First, rough necks and other oilfield workers, almost every man came.
Fascinated by stable wages as the country emerged from the Great Depression, they filled rooms at several motels in McKenzie County and cars, tents, and trailers to hide from the cold winds across the grasslands of North Dakota. I started to sleep. Once an empty dirt road was suddenly clogged with a tank truck. The crime rate has skyrocketed.
Soon everything shifted again: the workers’ spouses and children arrived. The classroom has expanded. An apartment building next to an oil rig. And newcomers have made this Northern Planes community their own.
This growth has made Mackenzie the fastest growing county in the country in the last decade, according to the Census Bureau. It wiped out like a twisted dust devil, Crush the innocence of the countryside Great for growing crops in areas known for their unfriendly winters and long summer days. But it also brought youth, diversity, and better wages — breathing new life into the drowsy towns that have lost their population since the 1930s.
Growing up on a farm’s double trailer at the edge of the county seat, Dana Amon remembers riding a field dotted with discreet homes illuminated at night by flares from nearby oil wells. increase.
“Our little town just blew up at the seams,” she said.
Battle and frenzy
Since the boom began in 2010, work in McKenzie County has come and gone with the changing fate of oil. Crude oil prices peaked at over $ 130 a barrel over the past decade, fell below $ 40, then rebounded and then fell again when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
Mackenzie continued to grow.
Watford City — on a cliff, its skyline is defined by a pair of grain elevators — spilled over the surrounding farmland. Amon’s childhood flat and almost barren landscape now features worker camps, shopping centers, parcels, hotels, truck yards and warehouses for miles.
People like Amon began to lock their doors at night as fights became more frequent in bars along the main street and deadly debris became commonplace on the freeway.
Ten years later, the frenzy subsided. The alertness of the locals and newcomers hugging each other has eased. In the process, life was united through school events, church services, and bystanders of youth soccer games.
“I tell the locals” If you kick me out, I won’t leave. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Yolanda Rojas took her husband to McKenzie County with her five children a year after she got a job in the oil field.
From 2010 to 2014, the amount of crude oil produced in the county increased by 1,800%. By the end of the decade, census figures show that its population has more than doubled to 14,704 inhabitants.
Rojas and her husband, Ruben Vega, saved enough money to open a Mexican restaurant in March 2020, just as the pandemic broke out. When Rojas contacted the community on social media, the business was suffering from failure. The people of Watford City gathered to help, ordering takeaways on a regular basis to keep their families afloat.
Many of our customers were Hispanic and were unknown to LOHAS. Only when census data was released she learned that the number of Hispanics had increased tenfold over a decade. This is a cultural change in the community that has long been dominated by Scandinavian peasants.
Hispanics currently make up about 10% of the population. This is about the same percentage as Native Americans in the county, including part of Fort Berthold Reservation. NS Three tribes of reservations — Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara — Their roots in the region date back long before the first European settlers.
“Big extended family”
Oil was first discovered in McKenzie County in the 1950s, but it was the industry’s hydraulic fracturing revolution that opened up previously inaccessible crude oil reserves and turned North Dakota into a global energy player. Government estimates indicate that tens of billions of barrels of oil have not yet been used and new wells continue to be drilled.
County officials say growth is not over yet. Enrollment rates have tripled in the last decade and are expected to double again by 2030.
Pump jacks that draw oil from the ground are scattered across the county’s 2,860 square miles (7,400 square kilometers) landscape. Adjacent to the Yellowstone River to the north, Lake Sakakawea to the east, and Montana to the west, Mackenzie has more land than Delaware.
Howdy Roller, chaired by the McKenzie County Commission, whose family has grown wheat and raised cattle northwest of Watford City for five generations, has thousands of oil trucks designed for such transportation. It reminded me of widespread frustration among farmers as it clogged no roads.
As he left the farm and turned left towards Watford City, Roller was able to wait an hour for the traffic gap.
The bypass was built to reduce congestion. The pipeline was used instead of a tank truck. At the height of the boom, nearly 4,000 trucks crawl around Watford City every day. Recent counts total more than 320 trucks per day.
More police officers were hired to maintain order and new schools were built to drive students out of temporary trailers.
“I feel like we’re becoming a big family,” Laura said. “That’s a good thing.”
However, most families are getting older, which is younger, with a median age of 39 to 30 in 2010. Median household income increased 61% to nearly $ 78,000, according to census data.
This money captivated 31-year-old JT Smith from Fort Worth, Texas, who got an oilfield job in McKenzie County six years ago. His parents had moved to North Dakota for oil work a few years ago. At first, he found the area dark and unattractive.
Smith returned to Texas, where his wife and two children remained, and vowed never to return.
Stay for the community
A few years later, another job came in North Dakota, so he decided to start over. This time I brought my family and the rhythm of their lives became more comfortable.
JT Smith departs before dark to work as an oilfield safety advisor, climbs a white company pick-up, and almost every morning fan out to drilling rigs, gas treatment plants, and pipeline construction projects in western North Dakota. Join the same swarm of pickups.
An hour later, Smith’s 10-year-old son boarded a school bus and dozens of other students sent students to a new, sparkling primary and high school complex on the edge of the town.
Smith and his wife, Virginia, have been deeply involved in the Assemblies of God Church, which has doubled in recent years to approximately 400 members. Their children made friends through a mixed martial arts gym.
Now, when Smith goes to the grocery store, they must come across half a dozen friends. It’s one of many that gives you a glimpse of the charm of a long-lasting small town.
“You’ve been here for a month and everyone knows you,” said Virginia Smith.
Despite the dramatic changes over the last decade, the open landscape around Watford City remains remote.
When Roller, the chairman of the County Commission, recently worked to replace the barbed wire fence adjacent to the wheat field that stretches to the horizon, the only sign of industry is that trucks occasionally roar on distant roads. It was that.
As the rollers walked quietly along the fence line, a glass hopper appeared in front of them. His farmer, Charlie Lewis, sat down along the bobcat they used to push the steel fence posts into the dry soil.
Lewis came to work in an oil field and worked with Roller during a fall in crude oil prices. He plans to make this place his home and start a family.
“People come for work and stay for the community,” Lewis said. “I think I’ll be back only when I’m under 40.”
Read it from pennsylvanianewstoday
