NW North Dakota and the New York Times

[WYOBISONMAN]

I posted this on Bisonville and thought some of you guys might want to see this........

Since I am from Williston I found this article interesting. It was in the NY Times Magazine on Sun., April 9th. My sister just forwarded a compy of it to me. Wow.......reading it really makes one feel pretty melancholy about rural North Dakota....

Here is the link to the story....free registration to view it....and they don't send you a buch of junk mail, so it is safe to register...... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine...b&ex=1148011200

Here is a bit of the story..........

THE NEW YORK TIMES

April 9, 2006

Not Far From Forsaken

By RICHARD RUBIN

It is as you imagine it: Vast. Open. Windy. Stark. Mostly flat. All but treeless. Above all, profoundly underpopulated, so much so that you might, at times, suspect it is actually unpopulated. It is not. But it is heading there.

In our national consciousness, America is a land of perpetual growth. But for the past half-century or more, much of the middle of the country has been slowly, quietly emptying out. A few people left, then more and more, until it started to resemble an organized exodus. For a while, it looked as if the area might indeed one day resemble the Great American Desert it was mistakenly labeled on early maps.

That didn't happen. At some point, throughout middle America, the population hemorrhage stopped, bottomed out.

But not here, in North Dakota. North Dakota has continued to lose people. And it didn't have that many to begin with. In 1930, its population peaked at 680,845. In 2000, it was down to 642,200, and by 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, it had dropped to 634,366. (By comparison, the national population more than doubled, to 294 million from 123 million, during the same period.) Of the 25 counties nationwide that lost the largest portions of their populations in the 1990's, 12 were in North Dakota.

[The Sicatoka]

Stark as that is, the population positive really isn't as positive as once was.

From 2004 to 2005, Cass County’s domestic migration fell into negative territory, with a loss of 87 people, according to Census Bureau figures compiled by the North Dakota State Data Center.

But the county gained 290 that year through international immigration – largely refugees – for a net migration gain of 203. International immigration, in fact, has become proportionately more significant over the past decade as domestic migration has slowed.

"Fargo's role as people magnet declines"

Bismarck (Burleigh Co.) is adding more than Fargo/Cass.

Grand Forks "holding serve" doesn't looks so bad in comparison to the rest of the state.