Sarah and Jared Twogood, of Dickinson, stand on the fi eld at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, following North Dakota State University’s victory over Illinois State in their fourth consecutive FCS championship game on Jan. 10, 2015.
Dave and Kay Moody aren’t exactly superstitious, but they aren’t taking any chances either.
The Moodys made their fifth annual trip to Frisco, Texas, this week the same way they did when they followed the North Dakota State University football team — and their son, senior Bison receiver Nate Moody — there in 2012.
The Moodys left Dickinson on Wednesday to drive to the Denver area and then flew to Dallas on Thursday morning and are staying at the same hotel they did during the first title season, Dave said, when Nate was a freshman who saw playing time in NDSU’s first title win.
“It’s kind of full circle,” Dave said. “That’s what we did the first year and we figured, let’s do it.”
The Little Missouri River fl ows through the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park on June 6, 2013.
NEW YORK — The New York Times’ travel editors have named Theodore Roosevelt National Park as one of its “52 Places To Go in 2016.”
The park came in at No. 5 in the newspaper’s rankings, as it spoke fondly of the 26th president who was a champion of conservation.
The Times wrote: “Fly into Dickinson in western North Dakota to visit the park named after him, where rolling grasslands dotted with bison collapse into the spectacular red, white and gold badlands of tumbling mud coulees.
“Lonely dirt roads bring you to one of the park’s less-visited attractions, Elkhorn Ranch, about 35 miles north of Medora, where Roosevelt arrived in 1884 as a young New Yorker ready to raise cattle and heal from the deaths of his wife and mother.”
The park was one of 10 American cities or landmarks to make the list, and was the first U.S. place listed.
Other U.S. locations included Park City, Utah; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Washington, D.C., Providence, R.I.; East Bay, Calif.; Rosine, Ky., St. Louis; Marfa, Texas; and Beaufort, S.C.
The only thing certain in this life is uncertainty.
Never was that more true than in southwest North Dakota in 2015.
We came into the year nervous about the state of the energy industry here as oil prices steadily dropped.
The commodity that had sparked so much growth, development and excitement in our little corner of the world all of a sudden wasn’t having such a great impact. Instead, everything seemed to hit pause, and oil companies began shuttering operations, taking down rigs and cutting workers by the dozen.
We now go into 2016 knowing it’s unlikely that the oil industry will soon return to the boom times that sparked and sustained our growth.
An oil well pumps on the outskirts of northwest Watford City on Oct. 14. Despite the decline in oil prices, a hectic way of life continues in many Oil Patch cities, though some city leaders say 2015 brought many changes
Leaders in western North Dakota’s Oil Patch cities say life didn’t change as abruptly as many expected it to in 2015 as crude prices bottomed out, oil rigs disappeared from the landscape, and oilfield workers packed up and left the area in droves.
As traffic slowed, crew camps closed and apartments emptied, Williston, Dickinson and Watford City continued to build infrastructure and work on long-term projects while keeping a close eye on the industry for even the slightest changes.
“As a city, we haven’t had a chance to take a breath yet,” Williston Mayor Howard Klug said. “We had $100 million worth of projects going on. We’re finally getting them all buttoned up.”
In McKenzie County, which produces more oil than any county in the state, Watford City Mayor Brent Sanford said “it’s really business as usual.” But, he said, challenges are neverending, despite the creation of what city and county leaders believe is a long-term industry through both oil and natural gas production jobs.
“People are still busy,” he said. “There’s not a lot of job loss in Watford City, comparatively, and there are still job openings. There are still employers who are still trying to figure out plans for hiring the right amount of employees and the right employees.”
Dickinson, meanwhile, has fallen back on its manufacturing industry to soften the blow of massive oilfield job loss after what City Administrator Shawn Kessel said after the city experienced multiple years of 10 percent growth.
“I think people really have to look the whole thing in perspective. … That stuff is really not sustainable in the long term,” he said. “What the downturn has done has allowed our manufacturers to take advantage of the economy. They had a hard time expanding because of such a low unemployment rate. They couldn’t find employees. Now they can. Rather than having expansions happen in other communities, they can now look at Dickinson again. I think that’s great. I’m really glad to see that. It further diversifies our economy. It makes us more resilient in managing the back side of the boom.”
From left to right, Beau Wisness, Dusty Hausauer, Chase Wisness, Rusty Christophersen, Chaston Lee and Hailey Schaper pose with the mountain lion that Chase Wisness, who is paralyzed from the waist down, killed on Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. It was the last mountain lion allowed to be hunted in western North Dakota this year. Special to the Forum
It was late July 2008 when Levi Wisness asked his friend, Rusty Christophersen, to do him a favor.
Levi wanted Christophersen to help his younger brother, Chase, hunt a mountain lion in the North Dakota Badlands.
“He goes, ‘Do you ever think we could get Chase in on one?’” Christophersen recalled on Wednesday. “I said yeah, I’ll do everything I could do to get him one.”
Levi Wisness died a week later in his sleep from complications related to a brain tumor he’d been battling for nearly a year.
At the time,17-year-old Chase’s future was uncertain.
He had been paralyzed from the waist down, the result of an auto accident in June 2007 — just months before his brother was diagnosed with the tumor.
“It was pretty cool he thought of me then and it was cool that Rusty was serious when he said we could do it,” Chase said on Saturday.
Over the past month, Christophersen did everything he could to fulfill the favor.
Last Monday, he and about a dozen friends capped off more than three weeks of tracking, scouting and hunting to help Chase, 24, of Keene, hunt and kill a 100-pound female mountain lion near Grassy Butte.
It was the last mountain lion allowed to be hunted this year in the state Game and Fish Department’s western North Dakota zone.
Dustin Monke 