The Initiative's first Conference on the Rural West took place over the weekend of Oct. 13-14 at the Ogden-Eccles Conference Center in Ogden, Utah. Organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West in collaboration with the Western Rural Development Center at Utah State University, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, and the American West Center at the University of Utah, the conference brought together scholars, journalists, researchers and community members for exploration, dialogue and debate on critical issues facing the rural American West, from economic development to health care, energy and natural resources, Native American concerns and the essential nature of western rural life and culture. At the conclusion of the conference, the historian David Danbom delivered the remarks below, which summed up the wide-ranging subject matter and the state of a rural West in transition. Danbom has written several books about rural life, including the seminal work Born in the Country: A History of Rural America.

By David Danbom, Independent Scholar

In the past 20 years an estimated 110,000 people have moved onto the Eastern Slope of the Colorado Rockies, mostly into scattered single-family dwellings in the area between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.  These exurbanites may live in the wilderness, but they desire the conveniences a modern society offers—well-maintained roads, electricity, broadband internet access, and, when they can get it, water. 

They also desire the amenities of wilderness living, and thus they oppose such prudent measures as controlled burns and forest thinning.  That becomes a problem when forest fires erupt, as they did all along the Eastern slope this spring and early summer.  When the fires broke out, the presence of householders shaped the way the flames were fought.  In addition to establishing fire lines, fire fighters were called upon to attempt to save individual homes.  It was not always possible to do both jobs well.  And now, when areas vulnerable to fires face sharply rising property insurance rates, they are requesting enhanced fire protection from counties.  Other county residents—especially those in municipalities—have trouble seeing why their tax dollars should go to protect people who choose to live in the forests of pine and aspen. 

David Danbom of North Dakota State University delivering the closing remarks at the Conference on the Rural West on Oct. 14 in Ogden, Utah

In Park County, Colorado, the Bureau of Land Management proposes to lease 2850 acres of land for oil and gas drilling, a process that will involve fracking.  The BLM argues that it is doing its part to advance American energy independence, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission, which both promotes and regulates energy development in the state, supports the plan.  However, the leasing plan is opposed by the city of Aurora, which draws some of its drinking water from Spinney Reservoir.  The BLM would allow fracking within half a mile of this impoundment, while Aurora would like a buffer of at least one mile to protect the integrity of its water supplies.  Park County opposes the leasing plan altogether.  In common with many mountain counties, Park’s livelihood is dependent on tourists who come to hunt and fish.  County leaders are wary of any development that might diminish their area’s aesthetic appeal or threaten fish and game.  Read More »

Last modified Fri, 19 Oct, 2012 at 12:21

The emergency room at Mercy Hospital in Williston, North Dakota

The Bakken oil boom in western North Dakota has put a tremendous strain on the rural region’s small hospitals. A declining, older population and a rapidly expanding younger, uninsured population; a major overload on emergency facilities, accompanied by skyrocketing bad debt;  nurse and staff recruitment has become much more difficult due to high housing prices and high competitive wages in the oil patch; and physician recruitment, always a problem for rural areas, has gotten worse as needs soar.

By John McChesney

I met Randall Pederson, right, in his cramped office. As I start my interview, he yawns. He’s sitting behind a desk piled high with papers surrounded by shelves,  and also piled high with papers. Pederson is President and CEO of the Tioga Medical Center, a 25-bed hospital in the town of Tioga, population around 2,000, although Pederson says it’s anybody’s guess how many people live here now. Several towns have more than doubled in size in the last couple of years. Pederson not only runs this hospital; he also serves on the town’s volunteer ambulance squad. Thus, the yawn. The squad is now making a lot more runs in the middle of the night. “They say New York City never sleeps,” Pederson says. “Well, I don’t know if western North Dakota ever sleeps.”

Like many small town hospitals around here, the Tioga Medical Center has seen a dramatic leap in ambulance runs and emergency room patients. “In 2007 we would see 600 patients in ER per year,” Pederson says. “In 2012, we anticipate seeing over 2,000. So in a five-year period, we have more than tripled our emergency room visits. We are seeing a lot more industrial accidents, major trauma, many of those involving car accidents, because there’s a lot more vehicles on the roads these days.”Many of those accidents involve a 40-ton tank truck colliding with a 5,000-pound passenger car. Those can bring several patients with horrible injuries into the small ER at the same time. The one doctor on call has to scramble to get some help. Read more »

Last modified Mon, 1 Oct, 2012 at 10:34

By John McChesney

Note: A radio version of this story ran on NPR's Morning Edition today.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota is often called the “Walden Pond of the West.” But Roosevelt’s ranch today is in the midst of an oil boom that is industrializing the local landscape. Critics say a proposed gravel pit and a bridge could destroy the very thing that made such a lasting impression on Roosevelt: the restorative power of wilderness.

It’s not easy to reach the place that Roosevelt said created the best memories of his life. Over 30 miles of dirt road, then and a mile-and-a-half hike, lie between a visitor and the ranch. Roosevelt National Park Superintendent Valerie Naylor drove me out on a Sunday. We didn’t see another person at the ranch site, which sits on the banks of the Little Missouri River. 

Naylor showed me the old hand-dug well and the ranch house’s massive foundation stones, cut from granite. “That’s what’s so special about the Elkhorn ranch,” she told me, “We don’t have anything that’s reconstructed here – we just have a site and it’s the way that it was – for the most part – when Roosevelt first found it in summer of 1884. So it’s very special.”

The long drive out here takes you across the North Dakota Badlands, which are in fact beautiful, not bad. Because they made for hard travelling, early French trappers called them so. The area is crisscrossed with ravines (called coulees), meadows at bottom, tree-lined on the sides, and bordered by gray and red walls. Their fantastical formations fracture the horizon. Naylor said the site’s isolation is its charm. “You can see and hear things that many people have never seen or heard,” she explained, “That is, a landscape without any development, or minimal and all natural sounds, birds, wind in the cottonwood trees, and that’s exactly what Roosevelt heard and wrote about while he was here at the Elkhorn ranch.” (Read More)

Last modified Tue, 23 Apr, 2013 at 19:40

From the interactive video "An Unquiet Landscape: The American West's New Energy Frontier"

With sky-high energy prices driving new oil and gas exploration in the American West, states are struggling to keep pace with critical infrastructure and revenue policies. Western North Dakota is in the throes of a raging energy boom, as hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling techniques coax valuable hydrocarbons out of long-dormant oilfields. But as towns like Williston see their populations double virtually overnight and vital farm-to-market roads crumble under 18-wheel trucks, how best to ensure that local communities can survive the onslaught, and to reap rewards that benefit the whole state, long after the boom is over?

Working with Montana-based Headwaters Economics, The Rural West Initiative has published a comprehensive multimedia report, combining a rigorous economic and policy analysis with a 31-minute interactive video documentary called "An Unquiet Landscape: The American West's New Energy Frontier." 

The video feature looks at three rural western communities at different stages of the process of energy development: North Dakota, where a recent drilling frenzy has pushed it to the third-highest oil production in the U.S.; western Wyoming, where residents are coping with air pollution and habitat destruction after a decade of oil and gas exploration; and eastern Wyoming, where residents of one of the state's poorest communities pin their hopes on a boom on the local Niobrara formation.

The video report is published in an innovative format, an interactive player that presents supplementary information at key points in the documentary.  We will be sharing the source code for the interactive player, which leverages the latest HTML5 technology, under an open source, creative commons license for noncommercial reuse.

REPORT: ENERGY DEVELOPMENT IN THE RURAL WEST »

Last modified Mon, 1 Oct, 2012 at 9:38