Ray, ND

Ray is a Williams County city in western North Dakota, set on the prairie west of Williston. The 2020 census counted 740 residents. Nesson Public School District No. 2 is headquartered in Ray and operates Ray Public School, making the city a school and service stop for surrounding farm and energy country. Local government, grain handling, farm businesses, and the roads toward Williston, Tioga, and the Montana line give Ray a working map that reaches well beyond its city limits.

Ray was founded and incorporated in 1902, when railroad development was opening the western North Dakota prairie to new townsites. The city was named for William G. Ray, a railroad official, and its longtime nickname is the Grain Palace City. A post office has operated there since the founding year. Today the school board, city offices, grain economy, and prairie roads carry that original railroad-town purpose into the present. Ray is the kind of place where a school event, a grain shipment, and a county road project all belong to the same local conversation.