A decade after the Bakken oil rush, Watford City has remade itself into a growing community by keeping young people local
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WATFORD CITY – A decade ago, Watford City—a community of 6,000 in McKenzie County near North Dakota’s Badlands—was undergoing unsustainable growth thanks to the region’s booming oil industry.
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the growth saw droves of new residents arrive hoping to stake their claim to the money flowing through the region.
Communities like Watford City in northwest North Dakota ballooned overnight. The 2010 Census recorded about 1,700 residents in Watford City; five years later, the city hit a peak at 6,734, according to Neilsberg Research. In the 2010s, McKenzie County was the nation’s fastest growing county.
“The local is the minority,” says Daniel Stenberg, McKenzie County economic development director. “That’s the unique thing I think about our community. … But when we’ve got people kind of moving in every month, soon you become the old timer.”
What was once a sleepy town 2 hours from the Canadian border is now hosting statewide events for North Dakota, Stenberg says.
“We’re able to have state conferences here in our town, because we have some facilities that allow for that,” he adds. “All this has just been the last couple years.”
Before that came the problems with infrastructure. The oil boom happened so quickly that there wasn’t the infrastructure in place in to support Watford City’s growth.
The discovery of the Parshall Oil Field in 2006 prompted the rapid expansion of oil extraction from the Bakken Formation, a layering of sedimentary rocks in western North Dakota and eastern Montana that houses one of the largest on-shore oil and natural gas deposits in the United States. Meanwhile, new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) made previously hard to reach oil deposits accessible—even if they generated significant air pollution, oil spills in farmers’ fields and an uptick in worker fatalities.
“I would say 2010 or so was when things started happening,” Stenberg says. referring to the exponential growth and the oil boom. “And I’d say we were overrun as a community, probably from 2011 to 2016, and then by 2016 we were starting to be able to catch up with the growth, and then we got a bypass around town.”
On Main Street alone, around 11,000 vehicles—some large trucks—would pass through each day. “It just was not welcoming,” Stenberg says. “I mean, you just were tense when you were driving.”
Outside of oil, housing became the most prized commodities, with rents in some places surpassing those in San Francisco. In 2013, Williston, a town just north of Watford City in Williams County, had the highest rent prices on average in the country.
They’ve now built out the infrastructure, he says, including arterial roads that weren’t around before. “It’s not rush hour in small town North Dakota anymore like it had been.”
There are plenty of job opportunities in Watford City, Stenberg says, and not just in the oil fields. Industries have popped up to support the main one, including hospitality and others. The main issue, he says, is finding and retaining the people to fill those jobs.
Housing is a large barrier to that, particularly the lack of single-family housing, Stenberg says.
“Federal programs don’t fit our needs here,” he says. “[Federal programs] they’re very much income based. … And so we’ve focused on programs that help builders do their thing because it’s really a supply issue.”
Education is another obstacle. The community doesn’t have a college and many young people leave for other opportunities. But a new skills center has opened up hoping to help keep people in the community.
The Bakken Area Skills Center opened in January 2024 in Watford City. It caters to more than 370 students from 30 school districts. The skills center focuses on career and technical education, including pathway courses like welding, automotive and aviation.
“I think the priority was more about workforce in the Northwest Bakken region, and not just for the McKenzie County community of Watford City, but all of the rural surrounding communities as well,” says Wayne Heckaman, director of the Bakken Area Skills Center.
Heckaman recites a list of questions to show the skills center’s breadth in trying to support those communities:
What can we do to enhance our workforce? How do we be proactive in preparing and planning for the industry needs? We have so many strong industries in the state of North Dakota. But how can we keep our students locally here? What can we do to provide that coursework and post-secondary opportunities so that they can stay within the communities that they live in, and then provide that next generation of workforce?
Assistant Director Scott Wisness says it’s important to keep the students locally in the region.
“We wanted to keep our students here and not have to go off to Bismarck and go off to these larger cities,” he says. “We wanted to provide that platform so that they would stay here.”
Wisness, who moved back to the area in 2009 and saw the boom take place, says the family-friendly community has transformed over the years.
“Over the past 10 years, the city’s become much larger, providing more opportunities and more things for families,” he says.
Isaac Wolff, a senior, studies Heavy Equipment Operation and plans to start his own construction company. He values the center for its continuous learning opportunities and career guidance.
“It’s kind of always what I wanted to do since I was a little kid,” he says about construction.
Sam Inman, a junior, is studying Building Trades, which offers a foundation for plumbing, HVAC, electrical and construction in general. Inman says he has learned time management skills as well as skills like working with fractions and angles.
Briley Delgado is studying Health Sciences. A junior, Delgado aspires to attend medical school and become an anesthesiologist.
“I really like the patient interaction part,” she says, later adding: “We’ve gotten a lot of experience on job shadowing, so I’ve been able to learn more about how actually going to work would be, and how to care for patients and all that stuff.”
Kristi Eaton is a freelance journalist in Oklahoma, formerly with the AP in Oklahoma and South Dakota. She covers social justice issues, gender, travel and more, with a focus on solutions-based stories. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post and elsewhere. Visit her website at KristiEaton.com or follow her on Instagram @KE_Comms.
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