Willston Library
Williston, North Dakota
September 10, 2024, 12 PM
I'm a bit overwhelmed trying to document everything I have seen in the past couple of days. When I experience as much as I did yesterday, for example, I have a lot of photos and I have a lot of material I want to include in a blog post. I can take me a couple or three hours to write such a post. More when I don't have access to wifi in order to use my Mac to pull together the information. My phone is great but when it comes to putting together photos, my thoughts and information from Google searches, it is -- yes -- a lot. Yesterday I left my campsite around 7 am. I arrived at Love's Truck Stop outside of Williston after 6 pm. In those 11 hours, I had breakfast in a diner in Granville, drove around Minot (saw the home of the Hot Tots!) and decided I did not want to tour the city, saw that there was a Foxholm kinda sorta on my way so I vectored off on US 52 from US 2. Near Foxholm there was Donnybrook so I had to go there! And wait, I can also go to Coulee -- a word I had learned last week on the golf course in Cavalier! Oh wait! There is a place called White Earth! I had visited the other White Earth in the USA while I was in Minnesota. It was somewhere between Coulee and White Earth (actually it was in Stanley, North Dakota) I think that I realized I was in the Bakken region of North Dakota. You might recognize that region as the fracking area of North Dakota. Did I mention that outside of Minot I began to realize that the topography was changing and the flat of eastern North Dakota ws giving way to rolling hills -- still some fields of wheat, corn and beans but not like eastern North Dakota. Back to the Bakken region. I think I was in Stanley when I really began to experience to fracking region. Lots of oil derricks. Lots of new housing -- both houses, apartments and fifth wheels.
The classic oil derrick pump is known colloquially as a sucker rod pump, named for the plunger-like mechanics it uses to pump oil from underground wells up to the surface. It uses a series of gears and cranks to pump a rod up and down an oil well in a piston-like motion, although much slower. This design is used to conserve energy while bringing a continuous, reliable flow of oil from deep wells to the surface. Derricks are usually pyramidal in shape and offer a good strength-to-weight ratio.
Note: I am not convinced I am using the term oil derrick correctly. What I am referring to is the pump itself that I recall being called a horse head -- as indicated below.
When first introduced, the counter-balance pumpjack's ungainly appearance was mocked and ridiculed. But since the late 1800s, they've reliably delivered the oil that drives the nation. The pumpjack is known as: nodding donkey, horse-head, thirsty bird, rocking horse, beam pump, grasshopper and other colorful names.
Here's the answer! Sorry to take you through that learning process. At least I remembered correctly that the word horse was somehow used to describe the pump!
An oil derrick is a support structure that holds the drilling apparatus, while a pump jack is a type of pump that helps extract oil from an oil well.
After White Earth, I drove into Ray. Of course I did. I thought it might be associated with Ray Charles, forgetting that there are no Blacks in North Dakota. Joking -- but not really. The Ray High School had a football game underway -- the Ray Jays. Poor kids -- it was 90+ degrees.
I had thought I might get a hotel in Williston, not thinking clearly that the hotels are full with oilfield workers. So I spent the night at Love's Truck Stop.
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