A mother and daughter move to Watford City from Oregon, with a husband and fiancé in tow, in search of work and a way out of mounting debt. The men open a thriving electrical business, the women find careers in Outlaws Bar and Grill, the daughter and her fiancé buy land to build a house and the family settles in to call Watford City home.
An energetic veterinarian moves to Watford City to take over an old practice, expands to fill a need and falls in love with the community who helps him realize his vision of a much needed, appreciated and new state-of-the-art facility.
A local man uses his entrepreneurial vision to create a thriving business in his revitalized hometown.
A young woman moves home to raise her children and cattle alongside her husband and family on the ranch where she grew up.
A retired teacher finds a new, challenging and fulfilling career behind the wheel of her big rig.
Fresh starts, big ideas, fulfilling careers and stories of families settled and lives made abound among the busy streets and back roads of Watford City and other booming communities in western North Dakota's oil patch. Sit down at any restaurant in town, spend time with a teacher, a business owner or a new resident searching for work and you'll hear stories that run the gamut of hope and worry, family and career aspirations, well thought out plans, calculated risk and leaps of faith. Every story is unique, with twists and turns and reasons, but all are grounded in the fact that Western North Dakota has something to offer.
In a world of quick news and catchy headlines, journalists, film and television producers and every news outlet in between seem to be frantic to tell the story of getting rich quick, harsh living conditions, big sacrifice, big dreams, and big disappointment in oil country.
For a family looking to relocate to Watford City for opportunity, it's difficult to weed through the news stories, YouTube videos and social media commentary on the subject to get to the truth of what it's like to live in Western North Dakota, a place bursting at the seams with growth and new faces, a place with both challenges and opportunity and a potential that residents, new and old, have cultivated in many different ways.
"The story out here is not black and white," said Gene Veeder, McKenzie County Development Public Relations Director, who receives numerous calls from major news outlets for the scoop on how Watford City and its residents are faring in the wake of an economic surge that has bumped the community from 1,400 residents over the past six years to an estimated 15,000 people and growing.
"We're in the spotlight because of this unprecedented growth and opportunity, and it's exciting, but it can be frustrating to only see our challenges reflected in the news. There's always more to the story."
And so the community decided to find a way to help fill in the blanks. This fall work began to develop on "Voices of Watford City," a video based website that features the stories of Watford City residents telling their experiences in their own words.
The community hired a multi-media company out of Minneapolis and got to work gathering residents who were willing to share their story on camera.
The goal of the project is to offer a more balanced and honest view of Watford City to the media and general public and provide an informative, visual and dynamic place for those seeking information about the area to visit and get a sense of what it's like to live and work in Watford City.
The project, which was debuted at the Economic Development and Watford City Chamber annual meeting on March 4th, currently features fifteen video clips of residents in their environment talking about their experiences. Featured stories are categorized into business, community, housing, jobs and school links and highlight personal testimonies ranging from what it's like to run Wolf Pup, the new 200 child daycare facility, to the growth and role of the churches, to an inside look at living in a man camp.
And although this is a good start, the community plans to continue to develop these stories and populate the website with new voices often, with a new round of interviews scheduled for this coming summer.
"During our first visit, we were stunned to discover how different everyday life is compared to what the mass media would have us believe," said Kara Wayne, executive producer at Crash+Sues, the media firm working to develop the site. "Watford City is a vibrant town with a real sense of community fueled by a thriving economy. We want to provide a more balanced view of what the city has to offer. Hailing from a small, fading community in southern Minnesota the project has become personal."
Personal to those developing it, and personal to those who seek the answer to the question: "Who are we and how are we building a life here?"
And when you hear the stories of the people laid out against the backdrop of a town stretching and growing with the dreams of its residents, it's clear no one is as invested in its community as those who make their lives there.
"We really do love it here," says Callie Thorne, a fourth generation rancher and mother of two in McKenzie County as she walks with her children across the barn-yard to help her husband feed the cattle. "We enjoy the opportunity that the oil boom has brought our family and my children will have even more opportunity throughout their lives because of what's happened here."
Opportunities Jeremy and Kristi Fowler didn't have at their previous home in Arkansas.
"Kristi's sister gave her a sign that says 'Arkansas, My Home Sweet Home,' and it is, it is our home," says Jeremy in a video clip that that tells the story of a job opportunity that landed him in Western North Dakota in a fifth wheel trailer before moving his family of four into an apartment. "But right now in our life, North Dakota is our home. This is where we are grounded. We have friends here that are like family to us and we want to be a part of their home here."
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