The Common Thread Running From Bonanza Farms To Fracking Farms
Norman Township, Traill County, North Dakota 1892 Illustrates the large amount of land owned by the Jones farm and its relationship to Clifford. The main farm was located in section 13. I grew up in the ruins of a former boomtown called Clifford, North Dakota. Clifford, barely a town anymore, had been going downhill almost since it was built in the shadow of the nearby Jones and Brinker Bonanza farm that owned huge swaths of land in the area. It thrived in the last two decades of the 19th and first few of the 20th going into a long decline. At one point the small town of Clifford that rose along with the farm was a town of pool halls and saloons known for fights and even murders. Similar to the Bakken oil field, an infrastructure grew up to support the sole industry that dominated the area. All the infrastructure grew up around a community servicing mostly large groups of young men coming to work seasonal jobs on the farm. There is an interesting story to be told about wild early day
