The Klondike, a region of the Yukon Territory in Canada, was the setting for the most spectacular resource boom-and-bust cycle North America has ever seen. I grew up reading the stories,” said Gary Smith, a Janesville, Wisconsin native who made his way to Williston in search of work and now helps run a pair of restaurants. “I remember learning about the gold rush. Photograph: Ken Cedeno/Corbis Photograph: Ken Cedeno/Corbis The Boomtown Babes Espresso drive through coffee hut in Williston, North Dakota. And it is wracked with cultural conflict between about 12,000 long-time Williston residents and at least 21,000 newcomers who’ve arrived over the past five-odd years. It is the most expensive place in the US in which to rent new housing. It has the highest average wages in the US and the worst housing shortage. Thanks to the shale-oil boom, what was once an isolated city in the emptiest corner of the continent is now the fastest-growing small centre in North America. Today’s Williston is unrecognisable to its former self. It’s so overcrowded and you don’t know anyone.” There are new people from all over and a lot of them are nice. “There are new restaurants and places to shop. I have a lot of mixed feelings,” said Greaves. Now, the constant rumble of Ford F-350 pickups and 18-wheelers means there is very rarely any quiet any more. If you’d stopped to ask her then, lifelong resident Rena Greaves would have said she dreamed of leaving.
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