Writing Wednesday: Change Over Time in the Bakken

Over the few weeks, I’ve been writing an appendix to my book on oil, photography, and archaeology in the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota. The appendix is a brief summary of our work in the Bakken grounded in our publications for a reader who might not be entirely familiar with our work and who might want a more firmer grounding in a traditional archaeological narrative. Here’s part 1, part 2, part 3, and below is the fourth of four parts. III.4: Conclusions The North Dakota Man Camp Project witnessed significant changes over the five years worth of time spent traveling, visiting, and documenting workforce housing in the Bakken. As I have already noted, by then, some of the most visible temporary and improvised Type 3 camps, such as the famous Walmart parking lot camp, had already vanished and the small Type 3 camps like the one described in section 3 had become rare. This reflects the steady growth in the number of beds in the Bakken region in hotels, Type 1 and Type 2 camps, and new…