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 days.

Fast forward a hundred plus years to another boomtown and a new industry on the other side of the state. Fracking is the new wheat in the sense that it is the same groups of young men, the same quickly built infrastructure and the same short sighted myopia that favors short term profits for a powerful few over long term sustainability of a local culture and people. Boomtowns are good at supporting short term gain and all sorts of destructive vice, but eventually, they fall into decline along with the industry that was their lifeblood.

I've written before about how the apartments we lived in for several years while barely five years old, was already coming apart due to shoddy construction, cheap materials and lack of maintenance by a corporate management company that seeks the bottom of the bottom line in everything. Like the collapsing elevators, houses and other infrastructure I grew up around in Clifford, our apartment will become a playground of ruins for those left here when the party finally dies down. What children will play in these ruins?