In this April 19, 2012, photo trailers used as temporary housing for oil industry workers are are parked along a dirt road outside Dore, N.D. The western North Dakota town has seen an economic and population turnaround with increased oil activity in the region. (AP Photo/ James MacPherson)JAMES MacPHERSON
DORE, N.D. (AP) – For more than three decades, Kerry and Darrell Finsaas were all that kept this blink-and-you-miss-it North Dakota community from becoming completely deserted.
As Dore’s only residents, they lived in a ghost town on the desolate northern Plains. But now the couple has neighbors – and lots of them. The all-but-forgotten former farming village has been reborn as a hub of oil activity. And it may not be the last abandoned settlement to be resurrected from the dust.
“We knew it was inevitable,” Kerry Finsaas said of the oil boom that has enveloped the region. “We’re making the best of it, but it doesn’t mean we like it.”
Like many farm-dependent communities throughout the nation, Dore fell victim to changing agricultural practices and a harsh rural economy. By the early 1960s, the town on the state’s far western edge, near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, was largely vacant. Most residents had either moved away or died.