There's a particular kind of loss that's easy to miss until it's too late. A building comes down, a business closes its doors for the last time, an old room gets gutted in a remodel — and just like that, a place a lot of people quietly loved is gone. No walkthrough. No way back inside. Just photos, if you're lucky, and memory, which fades.
I kept thinking about that. I scan spaces in 3D for a living — homes, offices, listings — and somewhere along the way it hit me: I have the exact tool that could save these places. Not the building itself, but a faithful, walkable record of it. Something your kids could step inside in twenty years and say, "this is where we used to go."
That's why we started the Fargo Landmark Archive.
The idea, plainly
Each month, we choose one meaningful Fargo-Moorhead place and capture it in immersive 3D — at no cost to the owner. It becomes part of a growing public archive that anyone can explore, forever. It's a small act of preservation, done one building at a time, for the community that made this place home.
It's also a gift of access. Not everyone can visit in person — someone who's homebound, a former resident living across the country, a family who moved away. A 3D tour lets them walk back through a place that mattered to them, from anywhere.
What kinds of places qualify
People ask what "counts." The honest answer is: more than you'd think. We prioritize places that are at risk — but the door is wide open. A few that fit beautifully:
- Buildings slated for demolition or major renovation — the most urgent, and the whole reason for the "before it's gone" spirit.
- Historic homes, farmsteads, and early Fargo-Moorhead architecture that tell the story of how we got here.
- Closing businesses — the restaurant, shop, or bar a neighborhood grew up in, captured on its last week.
- Community landmarks — theaters, churches, lodges, event halls, and gathering places.
- Main Street storefronts and the small, character-filled interiors that chains never have.
- Schools, libraries, and civic buildings with meaning to generations of families.
- Places being repurposed — a mill, warehouse, or church about to become something new, worth remembering as it was.
If a place has a story and people who love it, it belongs in the conversation. Nominate it here — anyone can, and community nominations are exactly how we decide what to save next.
Being honest about the "free" part
I want to be upfront, because trust matters more than anything here. If your place is selected, here's exactly what you get, at no cost:
- A professional Matterport Pro2 scan of the interior — scheduled around you, about 1–3 hours on-site.
- A fully interactive 3D walkthrough, hosted and live free for its first 6 months.
- A short vertical reveal clip you can repost on social.
- A set of still images pulled from the scan.
- A permanent story page in the archive — kept forever, even after the interactive tour rests.
- A shareable link (and embed code while it's live).
No cost, no obligation. If an owner later wants the full commercial package — permanent hosting, floor plans, branded embeds — that's a normal paid project, kept clearly separate. The preservation stays a real gift, not a sales pitch in disguise.
How the archive stays alive
Here's the honest part about keeping this sustainable. The story, the reveal clip, and the images are cheap to keep online forever — so they always stay free. The fully interactive walkthrough costs real money to host month after month. So each tour is live free for its first six months, and after that it needs a keeper: anyone can sponsor a specific landmark to keep its interactive tour live for another year, and their name or logo shows up right on that landmark's page. If a tour goes to sleep, its story and images stay put — and it can be reawakened the moment someone steps up to keep it alive. It's how one local person can preserve far more than one place a month.
How you can help — and why sponsors matter
This is where the community comes in. Scanning, hosting, and archiving these places takes real time and cost, and I'd love to save far more than one a month. That's where sponsors change everything.
If you run a local business — a bank, a credit union, an insurance agency, a realty group, a law firm — sponsoring the Fargo Landmark Archive is one of the most genuine forms of good you can put your name on. You're not buying an ad. You're helping preserve the community's history, and getting real, lasting visibility for doing it: your name alongside every landmark we save, in front of people who care about this place as much as you do.
Individuals and families can help too. You can adopt a specific landmark — fund the scan of a place that means something to you, and be credited as the reason it was saved. It's a beautiful way to honor a family business, a childhood home, or a piece of local history.
See the ways to support the archive →
Save one with us
I genuinely believe this is one of the most worthwhile things I can do with this technology. Not everything can be saved — but more can than we're saving right now. If you know a place that should be preserved, or you want to help make it happen, I'd love to hear from you.
- Know a place? Nominate it.
- Want to back the mission? Become a sponsor.
- Curious what we do the rest of the time? We're Fargo3D Tours — professional Matterport 3D tours across Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo, and the whole metro.
Let's make sure the places that made this community aren't lost quietly. Let's save them — before they're gone.