Word: dakotas
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...whistle stops in North Dakota, pick Watford City (TIME, April 3) ? This is not outraged civic pride speaking -just curiosity and amusement. We in North Dakota are grateful for a little favorable publicity. . . . However, you make North Dakota sound like the last frontier. I'll grant that Watford City, along with the rest of northwestern North Dakota, has had its disasters and prosperity on a more epic scale than other parts of the state, but you don't have to be supermen to survive out here...
...would like to point out that the farmers of North Dakota have learned by hard experience that we need another hedge against disaster besides money in the bank. . . . North Dakota has turned to diversified farming. More and better grasses & pastures, more cattle, sheep, hogs, dairy products, turkeys, eggs and chickens. Maybe the farmers of McKenzie County can manage it, but the rest of us find it leaves us considerably less time to loaf, drink beer, play poker and have gold fillings put in our teeth than we would like...
Across the jagged Badlands, over the rolling plains of stubble wheat, and even in Watford City (pop. 1,087), there were still solid patches of snow. But the miracle had happened. Throughout North Dakota, the big thaw had come. The hard-bitten men who farm the northern tip of the onetime poverty-stricken U.S. "dust bowl" had survived a decade of dust, drought. WPA, grasshoppers, mortgages. Now, after a three-year spell of war and golden weather, they could afford a little fun in town...
During the '30s, North Dakota lost almost everything but its weathered denims and its prized "elbow room." Last year the state came back as one of the nation's biggest breadbaskets: first in spring and durum wheat production, first in barley, second in certified seed potatoes. North Dakota farms (average 1940 census value: $8,742) brought in an average 1943 income...
...farmers of North Dakota had learned that they live in an exacting country of violent extremes. Withering summer heat (up to 124°) follows hard on paralyzing blizzards (down to -40°). To scratch a living, a man must be both tough and lucky. North Dakotans are also hardheaded. They know all about poverty. Wealth is fine while it lasts. But next year -or the year after-hard times may come again. While the present boom continues, practical citizens have paid off mortgages ($33 million in the last four years), oversubscribed by 81% on "E" bonds in the Fourth...