Thousands of pioneers left soon after they arrived. Speculators who had no intention of living in the state purchased huge swaths of land, hoping they could turn it over for profit, but most abandoned the land soon after. Many farms and lots were deserted. By 1890, an estimated 4 million acres of land were held by speculators and sat empty. Some settlers came with the intention of staying only a few years, building their fortunes, and leaving. In the boomtown of Bismarck, an Army officer wrote to his wife in 1876: “I have not fallen in love with Bismarck. It is a bad specimen of a frontier town, nobody incidentally expecting to stay here permanently, but hoping to make some money to get away with.” After the exodus, some towns died completely. It was difficult to predict which ones were destined to become population centers and which ones would recede into ghost towns or tiny trading posts. Bismarck didn’t empty out completely, but the city struggled. Home prices plummeted, and many dwellings sat abandoned. “In the enthusiasm of the Great Dakota Boom, the pioneers had inevitably made what can be called ‘the Too-Much Mistake,’” wrote Robinson. “Much of the boom was a speculative, over-rapid, unhealthy growth. North Dakota had too much of too many things too soon.”
Among those who stayed, some struggled to avoid bankruptcy, but many eventually adjusted and began to love the new frontier. They liked the adventure and were proud they could survive in such harsh conditions. Hospitality became a way of life, and most would do anything for a neighbor in need. They worked hard, lived cheaply, and eventually saw benefits to their sacrifices. As ranchers raised cattle and the land produced wheat, the value of the land rose. One pioneer, Mary Dodge Woodward, wrote: “Nothing can excel this endless, enchanting view.” The Norwegian settlers brought customs and cuisine that are still around today, such as lefse, a flatbread made with potatoes and flour, and lutefisk. “North Dakotans still retain some of the pioneer virtues: courage, optimism, self-reliance, aggressiveness, loyalty, and an independent cast of mind and spirit,” wrote Robinson.
Tales of bravery, resilience, and social mobility came out of the region. In the government-run North Dakota Magazine, one writer told the story of a young man from Virginia who had been discharged from the Navy. He traveled to Chicago but couldn’t find work. He became homeless and wandered the streets broke and destitute, with a jackknife as his only possession. Finally, he decided to seek his fortune in North Dakota. He sold his jackknife for 10 cents, purchased bread and tobacco, and boarded a boxcar. When he reached the state, he found work in the harvest fields and as a ranch cowboy. He saved enough money to buy land and started a farm, eventually moving into a stately two-story home. North Dakota had provided him with the opportunities to work his way out of poverty and achieve a middle-class lifestyle.
Theodore Roosevelt, who spent much time in the state between 1883 and 1887, had a strong affinity for the region. He purchased two ranches, one called Maltese Cross, or Chimney Butte, in the Little Missouri Valley and the other called Elkhorn, north of Medora. “I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota,” he said. He called the region “a land of vast silent spaces, of lonely rivers, and of plains where wild game stared at the passing horseman.” As Roosevelt gained political influence, he worked to protect and conserve the lands he’d fallen in love with, including North Dakota’s Sully Hill near Devils Lake, which became a 1,674-acre national wildlife refuge, and thousands of other acres in the state. Today, North Dakota has the most wildlife refuges of any state in the country.
After the turn of the century, the state remained mostly rural farms and small towns, but a few cities developed. Bismarck went from a small town of 2,000 in 1890 to more than 7,000 people in 1920, while Fargo went from 5,000 to 22,000 over the same period. The population of urban areas in the state grew 39 percent between 1910 and 1920, but most other areas of the state remained stagnant or lost population. Although North Dakota added 70,000 people during the 1910s, the growth was still less than the natural rate of increase.
The state experienced more prosperous years in the 1920s and went through a building boom as the population grew, but during the Great Depression, North Dakota once again fell on hard times. Not only did the state suffer from a depressed economy like the rest of the nation, but one of the worst droughts in the state’s history occurred, followed by severe dust storms. Between 1929 and 1940, nine years had less than average rainfall, and 1934 was the driest year on record with only 9.5 inches of rainfall. By 1936, things got even worse. The state experienced the hottest (121 degrees in Steele in July) and coldest (minus 60 degrees in Parshall in February) temperatures ever reported and, once again, broke records with only 8.8 inches of rainfall. No prairie grass grew outside the Red River Valley in the eastern part of the state; dust storms swept across the land, preventing airplane or auto travel; and ranchers struggled to keep their herds alive, feeding them whatever brush or old straw they could find. In addition, a grasshopper infestation ravaged the prairie in the early 1930s and added to the destruction. Between 1932 and 1937, the per capita income in North Dakota was less than half the national average.
During this time, about one-third of North Dakota’s families lost their farms. Over 80,000 people fled the state, and nearly half of the population lived on government relief. The western part of the state surrounding Williston and Minot, known for its semiarid climate and already-difficult farming conditions, suffered the worst. Slope County, located 150 miles from Williston in the southwest corner of North Dakota, lost 29 percent of its population. The state’s reliance on agriculture, the value of which fluctuated with the market, exacerbated the forces of the depression. North Dakota grew more dependent on aid and direction from the federal government, a fact that was difficult for many proud and self-reliant North Dakotans to come to terms with.
After the Great Depression, the state struggled to recover. Its population peaked at 680,845 (fewer people than the current population of a midsize city like Charlotte, North Carolina) in 1930 and didn’t reach that level again until the most recent boom. World War II wealth, above-average rainfall, and rising prices for wheat helped many farmers settle their debts and expand their farms, but the depression scarred those who had stuck it out. Those who survived became hardened, stoic individuals who were reluctant to change. They knew hard times could hit again. State leaders attempted to diversify the agriculture business and attract industrial development, but they had little success—few factories wanted the added transportation costs of operating in such a remote area. In North Dakota, more income came from agriculture and less from manufacturing than any other state. State legislators considered doing anything and everything to bring attention and economic growth—from lobbying to drop “North” from the state’s name to make it sound warmer and more inviting to tourists, to turning the prairie into a giant dumping ground for the country’s nuclear waste. During the 1940s and 1950s, the state had one of the highest numbers of nuclear warheads stored there in the country. At one point, researchers even proposed returning the land to buffalo grazing territory. North Dakotans hoped for something—anything—that might boost prosperity for their state.
“The Dakotas are a place people are from,” wrote Kathleen Norris in Dakota, “a place that has suffered a steady outmigration for the better part of a hundred years. What does this do to those of us who remain?” Remnants of past lives and abandoned dreams are everywhere on the prairie. Old, dilapidated homes vacated long ago lean against the harsh plains winds, almost as if the buildings themselves are trying to escape. Pieces of siding occasionally rip off and whip across the fields. As Chuck Wilder, a 59-year-old local bookstore owner who grew up in the state, put it: “Our best export was our people.”
10. IT TAKES A BOOM
Colloquially called roughnecks, oil field workers in the United States typically come from blue-collar and working-class families. Jobs in the field began to decline in the mid-1980s when traditional oil reserves mostly dried up. But in 2009, a new crop of oil fi
eld workers entered the industry. Unlike their predecessors, these oil field workers had come up in a world where they watched the Twin Towers collapse, witnessed or participated in ongoing battles in the Middle East over oil, and saw the Great Recession wipe out almost any financial security they believed their families had. Many were raised on video games, Christian-based faiths, and gun culture and were die-hard patriots, believing America ought to be defended and protected at all costs. Others saw their parents feel betrayed after staying loyal to a company or participating in a union, so they had little desire to do the same. If they had work experience before coming to the oil field, it was likely in farming, construction, manufacturing, or, in many cases, the military. The boom coincided with the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops from Iraq. If soldiers weren’t killed in the war, they figured they might as well risk their lives searching for oil in the homeland. One veteran called North Dakota’s Bakken region “the next deployment.”
Many oil companies implemented programs to recruit and hire ex-military. A program called Retrain America was established in 2009 to prepare veterans and blue-collar workers with high school diplomas for energy jobs, particularly in engineering and oil field management. And ShaleNet, a $20 million federally funded program, launched in 2010 to retrain workers to become pipeline operators or oil field technicians and encouraged veterans to apply.
Like those before them, few modern-day oil workers attended college. Only 12 percent of oil and gas workers in Williston had a bachelor’s degree or higher. When the boom first began, companies transferred workers already employed in the energy industry from states such as Wyoming and Pennsylvania, where development had stalled from the drop in natural gas prices. This satisfied a tiny fraction of the workers they needed, however. It’s estimated for every drilling rig, some 120 workers are needed, and a third of those jobs involve truck driving. In the beginning of the boom, with an average of 100 new wells drilled or fracked every month, companies needed to hire quickly, and they hired almost any able-bodied worker who walked through their door. A few oil field service companies went to local high schools in western North Dakota and eastern Montana to recruit potential dropouts for the work. In 2011, at Sidney High School in Montana, an hour away from Williston, a record one-third of its graduates immediately entered the workforce instead of heading to college or the military. Enrollment at a community college in Glendive, Montana, fell by nearly half as fewer students in the area chose college.
The average oil field worker earned $20 to $40 an hour, and many received per diem bonuses, ranging from $35 to $750 a day, just for showing up to a job. In a good year with nearly every rig drilling, overtime and bonuses pushed most workers’ incomes into the six figures. By the end of 2012, the average wage for oil field workers in North Dakota was $112,462. In the rest of America, a high school graduate could expect to earn an average of $27,607; a high school dropout, a measly $19,642. A college degree gave workers a significant boost in the market: $50,096 on average, but with student loans, many college grads were barely making ends meet. It was easy to see the financial appeal of oil field work.
Despite local recruitment, few of the men and women who came to work in the Bakken oil field were actually from North Dakota. The local population could not sustain hiring needs, so companies looked elsewhere. Craigslist advertisements called for workers with “no experience needed!” “Work 20 days on and 10 days off!” “$22 an hour to start!”
Word traveled quickly, and a flood of workers showed up at the oil industry’s doorstep.
There’s little, if any, training to break into the oil field industry during a boom. Most jobs ask for a commercial driver’s license (CDL), which workers can complete in three to five weeks, a clean drug test, and the ability to lift 50 pounds. Once hired, they go through a safety training class certified by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for a minimum of 10 hours to learn about potential job hazards and safety protocols, like the dangers of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a gas present on well locations. For many companies, the training stops there. The new hire is placed on a crew with a supervisor and expected to learn on the job. Larger companies, such as Halliburton (“Big Red”) and Schlumberger (“Big Blue”), put new hires through slightly more rigorous training regimens, meaning a few weeks of “rig school,” before they’re tossed out onto a crew.
New hires are taught how the equipment functions and standard safety protocols, but in the oil and gas industry, the stakes are high. It’s difficult to prepare workers for what to do in a situation when a $2 million piece of equipment breaks in the well or when a highly pressurized hose releases a razorlike stream of air through a pinhole leak, potentially cutting off the limbs of anyone who walks by; or when a tank full of flammable liquid explodes into a ball of flames; or when a tornado touches down a few miles from the well, as happened to one supervisor.
Those coming to North Dakota also were not trained to work in extreme temperatures and weather—blizzards, hail, minus 40 or 50 degrees—temperatures so low that, if you’re not careful, your hard hat can freeze to your head. One worker said he was drinking a soda on site and set it down; 15 minutes later, he went back and saw it was slush. Fifteen minutes after that, it was frozen solid. Before I visited North Dakota in the winter, I asked a worker to describe what it was like. He looked at me, dumbfounded: “I’ll tell you what it’s like. Put your head in the freezer and punch yourself in the face.” I took his word for it. Such temperatures can also turn dangerous. “When you’re tired and cold, you’re more likely to get hurt,” said Cindy Marchello.
In addition, North Dakota crews often faced dust storms and 50-mile-an-hour-plus winds, both of which could create unforeseen hazards and difficult-to-detect wear and tear on equipment. In the summer, the fire-resistant coveralls workers wore trapped heat and made working during the day miserable. “You’re always fighting the weather, whether it’s too hot, too cold, or there are too many mosquitoes,” said Marchello.
Most of Marchello’s 12-person crew regularly clocked 120 hours a week—with some logging an occasional 140- or 160-hour week. That meant they worked, ate, and slept while on the well site, though sleep was never a priority. Most workers took catnaps in an 18-wheeler’s sleeper cabin. “When you’re out in the field, there’s not much sleep,” said Marchello. “You get used to it.” The most intensive bursts of hard labor were when a crew arrived to a location to set up the equipment or when they disassembled everything and hauled it away.
With extreme conditions, tight living quarters, and long stretches away from their families, it is easy to see the comparison to the military. “It’s like a war out there sometimes,” said one of Marchello’s coworkers. “You look out for each other—you have to. It’s like a battlefield. You think, can we actually pull this off?”
The long hours, sleep deprivation, lack of training, extreme weather, and dangerous work were a particularly lethal mix. In 2011, North Dakota became the most dangerous state to work in, with the fatality rate nearly doubling since 2007 to 12.4 deaths per 100,000 workers. By 2012, the state job fatality rate was 17.7 deaths per 100,000 workers, more than five times the national average and one of the highest rates ever reported for a U.S. state. The most dangerous sector was in mining and oil and gas extraction—with 104 deaths per 100,000 workers, more than six times the national rate. Burn injuries among workers in North Dakota rose to more than 3,100 in 2015, but the state has no burn centers, so victims were flown 600 miles to the Twin Cities for treatment.
Oil worker deaths during the boom included Brendan Wegner, 21, who was burned alive his first day on the job when an Oasis Petroleum oil well exploded in McKenzie County in 2011. His body was found under a pile of melted steel pipes, his charred hands still gripping a ladder by which he tried to escape. His coworker Ray Hardy, 28, suffered such severe burns that he died shortly after the explosion, and another coworker, Michael Twinn, eventually committed suicide after having his burned legs amputated and suff
ering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Twenty-one-year-old Dustin Bergsing died by inhaling toxic hydrocarbon vapor on a Marathon Oil well site near Mandaree; 20-year-old Kyle Winters died after power tongs collided into his chest when he worked for Heller Casing; Joseph Kronberg, 52, was electrocuted on site. Between 2006 and 2014, a total of 342 workers died on the job in North Dakota. At least 74 of those have been from an accident in the Bakken—that’s approximately one death every six weeks.
Between 2011 and 2015, only five to eight OSHA field investigators were employed in western North Dakota—the investigators were responsible for overseeing not only oil and gas industry safety but complaints in other fields, such as construction, covering more than 148,000 square miles in North and South Dakota. With eight investigators, it would take OSHA 126 years to inspect each workplace in North Dakota once.
When an OSHA investigator did find a safety violation, penalties were low. In fiscal year 2013, for example, the median OSHA fine in cases involving a death in the United States was $5,600. And within the North Dakota and Montana energy industry, only one oil exploration company that leases or owns wells was fined for a worker death between 2010 and 2015—a $7,000 penalty after a contract worker died in an explosion.
Though workers’ compensation claims have more than quadrupled among the state’s oil and gas workers, many injured workers don’t file claims. Companies often reward workers for low injury rates and offer incentives to not report every accident. If a worker or their family does file, workers’ compensation does little to help with the aftereffects from a serious injury or death. In the early 1900s, workers’ compensation legislation waived workers’ right to sue in exchange for compensation—such as payment for their medical bills and lost wages—if they were injured on the job. But many states have slowly chipped away at the system by shrinking payments, fighting claims, controlling medical decisions, and stopping payments before workers fully recover. In 2014, employers in North Dakota paid the least among the states toward workers’ compensation, averaging $0.88 for every $100 they paid in wages. By contrast, North Dakota averaged $2.39 for every $100 in 1988. After filing for workers’ compensation, many workers report being ostracized by companies for having an accident on their record. “If you’re hurt out here, it will go on your record,” said one North Dakota worker. “If it happens enough times, the company will get rid of you.”
The New Wild West Page 5