Free Lots On The Prairie – Not Far From Forsaken. North Dakota offers free land to settlers.

It is as you imagine it: Vast. Open. Windy. Stark. Mostly flat. All but treeless. Above all, profoundly underpopulated, so much so that you might, at times, suspect it is actually unpopulated. It is not. But it is heading there.

In our national consciousness, America is a land of perpetual growth. But for the past half-century or more, much of the middle of the country has been slowly, quietly emptying out. A few people left, then more and more, until it started to resemble an organized exodus. For a while, it looked as if the area might indeed one day resemble the Great American Desert it was mistakenly labeled on early maps.

That didn’t happen. At some point, throughout middle America, the population hemorrhage stopped, bottomed out.

PrairieOpportunity.com http://prairieopportunity.com/

By RICHARD RUBIN

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09dakota.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin