Flooding in America's heartland

Earlier during breakfast, we'd passed through Devil's Lake. There had been a lot of flooding in North Dakota this year, and the water level was very high. The formerly elevated trackbed was now submerged, and the wooden ties were wet and partially underwater. The train made no more than 15 mph (25 km/h) through the lake. Here you can see how close the water was to the tracks, though it is not quite as dramatic in 2D as in real life. A few more inches and the tracks would be entirely underwater.

Devil's Lake has been flooding for years. A government buyout program has relocated the town of Church's Ferry from its original location on the banks of the lake. The town had been declining in population for years, the school closed in 1988, half the residents are over 62 years of age. This depopulation of the heartland led Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff to resurrect the buffalo commons idea. Of course, these are proud people, and they don't like Rutgers University professors, much less columnists in the newspaper of the liberal elite, telling them what they should do with their homes.

BNSF is considering abandoning the line if an outlet isn't created for the lake. There's a bypass across eastern North Dakota, but such a rerouting would deprive several cities and towns of rail service for the first time in over a hundred years. The Great Northern completed the line to Seattle in 1893, only four years after North Dakota entered the Union.