Move Over, Texas: There's Oil in North Dakota

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The Minot Daily News (July 1, 2008)

"BEULAH (AP) - Oscar Stohler was raised in a sod house in western North Dakota and ranched there for nearly seven decades. He never gave much thought to what lay below the grass that fattened his cattle.

"When oilmen wanted to drill there last year, Stohler, 83, doubted oil would be found two miles underground on his property. He even joked about it.

" 'I told them if they hit oil, I was going to buy a Cadillac convertible and put those big horns on the front and wear a 10-gallon hat,' Stohler recalled.

"He still drives his old pickup and wears a mesh farm cap - but it's by choice...."

The Stohlers grew up in the Depression years, and learned how to handle money. They've splurged, but only to the extent of a new house: one with an automatic sprinkler system for the flower bed.

There's a chance that a third of the people in North Dakota's Mountrail County will be millionaires soon. I hope they all have the good sense that the Stohlers have shown.