Johnson Township, population center of N.D.

This rural township is 'in the middle of nowhere' and has 15 people.

Here's why it's ND's population center.

SYKESTON, N.D. - Johnson Township in Wells County is a remote square filled with farmland and rolling prairie punctuated by ponds and sloughs.

It's farm country - corn, soybeans and wheat are the chief crops - and a good place to hunt ducks, drawing hunters from as far away as Kentucky and South Carolina. The township's 35 square miles are home to 15 people, according to census figures.

That official population count might be a bit low, considering Johnson Township boasts 10 or 12 farmsteads, according to Jana Mogren, the Wells County planning and zoning director and longtime resident of the area.

Still, sparsely populated Johnson Township might seem an unlikely place to hold the distinction of being home to North Dakota's center of population - the geographical point that coincides with the centerpoint of the state's population.

Count Mogren among those who are surprised by Johnson Township's status as the state's center of population.

"I highly doubt that most people know that that's even a thing," she said. She described the township as "very waterlogged, with lots of big sloughs," adding, "It's beautiful."

Then again, given Wells County's east-central location within the state, and its centrality in the midst of North Dakota's urban centers, it's less surprising, Mogren she said.

Johnson Township is 158 miles from Fargo, 154 miles from Grand Forks, 102 miles from Bismarck and 119 miles from Minot.

"When you look at it, we're just about centralized between these bigger areas," Mogren said. "It's just neat," she added. "I don't think people realize that's even being tracked."

In fact, the town of McClusky, located 53 miles west of Sykeston, the nearest town to Johnson Township, claims to be the geographic center of North Dakota.

"We're kind of in the middle of nowhere," said Jon Polries, a farmer in Johnson Township. "It's handy, except it's two hours away from everything," which gives residents lots of options for shopping and services.

"If we're flying out of somewhere, we've got our pick," he said.

Robert Marcotte, a neighboring farmer, was surprised to learn that Johnson Township holds North Dakota's center of population.

"That's interesting," he said, "because there's not many of us left around here."

Demographers don't pay a lot of attention to the movement of the center of population, said Kevin Iverson, North Dakota's demographer.

"Geographers, certainly, pay attention to it," he said. "For the Census Bureau, maybe it's one of those fun facts."

A long-standing title

Wells County actually has been home to North Dakota's center of population for many decades, a continuous record dating back to 1910.

North Dakota's first center of population, as calculated by the Census Bureau, was located in Barnes County, north and west of Valley City, in 1880, when northern Dakota Territory had 36,909 people.

Back then, the population was concentrated in the east, the first area of the state to be settled.

By 1890, North Dakota's center of population jumped north and west, to adjacent Griggs County, then shifted further west and a bit north to northwest Foster County in 1900.

As railroads crossed the state, settlers followed. The vanguard Northern Pacific Railway reached Fargo in 1872, and by 1873 had reached Edwinton, renamed Bismarck. It took another decade for the railroad to cross the Missouri River, a transportation milestone that boosted settlement west of the river.

Those settlement migrations are evident in the shifting center of population, as it jumped west in the early decades, finding a migratory home in Wells County starting in 1910.

A decade later, in 1920, North Dakota's center of population began marching east, largely reflecting growth in Cass County and other eastern locations.

The easterly track of the center of population continued until it lurched to the west from 2010 to 2020, reflecting population growth in the Oil Patch during the Bakken Boom.

Much of the center of population's early westerly travel coincided with the Great Dakota Boom, from 1878 to 1886, when settlers poured into northern Dakota Territory from neighboring states as well as more than 100,000 immigrants from Europe.

The Second Dakota Boom followed from 1889, the year North Dakota became a state, until 1915. Homesteading peaked in 1908, when more than 14,000 claims were filed. By 1918, all of North Dakota was considered settled.

"The northward shift of the center of gravity for population by 1900 - this pretty clearly reflects the passing of the torch from the Northern Pacific to the Great Northern Railroad," said Tom Isern, a history professor at North Dakota State University. "All those NP stations and towns founded in the late 1880s in-filled the northern tier."

Then the shift westward by 1910, a result of the Second Dakota Boom, "wrought construction of new railroads specific to the west - the Milwaukee, for instance - and the lacing of branch lines across the state," Isern said.

"New development post-1900 was weighted early toward the west, but often that efflorescence was short-lived," he said.

Later in the 20th century, the emptying of rural areas, which included migration to nearby cities, "would have produced a relative shift east and south, a direction eventually reversed by petroleum development," Isern said.

Consistent population increases in Cass County, driven by growth in Fargo and West Fargo, account for much of the eastern drift of the center of population, Iverson said. Cass County's population grew 28.2% from 2010 to 2022, when it reached 192,734.

North Dakota's population grew 15.5% during that period, a stretch that saw the continued emptying out of rural areas, a trend that is evident in Wells County, where the population peaked in 1930 at 13,289 and has steadily declined since, falling to 3,930 by 2020, suffering a 6.2% loss from a decade earlier.

Not long ago, Marcotte was looking at an atlas from 1961, which indicated there were 54 farms in Johnson Township, roughly five times the number today.

Early in the oil boom, 10 or 15 years ago, the Wells County zoning board paid for a study that projected the county's population could double within 10 years, an optimistic prediction that didn't materialize.

'Country living, for sure'

There is no town in Wells County's Johnson Township, but Sykeston, with an estimated population of 99 and located a few miles to the north, is the closest.

Sykeston became the first town in the county to be organized in 1884, the same year as Wells County was organized, a head start that helped it win designation as the county seat.

A decade later, by a three-fifths margin, voters selected Fessenden as their choice for county seat. The shift owed a lot to the Soo Line Railroad, which traversed the county and gave birth to the towns of Cathay, Harvey and Fessenden.

Some Sykeston backers wouldn't acknowledge defeat, and sought to block the move - stubbornness that was overcome when a caravan of 29 horse-drawn wagons hauled the courthouse to Fessenden, 25 miles northwest, where the county seat remains.

Sykeston no longer holds a grudge over losing the county seat, Mogren said. Last July, Sykeston observed its 140th anniversary, a celebration that included an all-school reunion, community picnic and 5K run.

Marcotte, who has lived almost his entire life in Johnson Township, doesn't mind the sparse population and remoteness. He considers it an asset.

"We really love it," he said. "It's so quiet. Definitely country living, for sure."

(This article was reprinted with permission.)