In an age of franchise salons and styling apps, the traditional barbershop endures on the plains as a fixture of the small town, and of many a city neighborhood besides. The striped pole, the row of chairs, the smell of talc and tonic, the easy talk of weather and crops and ballgames — the barbershop offers a man far more than a haircut, and the plains have kept the institution alive.

More Than a Haircut

Fictional shops such as Halvorson's Barber in Bismarck are gathering places as much as businesses, where three generations of a family may have gotten their first haircuts in the same chair, and where the barber knows the news of the town as well as the mayor. A hot-towel shave and a straight-razor neck trim keep the old craft alive alongside the everyday trim.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• The traditional barbershop endures across plains towns and city neighborhoods.
• It serves as a gathering place and hub of local news.
• Hot-towel shaves and straight-razor trims keep the old craft alive.

It is a distinctly unhurried kind of grooming, rooted in familiarity and ritual, and the plains value it precisely for that. The almanac counts the barbershop among the truest community institutions of the region — a place where a haircut comes with the whole town's news attached.