© 2026 Blue Ridge Public Radio
Blue Ridge Mountains banner background
Your source for information and inspiration in Western North Carolina.
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
BPR's Summer Car Raffle is open! Learn more

A Modern-Day Gold Rush

WUNC News | By Anita Rao,
Frank Stasio
Published May 30, 2018 at 12:22 PM EDT

Before 2008, western North Dakota was a faded frontier. The vast and sparsely-populated area had been steadily losing population since the Great Depression. But the discovery of the Bakken oil fields, in combination with new fracking technology, paved the way for what Maya Rao calls a modern-day gold rush.

Frank Stasio talks to journalist and author Maya Rao about new book Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making of an Oil Frontier

North Dakota quickly became the fastest-growing state in the country and the nation’s second largest oil producer. It boasted plenty of well-paying jobs and attracted transients from all over.

 

In the new book “Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making of an Oil Frontier,” (PublicAffairs/2018) Rao profiles fortune-seekers ranging from Outer Banks surfer Danny Witt to a British real estate developer who ran a worldwide Ponzi scheme. She looks at how capitalism and industrialization transformed a desolate corner of the United States. Host Frank Stasio talks to journalist and author Maya Rao in advance of her reading at Quail Ridge Books on Wednesday, May 30 at 7 p.m and Scuppernong Books in Greensboro Thursday, May 31 at 7 p.m.

Danny Witt's oil truck being loaded from the tanks. Witt is a former-NC resident who has been working in the Bakken since 2011.
Courtesy of Maya Rao / WUNC
/
WUNC
Danny Witt's oil truck being loaded from the tanks. Witt is a former-NC resident who has been working in the Bakken since 2011.
An abandoned gas station in western North Dakota where a fugitive dumped radioactive oil waste.
Courtesy of Maya Rao / WUNC
/
WUNC
An abandoned gas station in western North Dakota where a fugitive dumped radioactive oil waste.

Copyright 2018 North Carolina Public Radio
Anita Rao
Anita Rao is the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.
See stories by Anita Rao
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio