http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-text.html
The Emptied Prairie
North Dakota Ghost Towns Speak Of An Irreversible Decline
by Charles Bowden
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This is the place where American assumptions about the land proved to be wrong. The homesteaders believed rain followed the plow. In the grasslands of western Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, they learned better. And so for almost a century we’ve watched stranded towns and houses fall one by one like autumn leaves in the chill of October. In most of the United States, abandoned buildings are a sign of change and shifting economic opportunities. On the High Plains, they always mean that something in the earth and the sky mutinied against the settlers.
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How can we say that we have no room for immigration?
I bet some entrepreneurial ethnic group (i.e., Hutus; the Montenyards; the Kurds, the Irish; the Chinese), who are persecuted in their home land, could shoot thru the Golden Door and turn these places into “gold mines”. Liberty does wonders.
But, we’ll never know because we are busy building fences to keep “outsiders” out. (And, “insiders” in?)
Sigh!
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Reinke Faces Life 