| Summary: | Population Centers When President Nixon visited North Dakota last summer with his Cabinet officials and met with Governors of the Upper Midwest concerning population distribution, the subject of "growth centers" came up. There were those who believed that only cities above 50,000 people had the capacity to absorb the rapidly growing population and thus become growth centers. I disagree strongly with this concept. Every city, no matter how large it might be today, started as a tiny village of a handful of people. I believe that any village or town in North Dakota has the potential to be exactly what its people want it to be. I believe that in fire years ahead, certain towns in North Dakota will emerge as growth centers because of what their present citizens plan and work for. Our state efforts and planning should be directed toward making services available to people out in the rural countryside in order that hopefully some day the movement to the cities can be stemmed . and the small towns can grow. Over-congestion creates some terrible social costs, but when over- congestion is caused by depleting the countryside of population, then the depleted countryside also suffers severe social costs. This phenomenon is man-made and man can reverse the trend if we only recognize it and plan to do so. A strong resolution to the President and to Congress supporting the concept of opportunity distribution and hence population distribution throughout the United States might be helpful. Tourism Our greatest potential for economic growth outside of our basic industry of agriculture is tourism. We have made fantastic advances in the business of entertaining visitors to our state. Our excellent highway system with its rest-stops is well known to the traveling public. Our growing park system can barely keep up with the surging demand from tent trailers, pickup campers and travel trailer operators. Every historic site that we renovate becomes a subject of eager visitor interest. Every boat ramp and picnic ground established soon hums with activity. On Labor Day at the state-owned marina at Sakakawea State Park, 1800 gallons of gasoline were pumped into motor boats using the facility. We need to continue a steady outdoor recreation development program. We need to continue to improve and expand our state park system. We must also become aware of the deep heritage that could be illustrated in the restoration of historic sites from Pembina to Medora and from Fort Buford to Fort Ahercrombie. The Old West Trail started by North Dakota in 1961 and including South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska has been extremely successful in promoting tourism. North Dakota this year launched the first international tourist loop, the Explorers Highroad, in conjunction with Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Minnesota. Economic development calls for a climate for profitable investment in order to produce new jobs. I believe that North Dakota has, through legislation, done as much as any other state in producing that climate. I believe we will see the efforts of this legislative session and those of the recent past pay off in the years ahead. Who Are We? - We are Americans, of course, but we are also North Dakotans. This land which is North Dakota has a rich and colorful history that goes back to those centuries when the red men fought among themselves for territory. The ebb and flow of the American Indian in the years before the first white men came is an epic in itself. Five distinct flows of humanity have populated what is now North Dakota. The Indians were first and came over the top of the world across the Bering Strait. Centuries later, the first white men made their way into the continent's heartland by using the Great Lakes as a means of transportation. These were the adventurous French, whose intermarriage with the Indians created a whole new identifiable population known as the Metis. The English, who were out to make money, entered the territory from the north down Hudson's Bay and the Red River. They werfe followed by the third wave of people who came up the Mississippi River, intent on building a new empire .with their homesteads which first crept into the Red River Valley in the mid-1850's. The last distinct movement of people were ifchose adventurers, trappers and explorers who used the Missouri River to gain entrance to what is now North Dakota. -18-
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