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Bakken Trip #3
Third Report
I grew up in Williston. After graduating from high school, I left and "never really returned." I was overseas much of my adult life and it was difficult to get back to Williston. The Bakken boom can be said to have begun in 2000 in Montana, and 2007 in North Dakota. I knew very little about the oil and gas industry, but there was something about the news reports coming out in those early years about the Bakken that got me excited. I had missed the earlier oil booms in North Dakota and in 2007 I decided I wanted to follow the industry in my hometown. I started blogging in 2007, but it was too eclectic -- literature, music, oil -- and it wasn't working. In a fit of temporary insanity, I deleted two years of blogging and started over. I had posted some good stories between 2007 and 2009 but they were all lost.
The current blog dates back to 2009 / 2010 or thereabouts.
I have great difficulty understanding how the community is changing, and even more difficulty articulating what I am seeing. When I return to the Bakken, the first thing I do is ask long-term residents how they see things developing. I don't talk to very many folks, mostly just a few friends and acquaintances from the old days.
I don't remember if I still have the post that talked about the Bakken at the beginning: it was my feeling that "old Williston" and long term residents were inside the eye of the hurricane. There was a huge energy revolution occurring just outside the town, but most folks seemed to be completely unaware. They were in the eye of the hurricane.
It is now 2014, and clearly Williston has experienced boomtown challenges for five, six, or seven years.
After five, six, or seven years, "old Williston" has hardly changed. Main Street seems no different than what I remember while cruising in my 1947 Willys jeep in 1969. The east side of Williston has some new buildings and some new residential areas but superficially it really doesn't seem that much different. Yes, I know the huge recreation center on the east side is due to open next month, March.
Even the west side of "old Williston" out to the bypass has not changed much.
There now seems to be three communities: 1) the long-term residents who live in "old Williston"; 2) the new residents who will become long term and who will become the "new Williston" living in new developments, most of whom are on the west side, outside the "old bypass"; and, 3) the those who, to quote a song, have not made up their minds. I suppose the first group numbers 10,000; the second group numbers 10,000; and the third group numbers 30,000.
The long-term residents seem not to have changed much. Many of them seem completely unaware of what is going on outside city limits. Many have not even driven by new retail stores popping up on the edge of "old Williston." For folks unfamiliar with Williston, we're talking about a destination that would be less than 1.5 miles away. I think the city of Williston would fit inside the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport footprint. It is not unusual for me to tell someone about a new building or a new business that I saw on my way into town, and that someone is completely unaware that there was anything new out there. We're talking about something less than two miles away; something one would see if one simply made a wrong turn on the way home.
When I ask folks how Williston has changed, or what they are seeing, this is about all I hear: "Yeah, it's busy." LOL. "Yeah, it's busy." Well, helloo. I think the oil and gas industry is pumping about $2 billion/month into the economy just drilling new wells. A town that might have had a population of 10,000 a few years ago, before the boom, might now have a population of 50,000. "Yeah, it's busy."
Weather was always the major topic of conversation; now the top three topics of conversation are: 1) traffic; 2) traffic; and, 3) traffic, and pretty much in that order. I honestly think the old-timers have no desire to drive outside of "old Williston." There is a fear of driving on the state or county highways.
Finally, yesterday, I ran into someone who was able to articulate it perfectly. In the Bakken, when one drives unto a state highway, particularly US Highway 85, one is "swept into the flow." One becomes part of a herd, or a flock, or a school. It is not like the interstates in California where there are entry and exit ramps, where one signals and makes lane changes, or exits the interstate. Once you are on US Highway 85 in the heart of the Bakken, you become part of the herd, the flock, or the school. You maintain the same speed as everyone else. You turn right, left, or stay true, with the flow. You are no longer in control. You don't have your own direction; you don't have your own destination. Your direction and your destination is that of "the flow." You don't exit the highway; you don't change lanes; you don't signal. You just flow. At 70 miles per hour with a really huge semi-truck behind you.
This would be the perfect location for Toyota to test their new driver-less cars.
It's not white-knuckle driving. It's just "pure concentration." There is no opportunity to watch the beautiful scenery go by. I think if a UFO landed in the farm field off to the right, no one would notice. One is devoting 100% of one's attention to the flow.
"John, did you see the UFO outside Williston last night." "No, I was in the flow."
Needless to say, roadside advertising is useless. In fact, on perhaps the busiest stretch of road in the US (measured in axle tonnage per linear foot of white interrupted striping), there is not one billboard sign. Not one. No one would even see it.
Coming into Williston the other night, I was coming down Indian Hill, on the long straight-away, heading toward THE choke point, the two-lane bridge over the Missouri River, and there was a pick-up truck on the shoulder. The rest of us were in "the flow." The driver had stopped to watch a moose; it was the first time I had ever seen a moose along the river, though they were well-known to be there, and I wanted desperately to stop and watch. But I couldn't get out of the flow. The stream was moving way too fast.
My hunch is that the pick-up truck was never on the highway in the first place. He had probably come off a farm road and had given up trying to get into the traffic stream, and spent the next hour watching the moose.
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