Pair moved to Williston with their last $300

The Bakken oil fields are booming and people from around the world are descending upon Williston, N.D.

Williston’s population explosion includes scores of people from Kalispell who are looking for — and finding — relief from Western Montana’s lackluster economy.

Clint and Ashley Farrington, born and raised in the Flathead Valley, made it out to Williston in July. They were egged on by a friend who already was there and promised they could find work as soon as they got there.

“I was just kind of sinking slowly back in Kalispell,” said Clint Farrington, 27. “We just decided one day it was time. We were sick of being broke all the time.”

The married couple left their three children behind with family, packed up their 1999 Suburban and reached Williston with $300 — the last of the money they were able to put together for the move.

Once there, finding work was easy.

“It’s like the Twilight Zone here,” said Ashley Farrington, 26.

“You’re used to Kalispell, where there’s too many people looking for jobs. Now we stop and get breakfast and it says, ‘If you have a complaint, take one.’ It’s a job application.”

The oil boom has spilled over into the rest of the economy. Businesses such as Subway, McDonald’s and Taco John’s are interviewing and hiring on the spot, offering $10, $13 and even $15 an hour. But so is everyone else.

Job applicants see what they can get at one place and walk down the street to see if they can do better somewhere else.

Ashley Farrington is working at a casino in Williston and, with tips, making at least $20 an hour.

“It’s very busy. Very, very, very busy. That’s the way I put it to people when they ask,” she said over the phone last week, having just waited in line at the post office for an hour and a half.

Clint Farrington is working for a big oil and natural gas company, making $20 an hour running an oil shaker that cleans drilling fluid and oil pumped out of the ground.

After a 563-mile drive east, he has gone from having no work or not enough work in Kalispell to more work than he could ever handle.

“I don’t ever work less than 85 hours a week. I could work as much as I wanted. Some guys here pull 100 hours a week,” he said.

FINDING A PLACE to live in or around Williston was the hard part for the Farringtons. The couple spent their first two and a half months living out of their Suburban.

They waited in line at a truck stop to pay $10 each for a shower when they wanted to freshen up. They fought the air conditioning on their vehicle — the vehicle has since been replaced with a new one — when it started going out as the thermometer hit 100 degrees in midsummer.

The couple finally found roommates to live with and started staying on “a friend’s dad’s couch.”

Two weeks ago they got their own place — no small feat in Williston. Clint Farrington got it through his company, which  now is kicking in a housing stipend each paycheck to help pay for the $1,300-a-month two-bedroom apartment.

The apartment is tiny compared to what they are used to getting for the money in Kalispell. But it sure beats living in a truck.

“For anybody looking to relocate out here, housing is going to be the biggest issue,” he said.

Apartments and lodging businesses in Williston have waiting lists that stretch for months.

Companies are renting out entire apartment complexes, hotels, campgrounds, RV parks and bare ground — whatever they can get their hands on to house workers in an area that was wholly unprepared for such a massive influx of new residents and money.

While the Farringtons are far from home, familiar faces from Kalispell are not uncommon.

Ashley Farrington said she sees more license plates from Montana than North Dakota when she’s out and about.

“There’s people we went to high school with,” she said. “You run into them at places like Walmart and say, ‘Really, you’re here, too?’ You’d think being 500 miles away from home you wouldn’t run into people you know, but you do.”

There’s at least a half dozen Montana license plates from “county seven” in their apartment parking lot alone.

But there are a lot of strange faces, too.

Clint Farrington said he has met people from all over the United States and even Turkey, Zimbabwe and Asia. They are all there looking to get in on the oil boom as the rest of the country continues to struggle with high unemployment.

“I can probably count on both hands how many people I’ve talked to from North Dakota,” he said.

NOW THAT THEY have an apartment, Ashley Farrington said, they have brought her 3-year-old daughter to Williston.

The other children remain in Kalispell and she and her husband get back to see them whenever they can.

She hopes to catch a ride back to Kalispell with a friend on Dec. 23 and make it home in time for Christmas, then stay home now that her husband can support the family.

“I’ve been away from my girls for five months,” she said. “I want to be home with my kids.” 

When he first got to Williston, Clint Farrington worked six weeks on and two weeks off, working at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

The company now has its employees working two weeks on and one week off, which should let him make it home to Kalispell more often to be with family.

He said he plans to keep working in Williston for the foreseeable future, but like others would try to transfer to Montana to be closer to home if the oil boom keeps moving west. Ideally, he’d like to be able to make a living in the Flathead Valley.

“At this point, I’m not over there because I really want to be. I’m over there trying to set myself up and my kids up where they have a better life,” he said.

So far, leaving home to make ends meet has been worth the sacrifice.

“We never had health insurance, and now we’ve got it for the first time,” Ashley Farrington said.

The oil boom also has helped the family get off Medicaid.

“I wanted to get out of that public assistance and I’ve done it,” she said. “You have goals in life and that was my big thing ... It just sucks I had to go to North Dakota to do it.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.