On U.S. 2 in North Dakota, just west of the turnoff for Tioga, you will spot two little brown highway signs pointing left:

Historic Site

5 Miles

And:

Lewis and Clark State Park

30 Miles

It would be natural to assume that the historic site has something to do with Lewis and Clark, but it doesn’t. Drive too fast or ignore your odometer and you will miss it: a narrow dirt drive that leads to a stout monument of reddish stone, maybe seven feet high. It reads:

Oil was first discovered in North Dakota by Amerada Petroleum Corporation April 4, 1951. This Williston Basin discovery, Clarence Iverson No. 1, opened a new era for North Dakota and reaffirmed the confidence of her people in the opportunities and future of this great state.

The monument was dedicated on Oct. 25, 1953, just two and a half years after the event it commemorates, but people had wildcatted for oil in North Dakota since 1916. After 35 years of fruitless drilling, you can understand why contemporaries would have regarded that first strike as historic.

Now, for some, the notion of this as a “historic site” could be jarring; oil might seem to mix with history as poorly as it does with water, or waterfowl. But in North Dakota, an oil boom is indeed historic. It does not look like history, at least not as we think of it; it looks like storage tanks, and gas flares, and towering derricks. Most of all, it looks like pump jacks, alone, in sets, always in motion.