A century after farmers built it to break the grip of the private grain trade, the nation's only state-owned flour mill still turns plains wheat into flour for a continent.

Interstate highways and rail lines make the plains a corridor of freight, and fictional carriers haul grain, oil equipment and consumer goods across a continent from prairie terminals.

From grain elevators to grocery stores to rural electric lines, the cooperative — owned by the very people it serves — remains a cornerstone of the plains economy.

Anchored by state government and healthcare, the capital city of Bismarck enjoys a steadiness that the boom-and-bust country to its west can only envy.

Research parks attached to the region's universities aim to turn plains ingenuity into plains companies, keeping graduates and their ideas at home.

From the oil patch to the café to the hospital, plains employers share a single chronic complaint: not enough workers to fill the jobs a growing economy keeps creating.