But on a ridge beyond the quivering cottonwoods and grasshoppers flitting through knee-high prairie grass, an oil well pierces the horizon. It's a symbol of the "carbon rush" that has earned North Dakota the country's lowest unemployment rate and ranked it second to Texas in oil production — and is rapidly transforming what the late CBS newsman and native son Eric Sevareid called the "rectangular blank spot in the nation's mind."
This summer, citing threats from nearby development in the Bakken, a 13,000-square-mile, oil-rich geological formation that spans much of western North Dakota, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Elkhorn Ranch one of the 11 most endangered historic places in America.
North Dakota's still-accelerating energy boom is "one of the best things that's ever happened to this state," says Bismarck-based humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson, author of For the Love of North Dakota.Fascinating story at the link.
Nothing to do with the post. I simply enjoy folk dancing.
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