state by state speak your mind about...north dakota

[SwampG8r]

i did not believe in north dakota until about 10 years ago
i thought it was a fantasy to even out the flag or something
i live in the touristy part of florida and we see every tag from every state
never seen a north dakota tag
but my dad went to work there and he says its really a place so i have no choice but to believe him
food processing and farming are the high priority jobs
when they admitted the dakotas as states they intentionally shuffled the papers so as to not know which was admitted first
dakota rivalry
we have the native people,scandanavians germans
there are no real tourist attractions there
i hope someone on du can confirm the existence of north dakota

[catbyte]

1. My dad lived in Dickinson for awhile at a coal (I think) gasification plant

in the early 80's. The Badlands in the northeast section of the state were really cool, but the Rax restaurant in Bismark sucked. Mom and I drove his Siamese cat, Miki, out there for company. Miki didn't like the wind but he loved my dad.

Diane
Anishinaabe in MI & mom to Leo, Sophie, Taz & Nigel, members of Dogs Against Romney, Cat Division
"We ride inside--HISS!”

[yesphan]

2. I've been there many times.

My band played in several towns including Minot.
Met lots of missile jockies. People are very friendly, especially in the winter.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. The only state to ever issue me a speeding ticket. I was going about 62

on a very straight, flat, two-lane in the middle of no where. Saw an on-coming car, the first I'd seen in about an hour, and was floored when it passed by and it was a sheriff's car. He actually turned around and came after me. I think the fine was $15.

[RC]

4. I have lived there for 45 years. It truly does exists.

Occasional -30° to -45°F (Usually in the winter) Help keep out the riff-raff.

I'm living in Kansas City now. I miss North Dakota and the lack of people.
A 2½ hour drive was 200 miles, and not just across town as is down here.

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. North Dakota is so rural...

...its largest city is Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

But seriously, best ribeye I ever had was at Le Bistro in Bismarck.

North Dakota is also where the mighty James River begins. It is notable for being the slowest moving major river in the US as it flows through South Dakota and into the Missouri River at Yankton.

[hfojvt]

11. hey, I lived on the James

Had some trouble canoeing upstream once. I think it was a windy day. I don't know if I would call it a major river, although it used to be the world's longest non-navigatable river, until it was somehow declared actually navigatable.

As far as cities go, I sorta thought both Bismarck and Fargo were bigger than Sioux Falls, but I guess not. That may have been true in the 1970s but Sioux Falls has really taken off in the last twenty years. Still a comparison of metro areas

ND
1. Fargo - 93,531
2. Bismarck - 60,389
3. Grand Forks - 51,313
4. Minot - 35,419
5. West Fargo - 23,708
6. Mandan - 18,091 (really part of the Bismarck metro area)
7. Dickinson - 16,035
8. Jamestown - 14,630
9. Williston - 12,641

SD
1. Sioux Falls - 154,997
2. Rapid City - 65,491
3. Aberdeen - 24,460
4. Watertown - 20,488
5. Brookings - 19,865
6. Mitchell - 14,752
7. Pierre - 13,899
8. Yankton - 13,789
9. Huron - 11,033 (my hometown which was once 4th largest with 15,000 people)

Point being that ND has three cities with over 50,000 people to only two for SD, that if you were to rank those 18 cities in order it would be

1. SD
2. ND
3. SD
4. ND
5. ND
6. ND
7. SD
8. ND
9. SD
10. SD
11. ND
12. ND
13. SD
14. ND
15. SD
16. SD
17. ND
18. SD

ND has four of the top 6 and SD has four of the bottom 6. That ND is slightly less rural than SD.

Can you tell I like making lists?

[Comrade Grumpy]

19. I grew up in Huron. It seems busier in recent years.

Maybe the population will have actually increased for a change in the last census. Still waiting to see.

[hfojvt]

20. Wait, you mean we know each other

IRL? Maybe not, if you are much younger than I. Heck, even three years apart in school could make us strangers. Well except for my siblings, I sort of span from 1976 to 1991 (from the time my older sister was a sophomore to the freshman class who might have known my baby sister).

It is kinda funny, because with all that growth out to Cemetery Road, to me, it seems bigger than it used to be.

[dmallind]

6. Can't offer much but...

A former boyfriend of my wife's was from North Dakota but lived in Minnesota. Whenever he saw an ND plate in the latter state he would check out the driver in case he knew them personally. He often did.

Despite a startlingly minuscule population density and dead straight hill-free highways, I managed to get a speeding ticket for 77 in a 75 on a bright summer day with characteristically low traffic in rural ND*. Needless to say, I had out of state plates, unlike the 3 or 4 cars who had blown by me like I wasn't moving in the prior 10 minutes. Still, state revenue has to come from somewhere I guess.

In re * above: yes Virginia, there IS a non-rural part of ND. It even has a hotel.

The incredibly low unemployment rate is a testament to residents' hardiness, work ethic and loyalty. That and the tendency for a huge ratio of grads to bugger off for warmer and/or more cosmopolitan states the minute they enter the work force.

North Dakota had at one point in the last 20 years, and still may have for all I know, the only county in the entire country where every single private phone number was in the white pages, with no unlisted numbers at all.

Dinosaurs abound from ND's legendary fossil finds. The state boasts a real complete triceratops, a stegosaurus and Byron Dorgan.

Despite many similarities, Winterfell is not in ND, nor does the border with Manitoba feature a huge sheer wall peopled with violent celibates in black furs. No - the wall is not that big at all.

Roger Maris came from North Dakota! .....but so did Lawrence Welk.

They had a serious initiative in 1989 that went to the point of a legislative vote to change their name, in a Greenlandesque marketing move, to just "Dakota". It failed. No-one knows why.

[Odin2005]

7. Big Oil is taking over ND.

[Paladin]

16. ND Will Be The Biggest Oil-Producing State In The Country.

Bigger than Texas. Bigger Than California. Bigger than Alaska. Lots of changes going on in that state now, and a lot more changes to come.....

[Zorra]

8. So I walked into this isolated bar,

I'm pretty sure it was on Hwy 1, that I had stopped at while passing through rural ND many years back. I needed something, I forget what it was, but before I was halfway to the bar, I stopped, and gulped.

The entire bar was full of white men of various ages, all wearing John Deere hats, and all glaring at me like I was crippled cat in a dog kennel.

This old Lynyrd Skynyrd tune started playing over and over in my head..."Gimme three steps, gimme 3 steps mister, gimme 3 steps towards the door, gimme three steps, gimme 3 steps mister, and you'll never see me no more."

I got out of there as fast as I could, just as soon as the shock wore off, and didn't stop again until well after I hit the Minnesota line.

I got the very distinct impression that this particular group didn't care much for "my kind".

Haven't been back to ND since.

[Spike89]

9. Never been there myself, but have deep family roots

My great grandfather (paternal) was one of the original settlers in the area around Cooperstown. My Mother and father were both born near Cooperstown and both of their families moved in 1938 to Oregon and settled within a few miles of each other. It wasn't until they'd been in Oregon for a few years that they met for the first time.
I've still got relatives on both sides living in ND. Some day I hope to make it there and stomp around a bit.

[uppityperson]

10. Born, grew up, left. It used to exist. There is quite a bit of computer software stuff going on in

Fargo these days as well as health care stuff and culture (music, theater, 3 colleges in the area though that includes Moorehead, MN). Medicare billing is located there as is a bunch of Microsoft and other software stuff. The rural areas lost people, cities gained them.


Property and houses are inexpensive, as is food.

Tourist attractions are the Turtle mts in the N, badlands in the center, some big statues (bison in Jamestown, a chicken somewhere else, and a bunch of roadside art in the western 1/4 off Hwy 94. Teddy Roosevelt State Park in western 1/4 also. Prairie dog towns, Missouri and little Missouri rivers as well as the Red River of the North. Not a lot condensed, but if you need condensed tourist activities, whatever.

Hot and humid and mosquitoey in the summer, cold dry windy in the winter. Crops in the eastern 1/2, livestock in the dryer western. Now fracking in the west, barf.

Scandanavians, Germans, NA.

Cheap alcohol in offsales (buy it and take it off site to drink) including everclear. Everclear and koolaide at one of the parks, in the shade by one of the rivers. You bet.

[Honeycombe8]

12. Why, there's an entire movie about it. Fargo.

Interesting accents. Lots of snow. White as far as the eye can see, if one is to believe the movie Fargo.

Lots of native Americans there, I think?

Sparsely populated. Harsh environment. It looked beautiful in the movie, but I'm from the deep south and cannot drive on ice or in snow, so I don't think I could make it there.

[dmallind]

13. ...except the movie is set in Minnesota

Brainerd area for the rural scenes and Twin Cities for urbanized.

[Honeycombe8]

15. Well, Fargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota, and it crosses over into MN. nt

[geardaddy]

26. That's Moorhead on the MN side.

[Volaris]

14. my dads family is from there, and I lived there when I was a kid..

in the eastern part of the state, 20 or so miles south of Grand Forks (in the Red River Valley).

Its beautiful there, very few people, a lot of them seem educated beyond what one would expect for such a rural area. My experience of the place politically is that its not called socialism, its called a Co-Op, has existed in some form since BEFORE the New Deal, and even if you're an idiot 'bagger, you think they are kinda a good idea. (but make no mistake, there ARE idiot 'Baggers up there)...

I live in MO now, and I miss the northern Prairie. The last time I was there to visit my grandmother I brought back a glass Mason jar of average farm dirt. Its blacker than potting soil.

ND was one of the only States to not be hit REALLY hard by the Recession, due mainly to the fact that the Oil and Gas industry has been keeping people employed, and bringing on new workers, and the fact the PUBLICLY OWNED State Bank took steps to mitigate their risk, and so they got stuck with a much smaller bag then they could have had they been a little bit dumber and a lot more privately managed.(or so says my Grandmother, anyway...=))
There's more, but its been a long weekend...

(ON EDIT) LOVE the dig about North Dakota NOT actually being Winterfell, thanks for that, it made me smile.

[Odin2005]

17. NDans score #1 in both Agreeableness and Extroversion

[Major Nikon]

23. They still talk funny

[Odin2005]

24. Uffda, ya, sure, you betcha we do talk funny!

We like our accent, thank you very much!

[JNelson6563]

18. I drove through it twice (there & back to Montana)

Labor Day weekend and first weekend in November. Pretty beige, flat and not much going on. And I think they may have even worse winters than where I'm at (northern MI).

But isn't ND very important to us as an agricultural resource, among other things?

Julie

[Major Nikon]

21. Spent a lifetime there one winter

I don't believe in hell, but I do believe in North Dakota.

[ibegurpard]

22. Next state to the east from me (Montana)

And it's one of only three states in the entire country (including Alaska and Hawaii) that I've never been to (not including Alaska and Hawaii).

[Raine]

25. I have relatives there, close to the Canadian border and have

been there several times. It's beautiful in it's own way and the people are nice and friendly. I'm a Californian thru and thru so it's not the place for me. I can see though that if you're the hearty type who doesn't mind the cold and small town living it has it's appeal.