'We have nobody we want to impress,' Hoover says.Ī record 80 rigs were drilling in North Dakota in August, part of an oil boom that began mid-2006. He can afford a new car but couldn't see the sense in paying $25,000 more. Hoover, 62, traded in his Buick for a Lincoln with 20,000 miles on it. 'It's not very hard to be a millionaire nowadays,' he says as he stops by Prairie Outfitters Clothing on Main Street to buy shoelaces for a pair of old boots. He receives royalties from three wells that pumped 22,000 barrels of oil in May alone. 'These are cautious, conservative people who are used to having good years and bad years and know you have to save for the bad years,' Gjovig says.ĭerald Hoover worked for the rural electric company for 42 years. His biggest splurge: a new two-car garage. 'I don't have a lot of wants,' says Lystad, a retired science teacher with a well on his property. News accounts may compare the new millionaires to TV's Beverly Hillbillies, but few want to move away from here. Most here say they don't expect oil money to change their lives. Ray Rude, inventor of the Olympic diving board, donated millions to this town of 1,300, including an aquatic center. Many hope the new millionaires - Bruce Gjovig of the University of North Dakota's Center for Innovation calculates two are made each day - will follow the lead of another hometown boy made good. And the ugly is the disparity, which creates a lot of animosity.' The bad are those who own the land but not the minerals underneath, and whose roads are tore up and they're not getting anything. 'The good is the guy with seven wells who's a millionaire in 24 hours. 'It's the good, the bad and the ugly,' Mountrail County Extension agent James Hennessey says. Schools started the fall short of teachers priced out by a housing shortage that has seen rents double as oil companies snap up whole apartment buildings for their workers, says Tom Rolfstad, economic development director in Williston. A nursing home recently offered $1,000 signing bonuses for housekeepers. Restaurants, motels and hospitals helplessly watch employees leave for higher-paying oil jobs. Some who own only the surface of their land because forbearers sold off the mineral rights beneath complain about traffic and trucks chewing up their roads.

Animosity shows sign letting up