No, you have not entered the Twilight Zone. You have not landed on Mars.

Welcome to the tiny town of Watford City, North Dakota.

Watford City typically held 3,000 permanent residents, and housed a few restaurants and small businesses. Today, Watford has 6,500 people, many of which sleep in the WalMart parking lot or in tents on the side of the road, while no homes are available and the hotels lack any vacancy whatsoever. That is the price that you have to pay in order to make $15 an hour to serve tacos, $25 an hour to waitress, or $10 an hour to work at a local gas station.

This city, and other small towns near it, all have one thing in common: its close location to the Bakken formation that is estimated to hold up to 24 billion barrels of oil within it. These restaurants and convenience stores work hard to pay its employees more because of the recruiting from the oil companies that need workers out on the formation. These companies pay employees upwards $100,000 to work. Other businesses must compete with these prices in order to keep workers to run the business.

Many local, typically minimum-wage paying jobs nationwide, will pay employees a minimum of $12 per hour. Many places have nearly doubled pay within the recent years in order to compete with the oil companies. Other companies entice employees to stay on the job for at least six weeks by offering a $150 bonus at the end of the period.

Truck drivers in the area make between $70,000 and $80,000 per year. This type of pay convinced a Indiana-based driver, Nathan Pittman, who planning on retiring the truck driving business that he owned. However, after hearing about the demand in North Dakota, he relocated and now pulls in approximately $2,225 per week. Pittman currently works on the side to help others relocate and start their own business here in North Dakota. He states that any business will flourish in these towns right now.

The boom has created several inconveniences for locals, including: more traffic, high business turnover rates, higher cost of living, and most prominently, a dramatic housing shortage. Unfortunately, these types of things happen when a town doubles in size quicker than the local government can keep up.

Housing that is available ranges from $1,500 a month for a small one bedroom, upwards $3,000 a month for two and three bedroom apartments. Many have taken advantage of the opportunity by building dorm-style housing for workers. Other rent out RVs in the Bakken area for approximately $2,000 each month.

If the demand for work in this town remains high, something must be done long term to help the housing crisis. While 2,220 housing units became available this past year, the demand lies more in the 5,000 range. Executive Director of McKenzie County Job Development Authority, Gene Veeder, says that developers call him daily wanting to start new projects, so it is only a matter of time before the houses boom as much as the jobs in the area.