Ray North Dakota Map

About Ray, North Dakota

Ray is a locality in Williams County, North Dakota, United States. It is a small community with a population of 740. The population density is 217.1 people per km². Ray is located at 48.3363°N, 103.1733°W. It observes the Central Time (America/Chicago) timezone. Ray is an incorporated locality. ZIP code: 58849.

Ray endures as a persistent knot of civilization where the wide, unblinking sky meets the rhythmic heave of the prairie. It lies 24.9 miles east-northeast of Williston, ND (from Williston, ND: bearing 57°T), and is situated 37.9 miles north of Watford City. Beaver Creek carves a shallow, determined path through the earth nearby, feeding the stillness of McLedd Lake while the land stretches out in a vast, muted palette of ochre and dust. Nine miles to the southwest, the subtle rise of Stone Johnny Hill anchors the horizon, standing as a quiet sentinel above the drainage of Stone Johnny Coulee. The air here carries a sharp, clean clarity that intensifies as the sun slips behind the distant, flattened edges of the world, casting long shadows that seem to stretch across the centuries.

Ray grew from the iron and grit of the railroad expansion, evolving from a frontier outpost into a vital node within the reach of the Bakken oil patch. The local economy pulses with the heavy, rhythmic labor of extraction and the quiet, enduring demands of agriculture, shaping a life defined by the seasonal turn of the soil and the industrial hum of the rigs. Residents find their connection to the wild in the quiet reaches of the Williams County Waterfowl Production Area, where the land is left to the grasses and the migratory birds that navigate the immense solitude of the plains. Life in Ray moves with the deliberate pace of a place that understands the gravity of the seasons, where the wind serves as a constant, restless neighbor.

About This Ray Map Page

This page provides an embedded street and satellite map of Ray, North Dakota. Coordinates: 48.336319, -103.173296. Live weather conditions are sourced directly from the National Weather Service. Real-time local and world news feeds keep the page current.

Detailed location data for Ray includes the ZIP code (58849), telephone area code (701), county seat of Williams County (Williston), and school district assignment (Nesson Public School District 2).

Location data is drawn from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and cross-verified against 2020 US Census records by coordinate proximity. Population figures are sourced from the 2020 US Census.