Dorothy is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Section 5, Louisville Township,

Red Lake County Red Lake County is a county in the Northwestern part of the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,935, making it the third-least populous county in Minnesota. Its county seat is Red Lake Falls. History Red Lake ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, United States. Dorothy was initially established as a railroad station in 1916–17, after the

Northern Pacific Railway The Northern Pacific Railway was an important American transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the Western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest between 1864 and 1970. It was approved and chartered b ...

extended its line from Tilden Junction to

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...

and built a spur through Red Lake Falls. The new town sucked away what was left of the historic river crossing town, Huot, and for a time sputtered toward prosperity, boasting a grain elevator, a Catholic church, a school and several houses. The post office in Dorothy was first established February 11, 1898, with Joseph H. Mathews as postmaster. It was finally discontinued in 1945. The

Federal Writers' Project The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers and to develop a history and overview of the United States, by state, cities and other jurisdictions. It was ...

reported in 1938 that the town had a population of 25, and "a beautiful church with stained-glass windows". In 1973, the railroad was abandoned and the grain elevator closed, and with it, the town's reason for existence was gone. By 2007, the church had been abandoned and appeared to be in use as a residence. On October 24, 2014, the old church caught fire and burned to the ground in a conflagration that apparently started after embers from a pile of leaves a property owner was burning nearby blew towards the building, igniting the structure, which was a total loss.

Sources

*Red Lake County Bicentennial Committee, A History of Red Lake County, Minnesota (Taylor Publishing Co., 1976), at pp. 91–95. *Federal Writers' Project, Minnesota: A State Guide (Works Progress Administration, 1938), at p. 338. *''The Post Offices of Minnesota'', Alan H. Patera and John S. Gallagher; (The Depot, Burtonsville, Maryland, 1978), at pp. 153, 268 *''The Erskine Echo'', Erskine, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, at p. 4 Former populated places in Red Lake County, Minnesota Ghost towns in Minnesota {{ghost-town-stub