You’ll Never Guess One of America’s Boom States

It’s a place that a lot of people once could not wait to leave

June 17, 2011

There aren’t mountains or many tall structures to keep the wind from blowin’ down the flat North Dakota plains.

During a spring of extraordinary flooding in America’s Northern Plains, the mostly flat, lightly populated state of North Dakota experienced 17 record river crests. This, after one blizzard after another dumped unprecedented snows onto the windswept state.

Windswept? One snowstorm’s 80-kpm winds snapped trees and blew so much snow around that stretches of hundreds of highways had to be closed.

Not a problem for these hardy folks. As one North Dakota Internet blogger reported, people calmly fired up their wood stoves, melted snow for water, threw on an extra layer of clothes, and sent out caravans to pluck people out of snowdrifts.

In these conditions, it’s not hard to see why thousands of people left North Dakota between the better farming days of the 1930s and 2010. Besides, folks there admit the place is a tad dull. After all, the official state beverage is milk.

Just another winter day in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

But guess what? Despite its rugged conditions and lack of big cities, major-league sports teams, and well-known cultural attractions, North Dakota’s population INCREASED by 5 percent in the first decade of this century.