r/geography
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u/oshatookmybolter
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10h ago
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Question Why are the Dakotas so empty?
There is so much land here in both states, yet there’s only one major highway through each and a bunch of small towns randomly spread out. I feel like there’s some potential here that’s been missed. Doesn’t seem like the reservations are that big either.
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u/Green-Tie-5710 9h ago
Wow we got some real bad answers here.
The reality is that they’re far west enough not to have been settled by early Americans, and even when they were available, a lack of navigable waterways to the Mississippi River system prevented a big migration there. Also the western part of the states not getting a lot of rain doesn’t help. There’s a big oil field in North Dakota, but besides that, there’s not a ton of natural resources and the land is basically just used for farming.
And as others have said, it’s bitterly cold and windy in the winter. The one thing that would make them worthwhile to spend a winter in, mountains, are nowhere to be found. They have a few hills and that’s it.
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u/Forward-Rice3280 9h ago
I like when people acknowledge how integral the inland waterways have been to shaping the country. A single jumbo barge carries more cargo than a mile and a half of railway cars and several hundred semi trucks, using less fuel!
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u/Xrmy 9h ago
Settling on water is like the oldest and most common thing shared by human settlements. It's not a hard rule, but it's incredibly common
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u/us287 North America 9h ago
And the one large hilly area (the Black Hills) is desirable and close to one of the few cities in the region (Rapid City)
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u/milehighsuperstar 9h ago
South Dakota does have mountains though, they’re just very small
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u/Fuckboitroye 8h ago
Is the Missouri not navigable?
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u/hrminer92 8h ago
It was very shallow in many parts so the conventional river vessels that make use of the Mississippi and others could only go so far north and the ones that were able to couldn’t really carry that many passengers or freight. There are hydro dams on the river now.
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u/Robot_Dinosaur_2000 10h ago
They are in the middle of nowhere and it gets really hot and really cold.
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u/Another_Atop 8h ago
The wind is what really seals it. It turns subzero winters into pure misery and bakes everything completely dry in the summer.
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u/fartmonster-2215 9h ago edited 9h ago
A lot of emptiness comes down to geography.
Harsh winters, mostly drought heavy areas. Lack of fresh water streams/major rivers. And simply, no logical connection to ports.
Especially in America, unless there’s gigantic agricultural infrastructure , historic religious pilgrimage (SLC) , or rapid economic uplift (LAS Vegas). Almost all your large cities are on the coast of a large body of water, or follow a major river.
If you aren’t on the Mississippi , a Great Lake, or the ocean. You are likely in a small town
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u/copperbonker 7h ago
I like that Denver is the exception purely because people saw the wall of mountains and said fuck that
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u/CookieResponsible865 7h ago
Lived a year in Chamberlain, SD. Absolutely gorgeous. People for the most part were incredibly welcoming and kind. I came from the Great Lakes and have known winters for a long time. South Dakota whooped me good. I remember thinking I had to get somewhere warm like Chicago. Best description I can give, around Lake Michigan you feel the cold in your lungs, in South Dakota you feel the cold in your bones.
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u/No-Use8941 7h ago
Grew up in Grand Forks AFB, ND. Moved there from Southern California, what a shell shock. Your description of can feel the cold in your bones is spot on. Live in Omaha now and laugh when people complain about the “cold”.
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u/slamminsalmoncannon
7h ago
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It is unrelentingly bleak in the wintertime. Something to endure. But then the snow melts and the sun comes out and the wind that never stops blowing blasts you in the face with hot hot heat and you stare out at endless nothing and understand despair.
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u/vsGoliath96
5h ago
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My mother lived in North Dakota for many years.
She eventually ended up moving to Alaska because the weather was nicer. Think about that for a second.
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u/12B88M 8h ago
Most of that land (89% in South Dakota and 90% in North Dakota) is used for farming and ranching.
East of the Missouri river it's fantastic farm land. West of the Missouri is great grazing land.
Toss in some National Parks, tons of state parks, Indian reservations and a few cities and the both are being completely used.
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u/like_shae_buttah 9h ago
South Dakota is pretty amazing. Not only the badlands but also the black hills. Black Ell Peak is the tallest mountain east of the Rockies until you get to the alps.
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u/ULTRASUPERRARECOMBO 7h ago
Some commenters already said as much, but you cant say South Dakota is pretty amazing and then point to a small sliver of the far western part of the state. The majority of South Dakota is very boring and not at all worth a trip. The Badlands and Black Elk Peak have more in common with the Rockies than with the Great Plains. Where I grew up, you had to drive 4 hours to what most people would call a city. That shit sucked.
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u/milehighsuperstar 9h ago
Outside of the Black Hills and maybe Sioux Falls, throw the rest of the state away. It’s very MAGA and law enforcement is known to profile.
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u/Ice-Storm 4h ago
They are very far from any navigable waterways to the ocean. And the climate is so crap that there's no incentive to live there despite that. If you look at the vast majority of major cities they are on the coast, the great lakes, or a major waterway like the Mississippi river. The few exceptions would be like Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas. But all 3 are still near major sources of fresh water in areas that don't have a lot. Denver was the last stop for the wagon trains headed west before the mountains. Phoenix is in one of the few places agriculture is possible in the SW (before modern irrigation) and Las Vegas obviously started as a town as far east as the mafia could get before the law stepped in.
There is just no reason for a city to be in most of the Dakotas.
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u/btroycraft 46m ago
Why South Dakota has its little tail:
Because Sioux City is the last navigable point on the Missouri River. If the Missouri was deeper into North Dakota, there would be a "big" city wherever it stopped.
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u/VulfSki
7h ago
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If you have ever been there you would know.
The real question is, why do so many people actually choose to live there?
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u/Mrkancode 6h ago
From the southeast. Moved to ND for 8 years then moved to the west coast and then moved back to ND for a few years.
Here's why:
Cheapest place to live I've ever been in America. Among the highest paying jobs I've worked anywhere in the country by ~20%! Cheapest housing and rent anywhere above Kansas on the map. No tax on food.
Most of the people I met in ND are transplants from other parts of the country just looking for a better life. People want to make more and pay less. Anyone can find success and stability in ND regardless of your pay class. My friend still lives there and is very proud that he works 26 hours a week at his part time grocery store cashier job and still makes enough money to pay all his bills while saving some on top AND also smoking hundreds of dollars of weed a month. That's just an impossible feat anywhere else I've ever been in America.
Yes it's a cold, windy conservative hell scape but if you're someone who has struggled financially and just want to feel your efforts are being rewarded appropriately, it's a good place to go. Just make sure to bundle up between nov-apr 🥶
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u/RevenueGullible1227 6h ago
Fav part about williston . Over 50% the ppk are transplants. Its a lil less noticable but there really used to be a underlying "we all showed up here with nothing and lived in our cars to make it ,we all are in this together " sort of camradire that really did tie everyone together. Like the person in 80k truck and dude living out his pack were equal. Was very unique. Its slightly dissapated a hair and the more "settled " it gets and also due to curreny social landscape i have noticed ppl up here are waaaaay more racist and insular than they used to be. To a large degree.
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u/Boeing367-80 6h ago
I drove across ND one summer night. Got to Bismarck (from the east) about 1am or so. What I remember is that the next morning I had to scrape a whole mass of dead bugs from my car. Lots of bugs dancing in the air in the summer night across ND. The next day, driving out of ND into MT, the landscape was majestic, in a really empty massive sort of way - reminiscent of the landscape in Dances With Wolves.
I also drove one time across SD the other direction - in winter, in freezing fog, through the Black Hills. I don't remember much because I was rigidly focused on not slipping off the freeway. There was one jack-knifed big rig in the median - I was more worried about slipping off the edge and down a steep hill. I did not realize that it was a serious problem before getting on the road. What bailed me out was hitting grooved road. That allowed me to descend out of the freezing fog in relatively good order.
These are places that can kill you pretty fast in the wrong circumstances.
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u/Linkylinkylinklink 6h ago
I visited Rapid City once and I thought it was amazing! Maybe it'd be less fun to actually live there...
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u/Solid_Cash_1128 6h ago edited 3h ago
That area, the black hills region, is not representative of the Dakotas. The area is anomalous. South is 95% nothing, and then one really beautiful region
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u/tomcat1483 6h ago
2 reasons to be there. 1. That’s where the Government put your people. 2 resource extraction.
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u/Specific-Wrap1396 9h ago
Was just in Winner, SD to hunt pheasants in early October. Beautiful place but vastly underserved in the middle areas. Flew into Sioux Falls and from our 3 hour drive to Winner, there really is nothing Eastward after 30 minutes of the 3 hours. There are small towns in between that survive on grocery stores here and there. Fun fact, the high school there has about 200 kids throughout all grades! Diversity is near none. My buddy and I made up the less than 1% Asian. There is also a large amount of Native American reservation land that American citizens stay clear of. Other than farming and hunting, not sure what else to do there in the rural parts. But I do recommend the place for hunting!
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u/Willow_Winnifred 9h ago
I had a friend from a town in ND with a population of 200. The school was only a couple of kids. Mind blowing to me.
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u/kasdejya 6h ago
The winters are cold, the summers are hot. The dust bowl probably didnt help much. My ancestors immigrated there from the Volga river region of Russia (volga Germans). North Dakota was very similar for farming, so my folks settled and farmed for generations. My uncle is the last in my family to do it, and I dont think he will be doing it much longer. :/
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u/skogurt 6h ago
Very same story here, down to the uncle part lol. The Germans-from-Russia settlements in ND is a fascinating history that doesn’t have a ton of documentation, but I remember growing up going to my grandma’s house and her and her friends having coffee parties and speaking only in German, as that was their first language despite being born in ND. I’ve since moved out of ND to the west coast, and have dug more into the history in my adulthood.
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u/Ebil_shenanigans 9h ago
North Dakota is a CIA psyop.
Have you ever met someone from North Dakota? No, you haven't. Everyone who claims to be from there is a government plant.
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u/NervousOil9868 8h ago •
As a military person stationed in North Dakota one time, can confirm, was a government plant.
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u/IceCreamSmackdown 7h ago
As a add-on to OP's inquery about North Dakota being empty, the nuclear ICBM silos are placed in North Dakota so that if there were ever a targeted first strike on the land-leg of the nuclear triad, there wouldn't be as many civilian casualties because the nuclear ICBMs are in the middle of nowhere.
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u/SleazetheSteez 8h ago
Had a buddy that worked in the oil fields up there and was forever weirder than before. Clearly a body double, you're onto something here.
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u/guhman123 9h ago
go to ND in the winter and then go to CA and find out why one is packed and the others a ghost town. or do it during the summer if you want a different flavor of misery
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u/JustAnotherPolyGuy 9h ago
I live in Minneapolis. We get a lot of the people who grow up in the Dakotas but don’t fit in. A town of 500, or even 1,500 can be real stifling. Everyone knows you and your family and if they don’t like what you’re doing they will be vicious in their gossip. Plus, agricultural industrialization means you don’t need many people to farm, and until fracking opened up gas drilling there wasn’t a lot of other work.
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u/ManbadFerrara 9h ago
That first part is why I never want to live in a small town, no matter what state. It sounds like high school, if high school was everywhere you went for your entire life.
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u/Snacks75 9h ago
Did a work project in Grand Forks one time in January. It was -12F and the wind was blowing 20Mph. Wind chill was super cold. I had to check on something in an outdoor portable. Whatever winter clothing I brought was woefully insufficient. If I have a choice, I will never live in ND, SD or Montana, or Minnesota. Miserable.
I can't imagine pioneer settlers landing in ND and deciding to stay. Makes no sense. One winter maybe, but after one, staying is insanity.
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u/Skolary 8h ago edited 8h ago •
Actual ND resident here. Last couple winters had days where it reached -60°. And about 3 months of -20 surrounding those outliers.
Summers can get up 105°; our Fall & Springs are sometimes about a week long, it feels like. Many years it's not unheard of where it really feels like winter 8 months of the year, and Summer for 4.
Winters here can be so brutal though. It's flat, no trees in many areas. Wind chill is always a factor.
If you have a heated garage here in the Winter, you're in luck. Otherwise, it's likely your car can be buried on the side of the street by snow plows.
That chill can really do a number on vehicle engines over the years as well. Primarily the batteries.
If you have to work at 6, best get up at 4 to go start your car for about 30 minutes, let it warm up, do a good 10 minutes of snow removal. Yes, at 4 A.M. when it's like -20 outside and windy.
The worst part is that ice sheet that forms virtually over the entire plains, and then gets a mountain of snow over it, and lasts all Winter.
There's been years where we have had snow so high, it covers 3/4's of your door entrance. You'll still be expected to be at work, school, or whatever. It's common here. Even when it's -75° outside, that's no excuse to shut the city down.
Buy North Face, coveralls, wool gloving under the thick gloves, double socks, stocking cap, mask, snow boots and all. A giant bag of rock salt, another of sand, a snow plow. Electronic car starter. Plugin your vehicle at night if you can't have heated garage / if you can. And make sure you have decent tire treading.
You come across the oddball steep hill here and there suddenly, and don't think about it? You can completely lose control of your car the whole ride down. Plowing through an intersection going 60 MPH in a vehicle that is completely out of your control on the ice is never a good time.
Make sure you start applying your breaks in intervals about 15 seconds before you stop. Apply constant control to small over-corrections when driving. Leave extra space when behind others on the road (plenty that don't, and find out the hard way).
And you'll be just fine. lol.
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u/SoggyWalrus7893 8h ago
A lot of them were from Norway, and Russia. Both noted for their balmy winters. The lutefisk suppers are also a big draw.
NB: Inlaws are FROM ND. North ND a few miles from the Canada border.
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u/Fearless_External932 8h ago
Imagine moving from one freezing hellhole across the ocean to a continent with every climate available, just to pick another freezing hellhole on the exact opposite side of the earth.
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u/Entire-Classroom-968 7h ago
Scandinavian here: the Dakotas are actually nothing like any Nordic country, and Minnesota is only very superficially. Even the inhabited parts of Norway with the harshest winters are nothing like that. I think that the more apt comparison to the Dakotas is actually Siberia.
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u/Admirable-Client-730 9h ago
I used to work on the border of Canada and north dakota. I once saw -36 without wind chill worked up there for 3 years. I am from south dakota so pretty used to cold weather. But that was so cold.
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u/Anon_Arsonist 7h ago
My ancestor on my mother's side settled there in the late 1800s after hearing about a land boom and free land. He and his brother bought a one way train ticket for themselves and their families from Nova Scotia.
According to a newspaper interview of them my family later dug up, they only stayed because they ran out of money. The land was swampy, the weather was terrible, and the productivity was bad. It took multiple generations of work, but my grandmother was the last generation that lived on the farm out there.
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u/Aborticus 7h ago
Yep, my granpda was too... still got that land that is all rock and hills. Cows loved it!
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u/robinizzme 9h ago
South Dakotan here…it is cold in the winter with windchills that could be as low as 30 below zero. Summers up to 100 plus degrees with high humidity caused by corn sweat (look it up).
And large percentage of the land owned by state or federal governments and Native American Reservations.
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u/robinizzme 9h ago
Oh…and LOTS of farmland…for the above mentioned corn. And beans.
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u/citizenQuark 5h ago
With names like "Devils Lake" and "Badlands", it's not what I would call great marketing.
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u/Foreskin_and_seven 8h ago
I lived in Fargo for a time. The winters are (as advertised) brutal, but the city was actually very nice for the most part. Small, but good enough amenities. The summers are fucking beautiful and almost make up for the winter. Friendly people, though I found it a little difficult to make friends TBH. The landscape in that part of ND is featureless--super flat, with grass and relatively sparse trees. I found it oddly oppressive, and I wasn't sad to get back to somewhere with some hills and trees. All in all not a bad place to be, if you can handle the cold and have a midwestern vibe.
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u/Wise-Profession1080 4h ago
Tundra in the winter, hell in the summer. I think Fargo is probably most compatible with life but even that is a stretch. I spent 5 years there and while I adjusted to the cold, I never adjust to the emptiness and refusal to divert tax money to school lunches.
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u/AlohaSnackBar555 9h ago
It’s so cold people casually wear battery powered clothing. It’s so flat the wind just tears through everything. I lived there for a year and twice on the news cattle froze to death standing in the fields.
Waking up to start your car in -50 with wind just makes you angry.
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u/deplaya99 9h ago
Driving down the highway on your way to work -30°F outside. Windchill, in a Jeep CJ5 neither heater work with a rag top. Wearing Sorels, 2 pairs of socks, thermal underwear, blue jeans, ski pants, thermal t-shirt, wool shirt, sweater, hooded winter coat, 2 stocking caps and a pair of gloves inside a pair of choppers. It was survival. I now live in Arizona. I like living in hell.
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u/Zmyslinski 8h ago
Pro-tip for anyone not considering a visit any time soon: Fargo's visiter center in North Dakota celebrates the Best for Last Club for anyone who makes it the 50th state you visit. You get a free T-shirt and a chance to take a picture next to the wood chipper from the movie.
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u/No-Quit-8420 8h ago
More to the point: why are there two Dakotas?
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u/After-Appearance-429 8h ago
The best question is, “why not east and west dakota?” Split in that fashion it would create 2 very different and distinct states. Geographically, Industrial, Agricultural, Cowboys v Farmers, etc…
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u/StructuralGeek 9h ago
No significant natural resources, outside of the Bakken fields. No specific strategic importance. No bottlenecks of trade. Limited water.
But, most of all, terrible weather. Hot and frequent hail in Summer, with a chance of tornadoes. Unending wind chill in winter, with a chance of the kind of absolute cold that verges on giving you PTSD.
I will say that Spring/Fall was great though when I lived in that area. Lots of small towns with interesting local lore, and good people that generally just to be left alone to do their own thing.
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u/Greekapino 9h ago
I had a friend in college who said he dad was a minister and was sent to a small community in North Dakota. She said her house had the only tree for miles around and all the kids would come over and play there on the tree. Now that is stark country.
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u/Top_Coach_8632 3h ago
The Republican Party created two dakotas in 1888 out of one to get additional senators to represent the dirt.
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u/PaladinGrishnarghan 2h ago
It’s always a shame to me considering North Dakota’s very socialist roots.
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u/Grease_the_Witch 9h ago
ever been there?
south dakota has very beautiful parts on the western side from rapid city to the badlands, and the black hills are one of my favorite places in the whole country, but the rest is just boring, arid, desolation
winters are brutal, summers are hot, you’re also severely landlocked, like almost the center of the whole continent, with no access to the great lakes
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u/_Bank_On_It_ 4h ago
It’s not empty, it’s full of farms. The best wheat in the world is grown there. Dakota durum is so good that there are pasta companies that buy and export it to Italy. Corn, sunflowers, barley, and cattle are also very prevalent. You don’t need big cities for all of that.
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u/CombatCrayon25 3h ago
The weather is ass 90% of the year; if it’s not freezing cold, it’s humid enough to choke a cow
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u/NowYouaSeeWhyYouScum 2h ago edited 19m ago
It's either -20 and windy af or it's 97 with 90% humidity and clouds of mosquitoes.
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u/Fine-Government9216 8h ago
Was stationed at Minot AFB,,, the city of Minot have local catch phrase "Why not Minot" the answer is "Cause freezing the reason"... It's cold, flat an in the winter it's dark 22 hrs a day!!
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u/tampapunklegend 9h ago
Having been there, it's flat, and there's not really much there. Also, not really close to anything important. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it also gets really cold in the winter. Much like other parts of the North American prairie region, it's not really good for anything aside from growing staple crops.
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u/No_time-comment 9h ago
I was born there. When you get your first 3 or 4 foot blizzard and can't get out for a week. We used to play a crap of card games, puzzles , read.
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u/E34M20 9h ago
I mean... have you driven thru either of them? Go pop on I-90 somewhere between Rapid City and Sioux Falls and you'll feel like you're standing on Mars, dude. It's just a bunch of barren land. Not much water. It's hot AF in the summer. Cold AF in the winter. I honestly wonder why they're as populated as they are, vs why there aren't more people. On some level or other it's like asking why Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia isn't a major city. It's just... not where you'd want to put one.
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u/ThisNameIsHilarious 9h ago
The better question is why are there 2 of them
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u/LostExile7555 9h ago
To stack the 1889 Senate in favor of the Republican Party.
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u/a_filing_cabinet 9h ago
You have this question the wrong way around. What reason would there be for the Dakotas to not be empty? Empty is the default, and then we filled places in when we had a reason. If there's tons of space, then it's because there's no reason.
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u/ElegantEgg2066 9h ago
There's nothing there. It's cold, windy and pleasant 3 to 4 months of the year.
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u/whiteholewhite 9h ago
Shitty land to farm, cold, wind, and drier. Eastern edges have good farmland, but drops off as you go west
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u/_Saint_Ajora_ 9h ago edited 21m ago
Because they are in the middle of fucking nowhere, landlocked 1500 miles in any direction (give or take) from any ocean
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u/Mailor_Soon 8h ago
It’s historically been tough to live there because of the extreme weather and low rainfall. While the soil in the east is great for farming, the land out west gets much more rugged and rocky, eventually leading into the Badlands.
Because that western terrain can't support dense crops, people rely on cattle ranching instead. That difference in how people work the land actually creates a pretty noticeable cultural divide between folks from "East River" and "West River."
Even with how massive the operations have to be to survive out there, around 97–98% of all farms and ranches in the Dakotas are still family-owned and operated.
(Source: From South Dakota)
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u/WriterMel 7h ago
When I moved from SD to the south in the ’80’s I asked my new neighbors where they plug in their cars in the winter. They thought I was insane. I didn’t know cars without block heaters existed.
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u/WitchesTeat 7h ago edited 7h ago
Zero infrastructure, zero future.
People are pack animals, flock animals really. We don't do well alone in the middle of nowhere. Even if you manage to eke out a living by yourself the loneliness and repetitiveness will drive you fucking mad.
Most of this country is empty West of the Mississippi. Civilization moved into these areas in large groups, not one by one.
So the country will expand outward from existing cities, not one person or one family at a time in the wilderness.
I just spent the last 8 years in a city of 200 people, 45 minutes from the closest grocery store. It absolutely sucks and I will never do it again. And I owned my own home. I'd rather live on my little sailboat on the wet end of town than a whole house in the middle of fuckall nowhere and statistically speaking the vast majority of the species agrees with me.
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u/ChasseGalery 8h ago
The Dakotas only exist to give 4 republican senators. That’s it.
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u/dumokkk 9h ago
I live there. In January it can get to -45F degrees and in the Summer it gets up to 110F with 90% humidity. Extremely windy too, for much of the year. I'm talking 25mph winds for most of the day, and gusts of 45mph, and that's just a normal windy day.
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u/cpod_the_elder 8h ago edited 8h ago
The farms and ranches have gotten progressively larger over time as has the machinery. Less people are needed to farm the land and this supports less of other types of business. The homestead may have been 160 acres when the land was given to European settlers and the average farm size today is 1500 acres. As in many places throughout the country and the world, the people in the country move to the city for education and/or employment. The message to many for several generations now has been to get an education and get out. And people have, to many places - Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Fort Collins, and many others. Also plays into explaining the political climate. The oil field in ND had brought in people from many places and increased the population there as well as other people to support those people and that industry.
And, yes, its cold in the winter. When I was in college in Grand Forks, there would be a week to 10 days in January that was typically the worst, high temps of -5 to -15 during the day and -30 to -35 at night. Not wind chill. Actual temperature. You find out what's wrong with your vehicle at those temps, and it takes effort to deal with the conditions.
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u/Fun_East8985 9h ago
Cause no one lives there. Why not? Well why would they! Nothing of interest to build a city there.
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u/Upper-Philosophy2376 9h ago
Civlization grows along trade routes and resource extraction, this is why most major cities have ports of some kind, or acted as a railroad hub etc. West of the Missippi we are also constrained by how abundant water is, so settlements seem to form somewhat around that too.
That and there just isn't much there other than prairie and harsh winters.
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u/CaptainObvious110 9h ago
Why don't you move anywhere in the Dakotas and let us know why they are so empty?
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u/mellamoderek 9h ago
The Black Hills, Deadwood, and Badlands are really spectacular places. But their area makes up only a small portion of the states. Oh, and tomorrow I'm going to a concert wearing cowboy boots from Wall Drug.
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u/ManOfManliness84 7h ago
Too cold in the winter, too dry in the summer, and the soil isn't as fertile like in Illinois and Iowa. Not especially complicated.
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u/netzack21 7h ago
Looks like a good spot for some Data Centers. Open the windows to save on cooling costs.
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u/fractious_kitty 6h ago
Both of my paternal grandparents are from the Dakotas (weirdly one from N, one from S). They both left and chose Ft Wayne IN instead. If you know anything about FW, that will tell you how depressing the Dakotas are
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u/West_Beginning5391 6h ago
I grew up in the Black Hills. A more beautiful bit land is hard to find. That said, when it gets so cold that windows shatter due to the temperature differential, trees just sort of explode, and your eyelids freeze shut when you blink, living there loses its charm. I once had to shovel my way out of my house because we got 8 ft of snow over night with drifts of over 20 ft, and my entire house was under a snow drift. They announced over the CB that school was still on with only a one hour delay and to bring a shovel and a sled. They had teachers on snowmobiles meandering through town and towing kids on sleds to school. Ultimately oce the 8 years of the wild west ended, the transcontinental live was complete and the gold was drying up, the pioneer lifestyle lost its savor and people had to move on.
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u/tiny_chaotic_evil 5h ago
if you're an outdoorsie type person, they are fantastic all four seasons.
if you do not care for the outdoors and prefer the comfort of city or suburb life, then they are not for you
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u/aggressivelildog 5h ago
Did you know that negative 40 Celsius is also negative 40 Fahrenheit?
People in North Dakota have -40 winters.
And people have mentioned that it's hot in the summer, but also? The mosquitoes are huge and brutal.
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u/Prudent-Aspect5085 9h ago
Technically they are a lot smaller than people think because of the mercator projection.
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u/Herbisher_Berbisher 4h ago
There is nothing but a barbed wire fence between Texas and the North Pole.
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u/gglynn00 9h ago edited 2h ago
I’ve been in Northwest ND since 2022. I love it. My wife loves it. Is there days during the winter that’s tough? Yes. But the summers are great and the people are too. And the wages are pretty high compared to other parts of the country versus the cost of living.
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u/Localizer805 8h ago
Pretty harsh country. Badlands for a reason. Those cold windy high plains are no place to be
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u/AITAFruend 8h ago
You've obviously never been to the Wall Drug. Or seen one of their 10,000 billboards.
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u/Odd_Copy_6794 7h ago
I spent a year or two in North Dakota. Didn’t really hate it besides the lack of trees. Winter can be pretty tough.
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u/According_Wave685 7h ago
I like South Dakota we drove through there last year all across the state. I wouldn't mind living there but I already had a destination.
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u/bee-ninja 7h ago
I am from South Dakota... I like how empty it is here. I like how boring it is. We don't have alot of the same drama the rest of the country has. I think that is partially because of how empty and boring it is.
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u/Coldspark824 7h ago
Ice, tornadoes, no water, dry difficult soil virtually everywhere except the black hills.
Not even good for solar really because of the snow and overcast.
Drive to mt rushmore sometime from the south direction and youll feel like you’re going up the side of the moon on an escalator. There are parts where if your car broke down you’d be screwed. Just horizon to horizon full 360 flat brown rocky nothing.
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u/Peregrine79 7h ago
Lots of land. Not a lot of transportation. People tend to settle on navigable waterways. Even today, access to ports to ship and receive bulk shipments of goods is important.
It’s also land that is very suitable for grain and similar crops that are relatively easy to grow in bulk, but not the highest value per acre. Meaning a single farm family wants to be operating the largest farm they can manage. (And of course, with larger farms consolidating and automating, that’s bigger with fewer people even than it used to be.
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u/Traditional_Poem8123 6h ago
lol. I’ve lived in Wyoming and Montana and worked in Sidney and western ND. Now back in Canada. Living on the northern prairies and have traveled as far north as Inuvik and Tuktoyuktuk. Lots of misinformation and talk tales here. But yes, there’s a trick to surviving in these areas. And you can make a very good living
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u/Silly_Option_8304 5h ago
There's lots of natural beauty in North Dakota and southern Manitoba. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is worth a special visit. I can't speak to the people or the politics, however. And some of the best beer I've ever tried was from Phat Fish Brewing in Dickinson, ND!
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u/alexadb123 5h ago
Zoom in a little bit more and you’ll start to see a lot more names of small towns pop up. Yes, it is very sparely populated compared to states east of the Mississippi. However, I would argue that it’s a bit more dense than places like Montana, northern Nevada/southern Oregon. Because there are so many farms, you generally can’t drive a few miles without finding a small town. The only “cities” would be considered Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, and maybe Minot, Williston, and Dickinson. Outside of those areas most farmers have at least some small town a short drive away.
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u/Big-Caterpillar5714 4h ago
I live in the northern Red River valley, Grand Forks ND-East Grand Forks MN. I for one love the open prairie, I like the winter and cold myself. Open country where you can see for miles. Tons of farmland and in the valley sugar beets, potatoes, wheat, canola, corn, beans. I much rather live in rural America than the trendy areas of the nation. For each their own.
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u/Megalesios 4h ago
"Why is there so much nature here, I feel like this is missed potential for a bunch of highways"
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u/Actual-Journalist-69 1h ago
Geography is the main reason but what surprises me are that they are each more populated than Wyoming.
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u/Comprehensive_Tie431 10h ago •
Visit in the winter and you will find out.