridge glowing at dusk above the Sheyenne River in Valley City, North Dakota

Downtown and the college on the hill

Valley City State University sits on a bluff above downtown, its brick buildings visible from nearly every angle in town, and the walkable Main Street below has held onto its old storefronts better than most small Dakota towns — a soda fountain, a couple of antique shops, a diner where the waitress knew half the customers by name and called Lia “hon” within about ninety seconds of us sitting down. We ate a late lunch there, biscuits and gravy that had no business being that good, while she pointed out which bridge went where on a hand-drawn map taped to the register.

Downtown Main Street storefronts on the bluff above the Sheyenne River in Valley City, North Dakota

Getting There

Valley City has a small municipal airport with no commercial service; most visitors fly into Fargo (FAR), about an hour east on I-94, or Bismarck, roughly ninety minutes west. A car is necessary — the town is compact enough to walk once you’re there, but reaching it requires the interstate.