During Talk Of The Nation today (Wednesday, February 11), at 2-3 PM, they are inviting callers with this question: "If you lived through a boom, how did your town change?" Call into (800) 989-8255.
The discovery of oil and natural gas in Wyoming, Colorado and North Dakota has created a new generation of boom towns. The explosive growth generated by the oil and gas drilling is often accompanied by an influx of new labor. The small towns near the fields wrestle to balance the economic advantages of the boom with the dramatic changes it brings to these tight-knit communities.
Host Neal Conan talks with John McChesney, former director of the Rural West Initiative at Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, and Ann Chambers Noble, historian and longtime resident of one of the boom towns, Pinedale, Wyoming.