Office of "The Montrail County Promoter" on Main Street
There's a small city in North Dakota called Stanley. You may not have heard of it but one visitor to this blog knows it well because it was where he was born and raised. Unlike Lebanon in Kansas, Stanley is a relatively prosperous place with its population now gradually rising. Stanley is the principal town in Mountrail County - named after Joseph Mountraille "a half breed mail carrier" who explored the region in the 1840's.
The brand new City Hall on Main Street
Significant oil reserves in the vicinity of Stanley are now being exploited which may explain its growing prosperity. However, 10% of the population live below the poverty line. Incidentally, 98.8% of Stanley's 2655 citizens describe themselves as "white". This is pretty typical of small towns in The Mid West.
Google Streetview Airways transported me to Stanley this morning and I had a good look around but I hardly saw any people. It was like a ghost town but I did see one man nipping into an office building. The imagery had been gathered on a bright but cool afternoon last October.
Households in Stanley enjoy a lot of surrounding space and on Main Street things look a lot healthier than in Lebanon KS. There are places to eat and drink and a good range of services.
Small house and church in Stanley
The main cities in North Dakota are Fargo (125,900) and Bismarck (73,622). Stanley is 280 miles from Fargo and 129 miles from Bismarck which is the state capital. In terms of population, North Dakota is the 47th most populous state in the USA - beaten to the bottom prize by Alaska, Vermont and finally Wyoming.
As far as I know, nobody famous ever came out of Stanley apart from the blogger known as Catalyst - who now resides like a prickly cactus in the desert warmth of Arizona. However, local legend has it that Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Stanley with his mother in the summer of 1953. He would have been thirteen years old at the time. The colourful rumours surrounding this mystery sojourn have proven impossible to verify.
A typical residential corner in Stanley
Stanley has a town website that operates out of the new City Hall building. The homepage welcomes visitors in this exact manner:-
"Stanley is a wonderful community with a charm that intertwines the traditions of our past with the progress of the future. Our aim is to make all citizens and visitors feel that they are part of and welcome in this community. If you are seeking a new place to live, looking for a business site, or considering a place to retire, you’ll find what you are looking for in Stanley."
Stanley High School - Home of "The Blue Jays"
Never heard of it, but it looks like an all white place.
ReplyDeleteYou have a much better racial mix in Camden. I notice you have one Pacific islander! Have you met him/her?
DeleteIt definitely does look like an all white place as Bob said. Not nearly enough trees for me. Nope. The words from the home page do not in the least hold true for me. I'm sure it's a lovely place but not a place I'd choose to move to.
ReplyDeleteI think it could be quite grim in Stanley in the depths of winter.
DeleteJust on 98% identify as white in the city of Stanley? Wow. Stanley might look pleasant but it sounds rather boring.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't mind spending a couple of weeks there - preferably in the summertime. There are supposed to be a couple of bars there but I couldn't find them on Streetview. Stanley seems a long way from anywhere really.
DeleteThe flat landscape looks to be an easy place for a person like me to get around. I doubt that the community is entirely welcoming, little places like that usually require a grandparent in the cemetery before a person is regarded as local.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to visit, meet some locals and hear some stories
It would be headline news in "The Montrail County Promoter": "AUSSIE MOVES INTO STANLEY! Rumour says it is singer Kylie Minogue!"
DeleteBy the looks of it, there are many worse places to live than Stanley. The house next to the church looks like straight out of a children's book set in a rural area of the US.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you hardly saw any people might have something to do with the general unwillingness of people in that part of the world to use their own two feet to get from A to B. Or maybe that is just a prejudice of mine and really there was nobody about because they were all hard at work in their offices, shops and at school.
Many Americans view walking as a strange activity. Why walk when you can drive?
DeleteMy eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw that 51 degrees, then I realised it was Fahrenheit, not Celcius, which is what we use in Australia, where 51F would be only 11C and cold enough to have the heaters on. (51C would be 123.8F)
ReplyDeleteI made the same mistake River. In England we seem to have shaken off references to Fahrenheit.
DeleteNope - wouldn't even want to visit! No charm at all. It looks like a film set when everyone has gone home.
ReplyDeleteThe surrounding area is as flat as a pancake. No hedgerows. Just occasional farmsteads in coppices and the road travelling straight into the selfsame distance.
DeleteIt looks very open and flat and deserted. So much space!
ReplyDeleteYeah. You should take a look at the surrounding area. Stanley is a long way from anywhere.
DeleteI guess because I have lived near towns like this my whole life, unlike others above, I enjoy being in them, especially during a holiday like the the 4th of July or Labor Day. To me they feel the same as comfort food.
ReplyDeleteI think I would enjoy living in Stanley for a while. I bet there are some real good people there. I hope Catalyst comes to call. He might have some interesting reflections on his old hometown
DeleteIt looks like a Sims town. Are you sure Meike didn't design it?
ReplyDeleteI would have put more windows in the school building. The way it looks now, it could just as well be a factory with large assembling halls.
DeleteThat is not all the school - I believe it's just the gymnasium and entrance block.
Delete"Doctor Livingstone I presume?"
ReplyDelete"And you must be Stanley!"
DeleteWow! What a surprise! The red brick building in the third picture is the former Presbyterian Church that I spent many hours in as a youngster. It's long since become a cultural center and concert site after the population dipped. There were only about 1,100 people there when I grew up so you can see what the second oil "boom" has done. I also spent many hours in the old Mountrail County Promoter headquarters, which was in a dark and dingy basement with a huge, noisy linotype machine. And my "ancestral home" was a few blocks south, also on Main Street. Thanks for this, Professor. I, myself, hadn't looked at this site in years.
ReplyDeleteWhy not have a cruise around courtesy of Google Streetview? Such a journey may bring back even more memories Catalyst.
DeleteI just took a look at the home I grew up in and, as a friend who still goes back to Stanley from time to time told me a few years ago, it's not been very well taken care of.
DeleteWell that must have been kind of sad to see. Nothing stays the same. Out of interest what was the address? I would like to take a look myself.
DeleteIt was 525 South Main St. when I lived there but I see a new number by the door that says it is now 532. There's a nice town park directly across the street.
DeleteI can see how the exterior of the house needs some maintenance.
DeleteDo you remember that as children we speculated endlessly about America?
ReplyDeleteOur knowledge came from movies and television drama, then TV News about Civil Rights and Martin Luther King, then literature.
National Geographic gave us a pictorial archive of life in North Dakota or the prairie states of Canada.
Now it is Google Streetview, a technology we could never have anticipated.
So many American writers from Edith Wharton to Kay Boyle, from James Baldwin to Paul Bowles felt the need to escape.
*Paul Theroux on new novel, career and living in Hawaii.*
CBS Mornings.
Theroux returned after living in Africa, Singapore and England.
His first wife Anne Theroux has written about her marriage, *The Year of the End*.
She writes that Paul's brother Alex broke off contact, saying that success had gone to Paul's head.
*Paul's a pain in the ass,* Alex told his sister-in-law. *He doesn't carry his success lightly. He has no sprezzatura.*
May we all retain our sprezzatura !
Castiglione defined 'sprezzatura' as: "A certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".
DeleteI might like to read Anne Theroux's book as I have read nearly everything that Paul Theroux ever wrote.
Never heard of it! and I live in the Midwest! Naperville, Illinois is a far way from Stanley, North Dakota, though. We've actually gotten too big - from 14,000 when my family moved here in 1966 to over 140,000 now!
ReplyDeleteNorth Dakota has experienced quite a boom from petroleum, I believe. I've never been there so I don't know any more than what Google and the newspaper tell me!
ReplyDelete