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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
July 15, 1999
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1999 Plains Folk
What does it take to bring a town back to life?
All over the plains are little towns that have lost the sense of community, the sense of being a place, and have become mere residences, aggregations of houses. They are no longer effective communities. They may still be what I have come to call affective communities--that is, places that people identify with and think fondly of. Is it possible, though, for a community that has lost it to once again become, as I have called it, effective?
What does that take? In a plains country town the attitudes and actions of a dedicated few might turn things around. I'm thinking, for instance, of the situation in Buffalo, N.D. I'll tell the story without names. Folks there know whom I'm talking about.
A few years ago three people from different towns in Minnesota moved to Buffalo, a town of 200 in rural Cass County. Two of them got jobs in the area; one is an artisan. They bought a turn-of-the-century residence and rehabilitated it beautifully.
Young, energetic and community-minded, these folks got involved with the Buffalo Historical Society, which had been pretty quiet since the centennial in 1985. In what most of us would characterize as a more-guts-than-brains effort, they entered into a campaign to restore the Old Stone Church--Calvary Episcopal Church--built of fieldstone in 1885. It had been deeded to the historical society in 1985 by the previous owner, the local Masonic lodge. It was a mess. Not just a mess--it had severe structural problems.
Restoration work commenced in 1995. Since then a couple of grants from the State Historical Society of North Dakota, matched by local contributions and by a heck of a lot of local sweat, have wrought wonders. The Old Stone Church is a community museum. Next door the rectory is being rehabilitated as a heritage center for research and discussion programs. The complex is alive with community activities ranging from the discussion of King Lear to an old-fashioned Fourth of July.
Visitors stream in, many of them attracted by the society's Web site (at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2253/). In fact, the graduates of Buffalo High School were planning to have their reunion in a motel in Fargo until they saw the historical society's Web site, figured there might be a little life in the old town after all, and decided to come home for the affair.
Buffalo is modestly famous because of--strange as it may sound--a little old historical society energized by a few people new to town. Is the town alive, effective again? Well, it's getting there, I'd say, but for you and I to believe that, we need to accept three things.
First, newcomers with weird ideas are a good thing. Face it, here on the plains we have a long history of futility in community improvement. It's been a long drought. We need people who don't say, "We tried that in 1960."
Second, there are possibilities for revival on the plains today that were not present even a decade ago. The farm economy is busted, the petroleum industry is belly-up and still the state is running budget surpluses. This means that business activity and employment are providing the basis for people to live here if they want to.
If they want to. Will they want to? That depends most of all on the sense of place. People want to be from a place, not just a place-name. What makes a place is the story you tell about it--its history, in other words--and the determination of people to build community based on that story.
So all best wishes to the gang in Buffalo. Now, is anyone ready to tackle that old high school building full of pigeons?
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable for printing.
(isern.tif - 512KB)
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern
suitable for printing.
(isern-h.tif - 426KB)