Pomme de Terre is a ghost town

Ghost town

A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...

 in section 24 of Pomme de Terre Township

Pomme de Terre Township, Minnesota

Pomme de Terre Township is a township in Grant County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 165 at the 2000 census.-Etymology:The name Pomme de Terre is French and is transliterated "apple of the earth," which usually refers to the potato...

 in Grant County

Grant County, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 6,289 people, 2,534 households, and 1,740 families residing in the county. The population density was 12 people per square mile . There were 3,098 housing units at an average density of 6 per square mile...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

.

History

The village of Pomme de Terre was first settled in the late 1860s and was platted in 1874 in section 24 of Pomme de Terre Township. Pomme de Terre had a post office from 1868 until 1879, and again from 1880 until 1902. At its height, Pomme de Terre had two stores, two blacksmiths shops, a grist mill, elevator, hotel and saloon. In 1873 an attempt to have Pomme de Terre named the county seat failed. The development of Herman, the growth of Elbow Lake as the county seat and the failure of the railroad to come through Pomme de Terre (going instead to the north through Ashby) led to the eventual demise of the village.

Etymology

The name Pomme de Terre is French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and is translated as "apple of the earth," which usually refers to the potato. In this case, however, it refers to the prairie turnip (Psoralea esculenta), a potato-like root vegetable which was commonly eaten by the Sioux

Sioux

The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...

.