Trouble strikes oil boomtown in N. Dakota

One oil boomtown is definitely not like the next. Or, at least that’s what The Eye hopes.

The murder of a schoolteacher by oil field job-seekers, an increased crime rate and roughnecks on drugs are among the tragedies an oil boom in the Bakken formation has brought to Williston, N.D.

In the July issue of Men’s Journal, Stephen Rodrick describes the dire situation in “Greetings from Boomtown, U.S.A.,” a portrayal of what ensues “when you double a county’s population with 10,000 drunk 27-year-old men thousands of miles away from their women and common sense.”

Arrests in the town have shot up…