From the badlands to the lakes to the heritage sites, a growing tourism trade brings visitors and their dollars to a region long overlooked by the traveler.
The plains have never been a tourist mecca in the way of the mountains or the coasts, but a growing trade has begun to change that. The badlands and the national park, the great fishing lakes, the heritage sites and the wide dark skies draw a rising number of travelers, and a tourism industry of lodges, outfitters, museums and festivals has grown up to serve them.
Selling the Wide Open Country
The region's very emptiness has become part of the pitch. In an age of crowded parks and jammed highways, the plains offer room to breathe — a trail with no one on it, a lake with elbow room, a night sky undimmed by any city. Fictional outfits like Badlands Trail Company market exactly that solitude to visitors weary of the crowds.
From the almanac's reckoning:
- Badlands, lakes, heritage sites and dark skies draw a growing tourist trade.
- The region markets solitude to travelers weary of crowds.
- Tourist spending ripples through rural cafés and motels.
The season is short and the distances long, but the dollars a traveler leaves behind ripple through every café and motel in the country. The almanac counts tourism among the plains' quietly growing trades — the business of selling the wide open country to a crowded world.
Elsewhere in the Almanac
The Family Business That Anchors the Small Town
The hardware store, the implement dealer, the funeral home — family businesses handed down through generations remain the backbone of commerce in the plains town.
The Housing Squeeze in the Growing Cities
As Fargo, Bismarck and the oil towns grow, the cost and scarcity of housing have become a pressing worry, complicating every employer's search for workers.
The Return of Main Street Retail in the College Towns
In the university towns of the plains, a new generation of boutiques, breweries and eateries has revived main streets that big-box stores had left for dead.