where Fargo is a big city

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifThe NY Times has an intriguing article on North Dakota. Whereas the Sunbelt and Cactus Belt are struggling to absorb their population increases, North Dakota is seeing a mass exodus.

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.

I spent a few days in rural ND last August, and it confirms the anecdotal evidence of the residents of Crosby, ND. Towns are few and far between. The landscape is flat, to be broken as the fields change from corn to soybeans to sunflowers. In town, there is one main drag, often with a railroad line dividing the town into sections. One town celebrates "Uff-da Days" and unfortunately, I left my T-shirt with the recipe for lefse at home. Neighbors can peer through their lacy windows because, well, strangers add a little excitment, mystery, and fodder for gossip. North Dakota was built on the pen of Lincoln with the Homesteading Act and thus on the need for community. The article points out initiatives by inhabitants to maintain what it values:

North Dakotans, [one resident] says, are "superfriendly, to where you say they're borderline nosy. A real tight sense of community."

The NY Times makes no secret of the problems that cannot be helped by civic pride alone. The desire to live in a place where everyone knows your name doesn't bring employment opportunities and young families to town. [I'm not talking about the teenage pregnancy problems where the youth have nothing to do but smoke, drink, have sex and now do meth. Even seeing David Brooks' column about the lack of values in our society today didn't make me too optimistic] It brings retirees.

The emigration to other places (like Minnesota) and the lack of a tourism industry has meant that ND is in danger of falling off the map. It's sad to hear about a town that simply folds up because it has two residents. "A History of Violence" set itself in Nowhereville, Indiana, to emphasize the disappearance and imagery of small-town America; the NY Times recommends that one goes to ND to see the last vestiges of true small-town America. But this real-life version is grimmer and more ghostly.