Overview

In the past decade, expert after expert has predicted that North Dakota would return to its pre-homesteading state and enjoy the status of the nation’s “buffalo commons.” So far, this has not happened.

Yes, small towns become smaller and large towns become larger. But lifestyle and family ties are strong, and seem to drive the state as much as the economy. People who live here value North Dakota. They want to stay here or return here to raise their families.

Historian and author, J. Patrick Smith stated in his North Dakota’s Second Hundred Years article, “Scholars and pundits, travelers and planners have traversed the plains, the farms and the prairie communities. These itinerants stand, observe, and pass: but the prairie, the farm and the community stay.”

What makes North Dakota so compelling to its tenacious, persistent citizens – to, as Smith states so eloquently, this “willful, purposeful choice for continuation?” What can we do to encourage more young people to remain here or to return here? How can we “sell” what we have to a world that can’t even find North Dakota on a map?

State leaders, city dwellers, and rural residents all agree, North Dakota has a future. And like our populist forbearers, we’re going to have to build the State we want ourselves.