North Dakota is a cheap place to live

Who here is ready to spring for a $3,000 house?

Make Way for Buffalo
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: October 29, 2003




RAWSON, N.D.

This forlorn farm town — Rawson, population 6 — is a fine
place to contemplate the boldest idea in America today: rescuing the
rural Great Plains by returning much of it to a vast "Buffalo
Commons."

The result would be the world's largest nature park, drawing tourists
from all over the world to see parts of 10 states alive again with
buffalo, elk, grizzlies and wolves. Restoring a large chunk of the
plains — which cover nearly one-fifth of the lower 48 states
— to their original state may also be the best way to revive
local economies and keep hamlets like Rawson from becoming ghost
towns.

Rawson used to be a bustling town with a railroad depot, two stores, a
hotel, a bank, a post office, a gas station, a Lutheran church, a
lumber yard, a grain elevator and a school. It had its own newspaper,
The Rawson Tribune, and its slogan was "Rawson, where opportunity
awaits you."

It has been downhill ever since. Two years ago, after the election for
mayor ended in an exact tie (one vote for Nels Heggen and one vote for
Garvin Gullickson), after the four adult residents tired of taxing
themselves to pay for seven streetlights, they dissolved the city and
turned it into an unincorporated village.

"My children won't come back here to live," admitted Mr. Heggen, whose
grandfather ran the hotel in town. "There isn't much to do here. Right
around here, it's kind of desolate." (Some journalists reach judgments
about a place after interviewing just a few inhabitants; I boast that
I talked to half the town.)

It sounds cruel to say so, but towns like Rawson are a reminder that
the oversettlement of the Great Plains has turned out to be a
150-year-long mistake, one of the longest-running and most costly
errors in American history. Families struggled for generations to
survive droughts and blizzards, then finally gave up and moved on. You
can buy a home out here for $3,000, and you can sometimes rent one for
nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house.

The rural parts of the Great Plains are emptying, and in some cases
reverting to wilderness.

It's immensely sad to travel through the Dakotas' ghost towns or
Nebraska's cattle country — where Loup is the poorest county in
America — because they are full of warm, hard-working, honest
farmers and ranchers who are having their hearts broken. How can one
not admire the people of Sentinel Butte, N.D., where there is no
attendant at the gasoline station but the townspeople all have keys
and pay on the honor system?

Yet honesty and sweat aren't enough to make farming and ranching
successful in marginal lands. The farms produce plenty of grain and
beef, but they will never make much money, even with billions of
dollars in agricultural subsidies. The economic model will be even
less viable as underground aquifers run out in the next two or three
decades. Much plains farming relies on the vast Ogallala aquifer,
which is dropping at a rate of four feet per year.

So it's time to reach for something bold, like the Buffalo Commons
idea, proposed in 1987 by Frank and Deborah Popper, two New Jersey
social scientists. This would be the biggest step to redefine America
since the Alaska purchase. Pushing it would give the environmental
movement a chance to be known mainly by what it's for instead of for
what it's against. But it would take close cooperation with the people
with the most at stake: struggling farmers and ranchers, who for now
are irritated by East Coast city slickers trying to turn their land
into a buffalo playground.

"Why not let us manage our own affairs, just as people in New York
would want to manage their own affairs?" asked Keith Winter, a veteran
rancher, during a break from working with his calves.

It's a fair question, and a Buffalo Commons can be achieved only if it
benefits North Dakotans more than New Yorkers. That should be
possible, for states like Colorado, Utah and Idaho have boomed by
branching out from their traditional economic base to embrace tourism
and recreation, and Buffalo Commons would become one of the world's
wonders.

If Buffalo Commons comes about, perhaps a hotel can reopen in Rawlins,
and Mr. Winter's ranch could draw German tourists who would pay to
herd cattle. If the thunder of buffalo hooves is again heard on the
open plains, that will not be the death knell for towns like Rawlins
— it will be their last, best hope.

It also states in the article " and you can sometimes rent one for
nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house."

The next question - Do you want to live in North Dakota?

Lots of North Dakotans apparently do! Have you been to North Dakota?
Tough to find a traffic jam and Starbucks, but then that does not signify
the end of humanity does it?

Ken in Winnipeg (just north of North Dakota)

Rqf wrote:

The next question - Do you want to live in North Dakota?

"Ken Pisichko" wrote in message
...
Lots of North Dakotans apparently do! Have you been to North Dakota?
Tough to find a traffic jam and Starbucks, but then that does not signify
the end of humanity does it?

Ken in Winnipeg (just north of North Dakota)

Didn't North Dakota tried to rename itself something else?


Rqf wrote:

The next question - Do you want to live in North Dakota?

Ken Pisichko wrote:

Lots of North Dakotans apparently do! Have you been to North Dakota?
Tough to find a traffic jam and Starbucks, but then that does not signify
the end of humanity does it?

Ken in Winnipeg (just north of North Dakota)

Lot's? The population is only 634,000 and has lost almost 12,000 net
people to migration in two years.

In alt.showbiz.gossip Rqf wrote:
: It also states in the article " and you can sometimes rent one for
: nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house."

: The next question - Do you want to live in North Dakota?

It's a very beautiful state. But the rural isolation and the lack of
dependable employment might be a bit much
for some people.

Fiona

Brian wrote:
Ken Pisichko wrote:

Lots of North Dakotans apparently do! Have you been to North Dakota?
Tough to find a traffic jam and Starbucks, but then that does not signify
the end of humanity does it?

Ken in Winnipeg (just north of North Dakota)

Lot's? The population is only 634,000 and has lost almost 12,000 net
people to migration in two years.

It's mostly flat but they do have some mountains/badlands in ND, don't they?
Nex

Ken Pisichko wrote in message ...
Lots of North Dakotans apparently do! Have you been to North Dakota?
Tough to find a traffic jam and Starbucks, but then that does not signify
the end of humanity does it?


Some consider Starbucks as a signifyer of the end of humanity.

Take it from a New Yorker who prefers Paris.

"abdul rahim" wrote in message
om...
Who here is ready to spring for a $3,000 house?
Make Way for Buffalo
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

So it's time to reach for something bold, like the Buffalo Commons
idea, proposed in 1987 by Frank and Deborah Popper, two New Jersey
social scientists.

Gee, why don't those social "scientists", Frank and Deborah Popper in New
Jersey engineer some brilliant idea for New Jersey rather than foist their
pie-in-the-sky, turn-back-the-clock-of-time fantasies on the Dakotas, et.
al.? Simple, the people who live in New Jersey and those that know them will
laugh them out of town, so they turn their eyes westward to promote their
utopian daydream. KM
--
(-:alohacyberian:-) At my website there are 3000 live cameras or
visit NASA, play games, read jokes, send greeting cards & connect
to CNN news, NBA, the White House, Academy Awards or learn all
about Hawaii, Israel and mo http://keith.martin.home.att.net/

"Rqf" wrote in message
om...
It also states in the article " and you can sometimes rent one for
nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house."

The next question - Do you want to live in North Dakota?

You call that living? KM
--
(-:alohacyberian:-) At my website there are 3000 live cameras or
visit NASA, play games, read jokes, send greeting cards & connect
to CNN news, NBA, the White House, Academy Awards or learn all
about Hawaii, Israel and mo http://keith.martin.home.att.net/