From my work I sometimes get the time to look out the window over the city and think to myself, I'm in Bismarck. Then I shake my head in disbelief and go back to work. I like the city. It's clean, well treed, and there is some topography so you don't exactly feel like you're in the middle of the prairie. It's just that if you had told me 3 months ago I was moving to the middle of North Dakota I would of just stared at you.
Bismarck is just outside the drilling fields of the
Bakken, the latest, greatest oil boom giving Texas a run for its money. Many of the oil companies set up their headquarters here so there is a large influx of people and money. Mostly white collar jobs here.
What's really nice is, it works. You can't go through any business district without seeing a for hire sign on every other business. There's great migration of workers here to fill the jobs, but it's not enough. That's the oil money from the Bakken. It won't last, the oil booms never do. But while it does there's a lot of families putting dinner on the table, and that ain't bad.
Some locals would disagree. From my perspective, crime is non existent. Listen to many locals and you might hear "there's a murder a day in those oil towns". And it is true, the violent crime rate for the state has doubled -what's double of nothing?- from the pre-boom years. But rest easy North Dakota, you still rank as the 50th most crime ridden state.
