Ghost towns of the Old West

WILLISTON, NORTH DAKOTA

We passed a sign, lonely on the dry, dirty yellow grass of the plain, reading something like “You can’t hide from God.”

It wasn’t a warning, a threat or an obvious hint to behave as you should. Out here, it’s simply reality.

In this part of the world, you can’t hide from much of anything. This is northern central US, acres and miles and counties and states of low, bumpy land…the prairie of Western movie fame. It looks great on film (lots of depth for those wide angle shots of Matt movin’ ‘em to Montana), but it can feel quite empty and lonely. This probably helps explain the taciturn and quiet way of locals from around these parts.

You don’t really get cityscapes or suburbs on the prairie. Municipalities, such as they are, tend to look a lot like Williston. This town was probably perfect western movie scenery a century or so ago; it’s easy to picture twin rows of clapboard buildings on either side of a dirt road Main Street. Modern Williston hasn’t grown too much wider than that; downtown has the feel of someplace not entirely permanent and not exactly making a good living. The one department store, obviously a fixture of the place for many decades, was still and nearly unoccupied when I stopped in for a coffee this morning. Under the old tin ceiling, in front of the racks of not up-to-date merchandise, the co-owner of the store’s café concession struck up a small conversation with me. What did she think of Williston? I asked during our little talk.

“Mmmm,” she said, in that way people do when working to think of something inoffensive to say. “God loves everyone. People here are nice.” She was originally from Oregon, and her tone and care indicated that for her, her home state easily wins the comparison.

Williston did grow, a bit. There’s a stretch of highway branching north and a little shift left from Main Street. This has the usual American shops and food troughs – Radio Shack, Arby’s, KFC, etc. etc. Giving this could-be-anywhere-in-the-USA scenery a small pinch of local flavor is the a few warehouses selling farm goods and oil extracting equipment. Like the prairie town it likely always was, farmin’ is apparently still a ripe business here. Same goes for oil – according to the taxi driver who gave me a ride through this landscape to my motel, people involved in the Black Stuff are doing pretty well and the local economy is that much the better for it.

But the oil money doesn’t seem to drip down to the town’s economy. The shops feel and look a few decades out of date, and only a few people wander around downtown. The neighborhood is Williston’s geographical center, but that’s where its significance seems to end.

I’m here for less than 24 hours. Tomorrow is another vault across the plains, 12 hours west to Whitefish, Montana. God bless us humble travelers…if he’s not too busy keeping watch over prairie ghost towns like Williston.