North Dakota Man Camp Project: The Archaeology of Home in the Bakken Oil Fields

William R. Caraher
Bret Weber
Kostis Kourelis
Richard Rothaus
ABSTRACT
Over the past three years, the North Dakota Man Camp Project has documented the
archaeology of home in over 50 contemporary, short-term, workforce housing sites in the
Bakken oil patch in western North Dakota. This article integrates recent scholarship in
global urbanism, archaeology of the contemporary past, and domesticity to argue that the
expansion of temporary workforce housing in the Bakken reflects a global periphery that
lacks infrastructure or capital to rapidly respond to the pressures of an increasingly fluid
movement of global capital and labor. The position of the Bakken produced short-term
housing strategies that embrace both traditions of American domesticity and global trends in
informal urbanism. A series of practical acts of architectural intervention straddle the line
between the ideals of fixity characteristic of the American suburb and the mobility of RVs.
The archaeological and architectural analysis of the Bakken man camps documents new
forms of informal housing and offer a glimpse of the city-yet-to-come.

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Introduction
The New York Times selected the word "man camp" as one of the most important
words of the year at the end of 2012 (Barrett 2012). Referring to the temporary housing
facilities for oil workers in North Dakota, the choice illustrates the impact that the Bakken
oil boom has made on the American national consciousness. The fascination with North
Dakotas man camps extends into the visual media including images of this new housing
form proliferating in the press (Gorney 2014; Brown 2013; Taylor 2013). Man camps have
provided a lexical and visual testament to an otherwise invisible subterranean process of
hydraulic fracking. Typically taken from a distant vantage point or focusing on human
subjects, the images of North Dakota's man camps resonate with other impermanent
housing forms such as refugee camps, natural disaster camps, and labor camps. Whether in
Greece, New Orleans, Dubai, or North Dakota, camps serve as home to an increasing
number of people, making them a permanent form of dwelling for an increasingly significant
section of the human population. The phenomenon has prompted Alex Hailey to argue that
camps are already the 21st centurys dominant form of dwelling (Hailey 2009).
In spite of the local, national, and international attention to the man camp
phenomenon in North Dakota, there are limited academic studies of the material,
architectural, and anthropological makeup of these sites. This article introduces the work of
the North Dakota Man Camp Project (NDMCP). The NDMCP is an ongoing project that
uses archaeological methods to document current workforce housing practices in the Bakken
oil patch of western North Dakota (Fig. 1). Our work situates the temporary housing in the
Bakken at the intersection of two key issues for understanding workforce housing in a
historical and contemporary context. First, the location of the Bakken at a global and local
periphery creates a space for practices associated with the informal urbanism that thrives
outside of institutions designed to support regular and controlled development. Second, the
peripheral location of the Bakken provides valuable architectural and archaeological
evidencedistinctly local manifestations of global transformationsand opportunities for
understanding negotiated domesticity in postindustrial America. The documentation
conducted by the NDMCP addresses the gap in the archival record and provides critical
analysis of these phenomena.
Man camps are an ad hoc solution to a housing crisis and represent reluctance shown
by local inhabitants and the oil industry to build residential infrastructure for the men and
few women who have traveled to North Dakota to work in the oil boom. The most recent
Bakken oil boom started with the introduction of hydraulic fracturing technologies (fracking)
to the long-standing Bakken oil field in 2008. By the spring of 2012, North Dakota
surpassed Alaskas oil production to become the second busiest oil producing state in the
United States. To extract oil from the thin layers of shale, the state welcomed a short-term
influx of workers, which reversed the regions long-term population decline (Robinson 1966;
Porter 2009). High oil prices, improved technologies, and optimistic assessments of the
Bakken reserves created an economic and demographic boom in Williams and McKenzie

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Counties that many predicted would last 30 years or longer. One of the major consequences
of this boom has been a severe housing shortage throughout the state (North Dakota
Petroleum Council 2011). The North Dakota Department of Commerce estimated in the fall
of 2012 that available beds for new workers numbered just over 15,000, while a trade
magazine suggested a higher figure of 21,511 planned or available beds to accommodate the
estimated 65,000 new jobs. If growth continues, some have projected a state population of
one million by 2020, which is an increase of over 30% in a dozen years (Dalrymple 2012; for
others see Bangsund et al. 2012; Hodur et al. 2013). Many of these jobs, however, relate to
the first phase of oil extraction and involve the labor-intensive processes of drilling, fracking,
and building the oil and gas infrastructure. The short term employment and surge in
production created the need for temporary housing that is unlikely to persist into the future.
The NDMCP project studied over 50 camps in the Bakken oil patch (Fig. 2). These
camps ranged in size from a few beds to crew camps large enough to be counted among the
states 20 largest cities. The methods employed in documenting the Bakken work camps
involved systematic photography, architectural drawings, textual description, oral interviews,
and aerial mapping. Acknowledging the eventual disappearance of the settlements, the
NDMCP seeks to create a permanent record of the settlements, and a benchmark for future
archaeological explorations that might reveal the process of their disintegration.
One of the fundamental conclusions of the project was that man camps are not a
unitary phenomenon but can be broken down into three categories from the most
centralized and formal to the most haphazard and informal, as Types 1, 2, and 3. Type 1
camps are distinguished by prefabricated buildings imported on an industrial scale and
frequently operated by specialized companies from outside the region (Fig. 3). The cost of
staying in a camp of this type is often part of an employees overall contract with a large,
multinational corporation operating in the oil patch. Many are constructed and managed by
multinational logistics companies, like Target Logistics, specializing in housing for workers
in extractive industries on a global scale. In general, the appearance of the more formal
camps is characterized by uniformity to the point of military-like precision.
Type 2 camps resemble trailer parks (Fig. 4). They show much greater diversity in lay
out and in the variety of individual units, consisting primarily of RVs and mobile homes
ranging from third wheel type campers to large motor coaches. They generally include
leveled gravel pads for each unit, wide roads for access, hookups for electricity, and, in most
cases, connections for water and sewage utilities. This type of camp is the most common,
although accurate numbers of camps, lots, and residents remain elusive. In general, the
occupants of Type 2 camps rent the lot and pay for utilities, but provide their own RV,
although some camps offer RVs for rent and companies do sometimes provide RVs for their
crews. In general, rents are relative to location and services, and range from $600 to $1,200
per month for those who own their RVs, and up to $2,000 for those renting both space and
trailer. Most camps include some form of administration that collects rents, offers limited
amenities, and maintains the roadways. Many of these camps are financed by non-local
capital and function with minimal oversight from local municipalities or, more frequently,

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county governments. To residents, however, many of these informal camps appeared at a

time when people just kind of swarmed . . . and waited for someone to come around and
kick them off or rent the place (Personal Interview, Craig Hooper, August, 2012).
Type 3 camps lack fixed infrastructure and are generally comprised of haphazardly
congregated RVs (Fig. 5). Many are illegal, squatting on available ground, and operate
outside administrative oversight. Typically small with only a handful of campers, Type 3
camps are the most difficult to sustain. Without water, electricity, or sewage they are
particularly difficult to maintain through the cold winters. Some of the earliest informal
camps were almost certainly squatter settlements that violated local laws. Based on press
accounts, Type 3 camps were once a common feature in the Bakken and included the
famous camp in the Wal-Mart parking lot, but since 2012 most squatter camps have largely
been eliminated.
The NDMCP has documented all three types of man camps, but focuses on the
most common Type 2 facilities as they tend to offer the most revealing articulation of new
social and architectural forms. Type 1 camps are so rigorously controlled by central
authorities that they offer little architectural variation. Type 3 camps, on the other hand, are
so impermanent that they rarely afford the formation of a spatial identity and remained
relatively elusive to our research program.
This article is divided into two sections. The first takes a theoretical approach in an
attempt to situate the material evidence within the context of global peripheries, informal
urbanism, and the archaeologies of the contemporary past. The second section investigates
the negotiated domesticity expressed in the architectural manipulations of interior and
exterior space within Type 2 man camps.
Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, Informal Urbanism, and Global
Periphery
Our approach to documenting workforce housing drew on recent directions in
archaeology and architectural history. First, our work is informed by the archaeology of the
contemporary past, which has been particularly productive in its focus on sites of short-term
or ephemeral occupation. Larry Zimmermans archaeology of homelessness, the archaeology
of contemporary protest sites, photographic documentation of graffiti, and the archaeology
of tourism collectively demonstrate how archaeological approaches to sites of contemporary
contingency have the potential to inform issues of immediate social and political concern
(Kiddley and Schofield 2010, 2014; Zimmerman 2010; Schofield and Anderton 2000; Myers
2010; Graves-Brown and Schofield 2011; ODonovan and Carroll 2011). By documenting
the recent past through its material culture, archaeologists have demonstrated that the
material world represents and reinforces agency and the dynamic processes that bring issues
of social and economic justice to the material culture of labor, leisure, and everyday life. The
archaeological study of spaces and objects has the potential to give voice to marginal

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communities in ways that traditional historical studies grounded in the more restrictive
practices associated with textual evidence tend to overlook.
This interest in archaeology of the contemporary world complements long-standing
interests by historical archaeologists on factory sites, working and middle-class housing, and
extractive industries. Archaeologists have documented mining camps through time and
developed a substantial body of scholarship related to the archaeology of labor and working
class life. Bernard Knapps work on the remains of mining settlements and extractive
landscapes dating to the Bronze Age on the island of Cyprus demonstrated the longstanding
correlation between temporary settlement and mining (Knapp 1998; 2003). Scholars of
Australia and South America have likewise studied the role of workforce housing in the
colonial transformation of extractive industries on those continents in the 19th and 20th
centuries (e.g. Garner 2012; Van Buren and Weaver 2012). For the U.S., a recent volume of
Historical Archaeology dedicated to life in western work camps located the archaeology of
workforce housing in the context of the American west (Van Bueren 2002). For the
American West, scholars like David Hardesty have pioneered the documentation of the
often-times ephemeral and overlooked landscape of resource extraction (Hardesty 1988;
2002). Susan Lawrences work on gender and domesticity in the temporary camps of the
Australian goldfield reinforced the key role of women and gender in understanding domestic
spaces associated with extractive industries (Lawrence 1998; 1999). Paul Shackels recent
survey of the archaeology of labor and working-class life emphasized how this scholarship
understood archaeological remains as evidence for agency, control, and resistance in working
class housing and the life of working class families (Shackel 2009).
Echoing the work of geographers, theorists, and archaeologists, architectural
historians have come to see camps and temporary housing as a quintessential architecture of
modernity (Jackson 1960; Drury 1972; Jackson 1984; Thornburg 1991; Wallis 1991; White
2000; Hart, Rhodes, and Morgan 2002; Hailey 2008; Van Slyck 2010). In the 20th and 21st
centuries, camps have adapted to such diverse functions as military occupation, refugee
settlement, recreation, and protest sites. The work of Charles Hailey provides a link to
urbanism which forms a crucial interpretative lens for this article. He suggests that
impermanent housing (shanty towns, favelas, encampments, colonias, etc.) has become the
architectural staple for more than work camps, factory labor, and rural industry, and has
become a key component of informal urbanism in the 21st century (Hailey 2009). The
informal housing sites surrounding many of the cities yet to come (Dakar, Pretoria,
Douala, Jeddah, or Buenos Aires) have more in common with the man camps of the rural
North Dakota than the cites of the past (Simone 2004; Perlman 2010). Their rapid growth,
contingent character, and lack of institutional control have created highly visible
opportunities for architectural agency in creating spaces that leave little evidence in textual
sources.
Our study of contingent workforce housing has been specifically influenced by
recent work on informal urbanism in the U.S. and throughout the global periphery. The
relative wealth and economic opportunity in North Dakota tends to place it outside the

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discourse of a global periphery that centers on the developing world (e.g. Chase-Dunn,
Kawano, Brewer 2000). The rapid workforce expansion represented a challenge for planning
and investment by the state of North Dakota, local municipalities, and by corporate interests.
Consequently, housing in North Dakota developed in an ad hoc way. The oil industry
provides housing for only a small fraction of the most professionalized workforce, usually in
Type 1 camps provided by global logistics companies (Rothaus 2014). Many newcomers to
the Bakken, however, work in industries either directly or indirectly related to oil extraction
such as pipeline work, truck repair, food and hospitality service, and general construction.
For these residents, outside investors funded the construction of temporary and informal
RV and mobile home parks, which are primarily Type 2 camps. The rapid pace of workforce
expansion and the struggle of communities in western North Dakota suggest a peripheral
character, but this should not imply that the communities and residents of the region lack
agency or are powerless against the depredations of an increasingly de-centered core.
Instead, certain economic, political, and broadly structural limitations common in both
North Dakota and the global periphery shape local practices.
The development of man camps took place in the periphery of the small cities and
towns that offer permanent housing. Most workforce housing in the Bakken stands outside
the towns of Tioga, Williston, Watford City, and more recently Dickinson (Fig. 6). In this
respect, the Bakken follows patterns evident in the developing world, where cities are ringed
by informal working-class settlements. Similar to the informal settlements that surround Rio
de Janeiro and other cities of the global south, the man camps of North Dakota stand
outside the gaze, jurisdiction, and living space of the established economic and political
order (Perlman 2010). This not entirely dissimilar to American suburbs that tend to ring
cities with a relatively stable affluence but represent a varying degrees of integration with the
urban core (Duncan and Duncan 2004). Whereas suburbs have asserted their own
independence from traditional city center for a wide range of economic, political, and social
reasons, the lack of local jurisdiction over peripheral man camps is not accidental: many local
communities passed explicit ordinances to prevent or restrict the development of man
camps within city limits. In this way, the Bakken settlement patterns paralleled the
establishment of colonias on the U.S.-Mexico border that emerged at the fringes of urban
areas providing access to employment without limits imposed by vigilant municipal
governments (Ward 1999). Similarly, while the oil boom provides affluence to some local
residents, the migrant labor required for this affluence is kept at arms-length from the small
urban core.
Pushed outside city limits, man camps stand at the margins of municipal building
codes, zoning ordinances, as well as human services centered in the cities. While established
North Dakota communities are beginning to catch up with population pressures, their slow
response during the first years of the oil boom allowed for an informal urbanism to thrive at
the edge of these towns. In this context, standardization in practice and appearance is much
more likely to derive from local rules, practical realities, and informal consensus among
residents, as from municipal or other government authorities.

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Negotiating Domesticity in Temporary Settlement in the Bakken

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the need for labor housing was met by company
towns or by private developers engaged in housing speculation (Wright 1981), with informal
developments like labor camps typically emerging along the edges of towns. Since the 1950s,
informal or self-help housing was the dominant domestic form in the developing world,
where it confronted the infrastructural deficits of the state and the economy (Ward 1982: 113). But Americas postwar economic boom had been so integrally tied to the housing sector
that informal urbanism, in the form of trailer parks and other impermanent housing,
represented only a fraction of the domestic stock.
In the 21st century, urban planners note that informality has come to influence many
manifestations of urbanism in the U.S.:
Partly a result of globalization, deregulation, and increasing immigrant flows,
partly as a response to economic instability and increasing unemployment
and underemployment, and partly because of the inadequacy of existing
regulations to address the complexity and heterogeneity of contemporary
multicultural living, informal activities have proliferated in U.S. cities and are
clearly reflected in the built environment (Mukhija and Loukaitou-Sideris
2014:1).
North Dakotans embraced this informality as a way to avoid repeating the perceived
mistakes of the early 1980s, when the oil bust and rapid exodus of workers left a real estate
crisis in its wake. Taxpayers stuck with the municipal debt that had financed the building of
necessary trunk infrastructure (roads, sewer lines, etc.) were hesitant to invest in housing for
the oil boom of the 2010s. Instead, responses to housing demands echoed the global trends
and left the problem of housing the rapid influx of workers to outside forces. At first, there
was a boom in ad hoc Type 3 camps, but these were generally cleared away or replaced by
2012. As the situation became slightly more formalized, many medium sized and large,
centralized, Type 1 man camps became increasingly visible along the main thoroughfares.
But, it was the informal Type 2 camps that came to provide the majority of temporary
workforce housing in the Bakken.
The impermanence of historic, contingent settlements like those found in the
Bakken contrast sharply with the traditional views of middle-class home ownership and
domestic life that emphasize stability and long-term fixity in the landscape (Jackson 1953;
Jackson 1984; Duncan and Duncan 2004). This illusion of suburban permanence emerged
from the rural ideal that served to market the American suburbs to a middle and upper class,
urban population from the late-19th and mid-20th centuries (Duncan and Duncan 2004). In
the Bakken, architectural permanence and attachment to the land has been deployed as an
exclusionary technique designed to distinguish the nomadic newcomers from those living in
the small communities before the boom. At the same time, the historical need for affordable,
mobile housing in the American west underscores the largely ideological tension between

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long-term and temporary housing (Jackson 1960; AUDC, Sumrell, and Varnelis 2007).
Nowhere was the tension between permanence and mobility more apparent than in the use
of RVs for the recreational retreats of the mid-20th century middle class (Hailey 2008). The
freedom of the road offered by RVs complemented the fixity of the suburban home and
defined life in the RV as a temporary escape from middle-class domesticity. Permanent and
temporary were interdependent. Although more economical than the cost of motels, the RV
required financial resources for its acquisition, maintenance, and operation during holiday
vacations. The transience that it afforded for the average two-week duration of its use was
indirectly supported by the owners access to domestic real estate to park the large vehicle
for the remaining 50 weeks of the year. On the fringes of the recreational ideal, however,
mobile homes served as permanent housing solutions for a growing population of internal
migrants or impoverished natives. According to the 1990 census, 7% of the American
population lived in a mobile home (Hart et al. 2002:2). Derogatory epithets, like trailer
trash, emphasize a compromised domesticity associated with long-term residence in fixed
mobile homes or RVs.
However, recent work on short-term and informal urbanism demonstrates that life
in work camps, colonias, and trailer parks offers opportunities for architectural agency. This
was reinforced by camps in the Bakken. Displacing broadly accepted expressions of
domestic values, the residents of mass-produced mobile homes and RVs modified and
improved their homes to meet the practical realities of challenging climates. The
manipulation of RVs in North Dakota resembles the bottom-up adaptation evident in other
contexts, such as the manipulation of gun trucks by American soldiers in the warzones of
Vietnam and Iraq (Kollars 2014) or the DIY interventions of consumer products, as in the
case of IKEA hackers (Rosner and Bean 2009). This exercise of architectural agency speaks
both to the distinct character of work in the Bakken oil patch as well as the negotiation of
domestic space in the 21st century.
Unlike permanent homes, RVs provide few opportunities for manipulation beyond
built-in flexible features like slide-outs and awnings. Assuming the RV design process is
complete, architectural historians have completed only limited documentation of
architectural agency among users. Notable exceptions include Kingston Heaths (2007)
regional comparisons, noting that in Montana occupants build enclosed wooden mudrooms,
while in North Carolina they construct covered porches. Heath characterizes this process as
cultural weathering. Peter Wards studies of spatial extensions in the trailer settlements
associated with colonias in Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border (Ward 1999; 2014:70) argue
that manipulations and additions demonstrate the creativity and self-management of
otherwise marginalized and disenfranchised populations. These innovations stem from the
structural limitations of the RV, the social networks present in workforce housing
communities, and the absence of strong institutional barriers.
Five key aspects of informal workforce housing in the Bakken help to illustrate ways
that residents negotiate domesticity and architectural agency through social practice. These
include insulation practices, enclosures, platforms, property demarcations, and ritual objects.

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These aspects of life in workforce housing speak directly to the tension between the need for
mobility in short-term housing and traditions of fixity central to American traditions of
suburban life.
Insulation. One of the most fascinating aspects of architectural agency emerges in
the process of de-mobilizing RVs: the practice of insulating an RV for the cold North
Dakota winter provides a poignant illustration of both the architectural transformation from
mobile to stationary structures as well as the social relationships that facilitate the
dissemination of related techniques (Fig. 7). RVs are designed to be occupied for an average
of two weeks (the average American workers allotted vacation), during the temperate
months of late spring, summer, or early fall. To survive a North Dakota winter, the owners
of the RV must modify the vehicles skin to increase the total R-value of thermal resistance.
The RV is understood as a unitary envelope with weak zones through which air and
heat leaks. Residents employ a range of strategies to maintain functionality and to make an
RV comfortable when temperatures dip below freezing for weeks on endsometimes with
sustained temperatures well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. For example, several companies
advertise on-site insulation service including installation of thick vinyl skirting around the RV
base. Many residents, however, see these services as overpriced and ineffective, and insulate
their units according to various techniques learned through conversations with coworkers
and camp neighbors. Much is also learned through trial and error.
The most common technique is to apply extruded polystyrene foam insulation to the
most vulnerable areas and especially the locus of mobility, the wheels. Some residents utilize
wood frames (Fig. 8). Remaining gaps are then sealed with spray foam insulation. While
various types of insulation are available at stores in Williston and Dickinson, many residents
travel to Minot to avoid higher prices in the oil patch. Extruded polystyrene costs around
$30 a sheet, and most large RVs require eight to ten sheets for full coverage. The expense
and suspicion of price-gouging result in some insulating with hay bales, rolled fiberglass
insulation, and plywood alone.
Other crucial areas for insulation are windows and slide-outs (extensions designed
expand interior space). The weak seals around these slide-outs and the thinner aluminum
skin in these areas allow cold air to leak inside. Windows can be sealed from either the
outside or the inside often using reflective insulation attached directly to the RV window
frames. Like the wheels, once covered, the slide-outs can no longer fulfill their service to
mobility. Polystyrene blue is ubiquitous throughout the man camps, creating a surreal
relationship between the vertically weatherizing plastic and the horizontally expansive blue
sky above. In the summer months, stacks of plywood-backed polystyrene are visible beneath
the RVs as comfort in the summer heat is enhanced by the flow of air.
Water and sewage hook-ups demand particular attention in the winter. Occupants
typically enclose the water and sewage pipes in fiberglass insulation and electrical heat-tape
to prevent freezing. Some go further and build small, insulated boxes to provide additional
insulation. To guard against frozen pipes, some camp managers perform regular inspections
as problematic units can imperil the entire park. But even with proper diligence, frozen pipes

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remain a constant problem. One major camp lost water and sewage for close to two months
during the winter months demonstrating how fragile basic comforts can be in these shortterm settlements.
By covering the wheel zone, extended slide-outs, and water and sewage hook-ups
with insulation, the RV bricoleur resists the cold of winter but also expresses the vehicles
fixity and long-term stability. The RV becomes immobilized as its wheels are encased within
an adhered rectilinear frame. The insulated tether of the sewage and water pipes tie the RV
to its lot, and the extended slide-outs, covered with insulation, further emphasize the
anchored condition. This transformation of the mobile RV to a more permanent residential
unit develops through informal knowledge networks with minimal involvement of either
prefabricated components or formal institutional authority.
Enclosure. Like insulation practices, informal workforce housing sites also
demonstrate opportunities to adapt the physical space of an RV through various methods of
architectural enclosure. The construction of enclosures represents a key strategic adaptation
to life in an RV park, as well as an opportunity to demonstrate skills in building and
individual creativity. The hodgepodge of different sizes and styles of enclosures contribute
to an irregular and informal appearance across the camp, and have led them to be a target of
increased regulation particularly in large and highly visible camps. Williston Foxrun, a camp
with over 300 lots for RVs, at one point featured over 200 enclosed additions, and while the
number of enclosures is exceptional, the percentage of units with enclosures reflected the
general ubiquity of these features across the Bakken.
Most enclosures involve the use of plywood to expand the livable area of the RV. In
some cases, residents create a small room adjacent to the RVs entrance typically called a
mudroom or entrance (Fig. 9). Like extruded polystyrene used for insulation, the
plywood sometimes comes from a lumberyard or big-box home improvement center, and is
loaded on a pickup truck and brought to the camp. In other cases, however, residents
construct their mudrooms using scrap wood left behind or modify completed enclosures
abandoned by previous residents at departure. Some of the larger camps set aside areas for
provisional discard of scrap lumber. In other cases, whole mudrooms are offered for sale.
Repurposed mudrooms are not uncommon and are easily recognizable when their shed roof
is higher than the roof of an RV indicating that the enclosure is in secondary use. Many of
the oil field workers were trained in the building industry, and show great facility in creating
and adapting these additional spaces.
The function of the mudroom or entrance vestibule includes creation of a space
where a resident can remove soiled work clothes, muddy boots, or the layers of clothing
required for outdoor work in the North Dakota winter. With one door leading inside the RV
and a second leading to the camp outside, mudrooms create both a layer of security and an
additional volume of air that can function as a layer of insulation. In a few of the larger RV
parks the construction of mudrooms took on a competitive flare with residents attempting
to build more elaborate and expansive mudrooms than their neighbors, including examples
of large mudrooms being insulated thoroughly and offering additional living and sleeping

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space. Some of these additions extend the entire length of the RV and the largest completely
enclose the RV in an insulated wood structure.
The mudroom addition transforms the space of the RV in more than merely
practical ways. By attaching a mudroom perpendicularly and at one end of the long vehicle
wall, the enclosure turns the rectangular shape of the RV into an L shape. Framed by the
parallel side of the neighboring RV, the mudroom not only increases the dwellings much
interior space, but also reinforces the formal stability of the new home, and anchors the RV
in a manner that visibly denies the implied aerodynamic motion and even its intended
directionality. The added vestibule also introduces a historical layer of formality and privacy
in an undifferentiated interior space of the RV, where kitchen, bedroom, and living room are
one, and subtly refers to the specialization of rooms of a Victorian home (Wright 1981:111).
The perpendicular mudroom likewise shifts the axis of entrance. Unsurprisingly, people take
great pride in their customization projects. Describing a particularly elaborate extension that
created a living room complete with large screen TV outside of the body of the RV, one
resident exclaimed, its very niceits almost like home! (Personal Interview, Lisa Holman,
August, 2013). The addition of enclosed space not only increases the fixity of the RV but
also creates the kind of meaningful spatial individuation associated with traditional
domesticity.
The threshold of the door has also become a contested site of architectural agency.
While residents of RV parks continue to experiment with mudrooms and other architectural
modifications, management in the parks and even municipal governments have tried to limit
the size and function of these additions. The check on the rampant individualization at longterm RV parks is increasingly restricted by seemingly ad hoc applications of state and local
laws, and similarly situational policies enforced by camp owners that dictate the extent to
which space can be modified. For example, counties are drafting ordinances to limit the
extent to which units may be enclosed in freestanding architecture (Personal Interview,
Denise Sasser, Williams County Planning, Zoning, and Building Department, July, 2014).
The reasons behind these laws are explicitly about safetyprimarily fire concernsbut also
have as much to do with the aesthetics of temporary housing within city limits. The
permanence of the elaborate architectural enclosures, their provisional style, and their
sometimes shoddy construction techniques run counter to an aesthetic of permanence,
substance, and consistency traditionally privileged by suburban development (Duncan and
Duncan 2004). Recently, Williston Foxrun embarked on a campaign to eliminate some of
the larger additions. Over 70% of the units in the camp had some form of mudroom and a
substantial minority of those were large and elaborate. During a visit in September 2014,
several partially dismantled additions stood in otherwise vacated lots, providing a ghostly
illustration of the transitory nature of boom economy workforces. The architectural
elaboration of RVs and mobile homes represents a key strategy in consolidating informal
settlements and can mark a step toward permanent and more formal settlement.
Platforms and Paths. Another common architectural intervention involves exterior
platforms adjacent to the threshold of the necessarily elevated RV and mobile home doors

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(Fig. 10). Such platforms run parallel to the course of the trailer and often provide an
elevated path between the units door and an area set aside for a vehicle. Most are made of
salvaged materials with shipping pallets being by far the most common. Pallets often serve as
the foundation for decks made of plywood or other scrap lumber available around informal
workforce housing sites. One innovative, and perhaps ironic, RV resident used a group of
old solar panels as an elevated walkway from his door to his truck.
Platforms and paths provide elevated surfaces to address snow and ice during winter
and mud and puddles during spring. Snow shovels are frequently left at the ready by the
door of a mudroom or RV during the winter months. Thaws often cover the rutted areas
around RVs with pooled water and mud making a boot scrapper a useful addition to many
platforms. As a result, these platforms serve alongside mudroom enclosures in a transition
between the realm of hard, dirty work and efforts to create cleaner, tidier, domestic spaces.
Similarly, objects commonly found on platforms, though lacking lock or security, are
also insinuated as separate from public space. Objects that do not fit easily within the
confined spaces of an RV or small mobile home including appliances, propane tanks,
outdoor cooking and dining wares, and hoarded building materials are left on the platform
to unclutter the precious interior space. Electrical generators are also common and speak to
the unpredictability of electricity in many of the informal communities. Refrigerators and
freezers often stand on makeshift platforms outside the RV preserving bulk food purchases
and reinforcing the private and secure character of the platform area. These elevated
platforms also provide an intermediary surface for outdoor household activities, such as
grilling, dining, or simply sitting, associated with the American deck. Beyond their practicality,
they convey the casual comforts of outdoor--archetypically suburban--life.
A particularly curious adaptation of the platform occurs in the unique context of the
indoor RV Park outside of Watford City. The indoor RV Park is a series of large garages that
provide indoor parking for RVs. Each garage consists of a heated room with a gravel floor
and enough space for two RVs. Some residents build platforms inside the garage unit to serve
as elaborate outdoor spaces. Elaborate platforms include dining tables, sitting areas, shelving
units for overflow storage, and even areas set aside for domestic display. Even in a situation
where the risk of mud and snow are not as immediate, platforms provide an extension of the
domestic space of the RV.
The constructions of platforms and paths represent another example of significant
investment in temporary housing particularly since they are usually left behind by departing
residents. These additions contribute to the anchored character of the RV, the allusion of
semi-private space, and the convivial sociality akin to a suburban deck. In addition to the
social uses and cues, like enclosure and insulation, these spaces provided practical solutions
including storage and efforts to mitigate the mud, dirt, puddles, and snow common in the
camps.
Demarcated Property.
In most informal workforce housing sites in the Bakken, residents rationally park
their RVs or mobile homes as close as possible to a boundary of their lot leaving the rest of

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the lot open for enclosures and platforms. The placement of the RV, the construction of a
mudroom, and the building of a deck or elevated path all serve to define spaces that serve a
variety of functions (Fig. 11). To reinforce the separate and private nature of this space,
some residents build fences from shipping pallets or other scrap wood present at the camp,
while others use light-duty, manufactured fencing. Railroad ties, stones, potted plants, and
prefabricated storage sheds likewise function to create demarcated space adjacent to the RV.
In more formally organized RV parks, long, narrow lots anchored on one end by
hook-ups and at the other by road access, encourage residents to locate their RVs set back
from the road. This arrangement creates a set-back and--even in these highly temporary
settlements--residents frequently adopt the traditional suburban characteristics of a front
yard. Some of the most elaborate lots have landscaped yards complete with gardens, and
even planted trees. One resident created flower gardens out of plastic flowers which she
dutifully rotated according to the seasons (Personal Interview, Debbie Skeanes, MC 75, May,
2015). The character of the landscaping is opportunistic, of course. For example,
neighboring RVs with well-kept lawns belonged to a landscaping company who appropriated
surplus turf to upgrade their surroundings. It is worth noting, however, that well-manicured
yards were almost always left to decay when a lot changed hands. In contrast to efforts to
maintain the front of the RV, the back of the RV, usually around the electrical mast and
water hook up, often becomes a place for storage of scrap wood, insulation, gas cans,
broken objects, PVC pipes, and other items that are unsightly and not of immediate use. In
more than one camp, the space between hook-ups in the back of lot is referred to as an
alley.
Demarcating property did not function exclusively in the service of mimicking
suburban domesticity. Defined lots also created spaces for work and storage of work related
objects. Truck tires, equipment, spare parts and tools, and work-related trailers reveal the
tensions between suburban practices and the practical requirements of work in informal
workforce housing. As a result, efforts to demarcate property did not always conform to
traditional suburban ideals of distinguishing between work and domestic spaces, but instead
blurred the distinction between wage labor and private life.
Less formal RV parks, often arrange smaller lots in more irregular ways making it
difficult for residents to define private space around their RVs. In one of the least formal
settlements--occupied by squatters clustered in a wooded area lacking water or electric hookups--residents built their camp around a common space where they shared tasks like cooking,
storing water, and cleaning up after meals. While this arrangement was unusual in the later
years of the boom, it hints at the outlaw character more prevalent during the early years of
the boom that may have relieved residents from opportunities, the need, or the
responsibilities to define private space.
The positioning of the unit, accompanying enclosures, elevated paths, and platforms,
all play a key role in demarcating personal space in the Bakkens informal settlements where
housing and ownership of private property are rarely aligned (Mukhija and Loukaitou-Sideris
2014). Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of man camp life is this interplay between

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the temporary character of most settlements and the willingnesseven the insistence--of
residents to negotiate domestic space and reinforce some sense of fixed domesticity.
Objects of Social Ritual. Moveable goods contribute as much to the formation and
presentation of identity in the archaeological record as the manipulation of space and
architecture. The presence and display of particular goods around the exterior of the RV in
the workforce-housing site produce meaning that transcends functional qualities. Many of
the most bulky objects mark the location of a specific activity at the intersection of practical
needs associated with RV life. Despite the casual nature of the placements, there are
underlying attempts to personalize and even advertise the identity of the resident. The
objects become icons of the function that they serve, and by extension, the social space that
they create. The assemblage of common moveable goods around housing units provide
insight into the gendered spaces that play such an important role in the publics view of
these settlements as man camps. This perception often brings with it some hostile baggage
and this perhaps accounts for policies present in the more formal camps that prohibit
personal objects in public spaces.
It is not uncommon for units in the informal settlements to feature weight training
equipment set on either the platforms outside of the RVs or in close proximity to the unit.
From a practical perspective, the weights are too heavy to steal and too bulky to keep inside
the RV, and the cramped conditions inside the RV make exercise difficult. Additionally, their
physical form becomes their security. In the context of an RV park, the weights evoke the
performance of weight lifting and present a hyper-masculine identity for residents (Fig. 12)
(Green 1986). In an ironic counterpoint, they are often left behind when the occupant
moves on or returns home where such conspicuous displays of masculinity may return to
interior space outside of the public gaze.
Even more common than free weights were grills, often set atop a platform creating
a private space for social eating. Like the weights, the grill embodies the iconography of male
cooking and bonding over the preparation of meat (Dummitt 1998; Miller 2010). The
presence of the grill and the practice of grilling register a mastery of a particular kind of
public cooking and socialization (Fig. 13). Historically, grilling outside developed in the postwar period as men became more involved in domestic life after the social disruptions of the
World War. Grilling outside became an acceptable place for men to be involved in the
otherwise feminine household task of cooking. Of further relevance to man camp living, the
grill also became a context for the performance of masculinity at a time when houses were
becoming smaller and the exterior space of the house increasingly accommodated social
activities.
The nearly ubiquitous presence of folding furniture further echoes the backyard
barbecue and an additional solution to expanding the limited space for socialization within
the RV and to establishing a place for male bonding rituals common to cook outs,
campsites, and tailgating at football games. Like the dumbbells, these items are used for only
a short time as tools, but then, left outside, they become visible cultural and identity markers
even when their owner is absent. The weight bench, camping furniture, and the barbecue

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become icons of the male absent at work, and reinforce the space of workforce housing as
evoking the space of work in the domestic realm.
Of course, the masculine encoding of the temporary workforce housing has both
limits and ambiguities. For example, there are pragmatic ways to understanding outdoor
cooking. The lack of extensive or spacious kitchens for social cooking in most RVs and the
heat of indoor cooking during warmer months complicates an exclusively masculine reading
of outdoor cooking. Hints of a more traditional model of domestic life appear throughout
the camps. As noted, some units had small vegetable gardens and even ornamental plantings.
Visits to camps during summer months reveal childrens play areas including small pools,
bikes, toys, and other aspects of family life. According to a woman employed at a large RV
Park, increasingly, year round, men are bringing their women and children out to the patch
(Personal Interview, Hollman and Collins, August 2013). Many informal workforce housing
sites have play areas for children, and common areas at larger camps become social areas for
any women present who are not employed in the Bakken.
Nonetheless, there is a reason that the sometimes inaccurate term man camp has
such currency, especially in the popular imagination. The objects associated with the
performance of masculinity at workforce housing sites reinforces the traditionally masculine
nature of work in extractive industries. The danger associated with extractive industries, their
location on the periphery, and the dirty physicality of work in mines, oil rigs, and forests of
the American West embody a historical masculinity connecting to frontier myths and
realities (Baron 2006). In the 21st century Bakken, this masculinity is reinforced by the
association of the oil industry with American strategic interests, and the prominent
appearance of American flags evokes military practice. At least superficially, oil workers in
the Bakken are hypermasculine domestic soldiers committed to national strategic interests.
The grill, free weights, and the outdoor life of informal workforce housing provide
surprising markers of both the thinly veiled tensions and the stark realities surrounding
domestic efforts amid the Bakkens fluid economy.
Conclusion
Archaeological investigation of contemporary workforce housing in the Bakken oil
patch provides an avenue for understanding the negotiation of domesticity and informal
settlement at a global periphery. The informality, contingency, and the practical realities of
life in these settlements shape a particular engagement with many aspects of American
domesticity. In the U.S., traditional domestic architecture, characteristic of the American
suburb for most of the second half of the 20th century, reveals the guiding hands of
architects, builders, and local building codes and standards. In the workforce housing of
western North Dakota, the Bakken bricoleur relies upon informal social networks, ad hoc
interventions, and salvaged material to establish the fixity of the RV and to make it more
suitable as a year-round residence. In multiple interviews, residents stated that these
modifications to their RVs make them more like home. This acknowledgment of the

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ersatz domestic character of temporary housing in the Bakken supports our reading of the
architecture and material culture of these settlements as they take on key physical aspects of
suburban life, while preserving their informal and contingent character.
Our work, of course, goes beyond confirming the ethnographic accounts, and
locates the informal workforce housing in a global context. The increasingly decentered
nature of both economic capital and markets, particularly in extractive industries, coincide
with the limited infrastructure and sparse population in the Bakken counties to locate it at a
global periphery. The Bakken counties also represent a historical frontier, which has
attracted short-term settlement and economic migrants throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries. The limited economic and political resources in the region have influenced the
structure of settlement in the 21st century. Informal workforce housing sites developed just
outside the jurisdiction of the small communities throughout the region, and this allowed ad
hoc housing practices to flourish with minimal enforcement of building codes or other
forms of legal authority. As the number and variety of camps increased, some sites have
attempted to enforce largely aesthetic guidelines for architectural additions, but these policies
are enforced irregularly. Among these guidelines is the idea that architectural additions
cannot prevent the easy removal of the RV from its lot. It is telling that local residents often
construct their own privilege in the Bakken counties by pointing to the permanence of their
communities in contrast to the impermanence of workforce housing. And this
impermanence--including the related realities that stifle connections to community, both
inside and in relation to the population outside the rutted camp boundariesis a clear
consequence of temporary workforce housing.

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Figures:

Figure 1: Map of Bakken (will be replaced with a proper map!)

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Figure 2: Workforce Housing in the Bakken

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Figure 3: Type 1 Camps

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Figure 4: Type 2 Camps

Figure 5: Type 3 Camps

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Figure 6: Man Camps around Existing Settlements

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Figure 7: Insulation

Figure 8: Woodframes for insulation

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Figure 9: Mudroom

Figure 10a: External platforms (Photo and drawing?)

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Figure 10b: (a) grill (b) cooler (c) camp chairs (d) propane cylinder (e) camp table (f) shipping
pallet (g) deck.

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Figure 11: Demarcated property.

Figure 12: weights

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Figure 13: Grills

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