National Geographic Author Returns to ND

The man who upset many people in the state of North Dakota with his message...returned to the sta...  More »

The man who upset many people in the state of North Dakota with his message...returned to the state today. Charles Bowden wrote the Emptied Prairie article, which was published in National Geographic in January. Bowden says the article was based on the early western settlement. He says misjudgments by the early settlers created the topic about which he was able to write dried up small towns with their empty buildings wasting away. Bowden spent three months in North Dakota before publishing the article. He says the backlash he got from his article is because people in North Dakota are proud of their state... (Charles Bowden, The Emptied Prairie) I have people that are not committed to where they live. They think that I will be here two or three years and move onto somewhere else and that doesn't build healthy communities. Although I must say it does build a very good crime rate. North Dakota has people that are totally committed to this state. I have never met a person here, and doing the story I spent months here, that disliked the state...not one. Bowden was the keynote speaker for the 2008 Alliance Summer Geography Institute at Bismarck State College. He says he was some what surprised by the amount of negative feedback he received from the Emptied Prairie article.  « Less