On drilling floors across the west, the roughnecks work the pipe in long shifts through heat and cold, in one of the hardest and best-paid trades the plains have to offer.

Hoping to square coal with a lower-carbon future, engineers on the Missouri Slope are pursuing projects to capture carbon dioxide and lock it deep beneath the plains.

For every barrel of Bakken oil comes salty water from deep in the earth, and managing that brine has become one of the oil patch's quietest and costliest challenges.

High above the grain, the wind technician services the turbines that power the plains, in one of the fastest-growing and most vertiginous trades the state has ever known.

Wary of squandering a windfall that will not last forever, North Dakota set aside a share of its oil taxes in a permanent fund meant to outlive the wells themselves.

The oil patch swings with the world price of crude, and the plains have learned to live with a prosperity that can double the rigs one year and idle them the next.