Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Three V Crossing, North Dakota

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:03, 12 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Three V Crossing (low-water crossing)[edit]

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Photo, map, and topo show this is a river crossing, not a notable community. Deprodder said "the community is located directly to the left of your waypoint on Google Maps. Look for the cluster of buildings with at least one side street". Of course I saw the "cluster of buildings", but that's a single ranch, not a notable community. That's consistent with the topo map, which shows "Three V Crossing" as the crossing, and the nearby ranch as "Three V Ranch"! Reywas92^Talk 18:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Reywas92^Talk 18:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of North Dakota-related deletion discussions. Reywas92^Talk 18:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep-Even if the buildings depict a single ranch, this place is still notable. Here is why: On this county map you can see that Three V Crossing it is one of only two crossings across the Little Missouri River in the county. It is a fordway, not really a bridge, so that is why it is called "crossing" instead of bridge. As T. 135 N R. 105 W (which it is located in) is unorganized without a township name, "Three V" is the appropriate name for both the ranch and the actual crossing. The crossing is in the middle of the Little Missouri National Grassland. This is a tourist attraction, and as a result the location of the fordway is potentially useful to people who might be interested in visiting the Little Missouri National Grassland. For example, I might call up the Little Missouri HQ and ask "Is the Triple V currently passable?" (The ranch or unincorporated community consists of one or more small privately owned exclaves inside of the grassland. On the map the white areas are private, gray is the national grassland. It would be useful to see a plat map and see who owns what--that would settle the question as to whether this is a single ranch or not.). Also, this name is used by theweathernetwork.com, beautifulbadlandsnd.com, and electronic page 17 of this document from the county government (for the county north of the crossing). I might add that beautifulbadlandsnd distinguishes between the VVV Ranch and the VVV Crossing--so it is not correct to say they are the same thing. Additionally the road is called "County Vv" which appears to be an attempt to name the road after the ranch/community/crossing while still following the two-letter limit for county road nomenclature. The name may possibly originate from the v shaped valleys of tributaries in the area. --Epiphyllumlover (talk) 22:02, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- And The Weather Network also provides data for the coordinates of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Susie, Washington:[1]... If the concern is Grassland access, put it in that article.
Delete in spite of the above arguments for keeping, ...as a place this area fails our SNG and GNG. It is not a legally recognized or populated place per our guidelines. In addition it fails WP:GEOLAND#2. The only way to argue for keeping this article as a geographical location would be to WP:IAR. Lightburst (talk) 22:48, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I'm in the awkward position of !voting delete on my own article when there's already a keep vote, but I can explain. I think I originally created this article because I was adding articles for a few North Dakota places that had photos but no articles. The trouble is, the photos in question don't exactly establish that there's a community there - there's the river crossing, VVV Road, and some signs of ranching/human activity, but no buildings or other signs of settlement. And while I have a lower bar for sources for verified communities - if people lived in a named settlement for a sufficient period of time, it tends to be documented somewhere, even if it's not online or easily accessible - that doesn't apply to a rural river crossing that got miscategorized as a community. Unfortunately, the sources that exist aren't sufficient coverage and don't seem to imply the existence of other offline sources; all I could find beyond what Epiphyllumlover found was one newspaper item about funding for the crossing. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:56, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Here are more mentions of either VVV Crossing or VVV Ranch. This article meets GNG. electronic page 46 of this history publication, pages 5 and 21 this document from a neighboring county, and page 43 of this geological publication.

To TheCatalyst31, if you don't think it is notable as a community, what about changing it to be an article about the fordway, with a mention of the ranch nearby of the same name?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 23:12, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misinterpreted what I said; if it was actually a community I would be more likely to treat it as notable due to the likely existence of offline sources. It's not a community, though. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:10, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, we're gonna have to AFD WP:GNG if any of these is considered "significant coverage": you've turned the article into a WP:REFBOMB. Not every bridge, fordway, or road that must be taken to get somewhere needs its own article, even if we have records of the county commission providing funding. Reywas92^Talk 01:20, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I moved the article to Three V Crossing (low-water crossing).--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 00:12, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Here is a history of the unincorporated community from this newspaper: "The Yule Post Office was established and operated with a general store on the ranch along the Fort Keogh Stage Coach Line..."The town was just a post office and general store, but also an area for homesteaders and those setting up ranches probably in the late 1800s and early 1900s...Today, the VVV ranch is home to Black Angus cattle...There are four families working on the entire Weinreis family farm and ranch operations...--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 03:08, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, not notable. Even less so now that the article is about a low water crossing then it would have been as an unincorporated community. The subsequent ref bombing of trivial and un-reliable source doesn't help either. Will I assume Epiphyllumlover's actions where done in good faith, hopefully the user at least learns a lesson from this that it's not a good idea to change the purpose of the article mid AfD or to ref bomb. Since quality sourcing is generally more important then quantity of sourcing. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Go to Weather.gov and type in "Three V" and you will see that it will autocomplete for this location.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 05:22, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I guess we should all just pack it up and call this AfD good then, because that totally proves notability <---- Sarcasm --Adamant1 (talk) 05:25, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Holy crap, seriously? Do you really think someone at the NWS was like, "Hey, let's make a page for this river crossing". No, their system literally imports the GNIS and it autogenerates a forecast for those coordinates in the GNIS. Type in Susie, WA and you can get the weather for this former industrial railroad spur! Zillow will autocomplete for your real estate search at the crossing and Facebook will show you Things to do! Reywas92^Talk 05:36, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hell, you can even find the nearest FedEx location! –dlthewave ☎ 15:49, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It makes more sense when you take into account that the NWS operated a station about a half mile south of the crossing from 1951—1958:BOWMAN 30 NNW, ND US. Also, the place is noted on a 1910 book of place names republished by a historical society in 1973: Yule (Slope County) entry, from Origins of North Dakota Place Names by Mary Ann Barnes Williams, page 201 (page 293 of the pdf), reprinted 1972 by the McLean County Historical Society. An extended fictionalized depiction of the place is found on pages 52 and following of this book, probably based off an earlier writing of a similar nature, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands, Volume 1 by Hermann Hagedorn, Houghton Mifflin, 1921, page 262
Delete - This article s about the river crossing; if the ranch was a notable community at one time, then a separate article should be written about it. Once you get past the proliferation of GNIS-sourced real estate listings, weather reports, etc, coverage consists of A) a short paragraph in a writeup about river crossings in general and B) run-of-the-WP:MILL coverage about a road construction project. –dlthewave ☎ 16:03, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the map linked to as reference #3, you will see that the crossing is so close to the ranch that is must have been part of the ranch back when the historically significant visits by Roosevelt happened. Was the legal title to the crossing itself specifically owned by JXL? I don't have the plat map, but they would have been foolish not to own it--the whole point of putting your ranch there--so you can get your cattle across the river easily. If they did not own it, they would have used it none-the-less, and used it as if it was theirs. Exactly how two kitty-corner parcels got abandoned during the dust bowl and ended up in Forest Service hands, I don't know, but the general history of this in the Great Plains is known and available if you want to research it. It is how these National Grasslands got started.

Just because a concrete structure was built on the crossing doesn't remove the historical significance of the location. In North Dakota, property owners legally own public roadways (possibly with exceptions for Interstates and some other major highways--I don't know), and must even pay property tax on 1/2 of the the roadbed (or all of it if they own the land on each side). Later on of course after the Forest Service ended up owning much of the property in the area the crossing became public instead of ranch property, but the ranch is still right there. The beautifulbadlandsnd.com website has a photo of the crossing and a ranch building not far away, underscoring this. I'm sure the ranch rents the grazing rights to the National Grassland property. The National Grassland then makes payments in lieu of taxes to the appropriate local authorities like the school district. In a sense, the roadway is still sort of part of the ranch--a sense that only hits home when the cattle block your way on gravel roads like Vvv. These Forest Service roads have cattle guards at strategic places to help them separate the tracts into separate grazing parcels, but lack barbed wire or electric fences along the roadside. Other than natural barriers and the guard, cattle are free to wander the road--and, unless it has guards on each side, the cattle even wander the low water crossing. The lay of the land here is a gradual slope down to the river and not a V shaped valley as I had mistakenly thought earlier. So in short, if the ranch was historically notable, so is the crossing, because it was an indispensable part of the ranch site.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 05:28, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It isn't run of the mill when you add Roosevelt to it.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.