The close-knit community, about 35 miles northeast of Dickinson, has little business, and the Four Corners Café is one that attracts many residents.
Everyone knows everyone in Fairfield and usually spends time with people in the same circle, said Jesse Romanyshyn, owner of the cafe. Measures taken locally to prevent COVID-19 include reducing contact with other people and social detachment – aspects of life that many rural residents practiced long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
People are smart in the area, he said, and are already taking the necessary precautions to protect themselves from COVID-19.
Slope and Billings counties, with a combined population of about 1,700 people, each reported zero COVID-19 deaths and a total of 83 positive cases in the 11 months that North Dakota resisted the virus. All other North Dakota counties had at least one virus death in a state that recorded more than 1,400 COVID-19 deaths and saw one of the country’s worst outbreaks in the fall.
For Romanyshyn, it can be frustrating when small rural towns, such as those in Slope and Billings Counties, are grouped with the larger cities of North Dakota – because for him it is obvious that the two are very different.
“It’s totally different here,” he said.
The Four Corners Café in Fairfield, ND, about 16 miles north of Interstate 94 on busy US Highway 85, has no customer vehicles in its lunchtime parking lot on Tuesday, February 2. Craig Bihrle / Special to the Forum.
Billings and Slope counties, along with neighboring Golden Valley county in western North Dakota, reported no active cases on Friday, February 5, according to the Department of Health. Some rural counties across the country country also reported zero COVID-19 deaths, including Mineral County of Montana and Jones County of South Dakota.
Coronavirus cases have been confirmed in all counties in the United States, with an unknown county in Hawaii being the last, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The number of serious outbreaks in rural western North Dakota has been limited, said Sherry Adams, executive officer of the Southwest District Health Unit – an organization that oversees the health response in eight counties in western North Dakota.
THE outbreak in western North Dakota it looks very different from larger cities, Adams said. If 10 people are positive, this is considered a “huge” outbreak for the area, she said.
Because the communities are so small, this can easily affect what may be the only gas station or meeting space in the community. Thus, an outbreak of viruses can be more harmful to rural areas than to metropolitan cities. A small town that is very aware of this is Medora.
Medora, a cowboy-themed city that attracts tourists in the summer, is almost deserted in February. There are no cars parked on the city streets, and those who live or work in Medora wave politely to outsiders, no doubt wondering what could bring them to the city at this time of year.
In a community that thrives on tourism, a pandemic would likely drive tourists away. But last summer, travelers stopped in Medora almost as if everything was normal, according to some city dwellers.
As the summer of 2020 was a success due to the circumstances, business owners hope that this summer will continue to attract people looking for some kind of relief in the midst of the pandemic.
The Medora Community Center also functions as the city hall. Municipal Auditor Gary Ridenhower said that business owners are taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, as they do not want their business to close or Medora to become a COVID-19 hotspot. Craig Bihrle / Special to the Forum.
Last summer, Medora had weekly test events to monitor the spread of COVID-19. Even though tourists traveled from across the state and country to the small town, no official in Medora tested positive until September, Adams said.
All business owners in Medora don’t want COVID-19 in the city, said Gary Ridenhower, the city’s auditor. Everyone knows that if COVID-19 reaches the city, its revenue will be lost, he said.
“Together, we can reach our ultimate goal, which is to overcome this with our business intact and our reputation intact,” said Ridenhower. “If that happens, it will be a huge victory.”
Since Governor Doug Burgum allowed the masks’ statewide mandate to expire last month, masks are only recommended in Medora.
Ridenhower said that the way people think about the pandemic in Medora is different from the rest of the state, and people value their freedom and their right to do things as they see fit.
“It’s a different culture, and if more people could understand that it’s not about telling people what to do,” said Ridenhower, “it’s about ‘here’s what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and how we do it’ we are doing this together. ‘”
Almost everyone in the city knows someone who contracted COVID-19 or even died of it, said Karen Schmeling, a resident of Golden Valley County who works in Medora.
Billings County, in southwestern North Dakota, has fewer than 1,000 permanent residents based on recent estimates. However, it entertains tens of thousands of tourists each year at its county seat in Medora and also hosts substantial oil industry traffic. It remains one of the two municipalities in the state with no deaths from residents due to COVID-19. Craig Bihrle / Special to the Forum.
“It took a while for people to get serious here, but I think a lot of them do, because we’re getting to the point where almost all of us know someone who died because of it,” said Schmeling.
One of the main differences between COVID-19’s response in rural areas compared to metropolitan areas is that quarantine in rural areas can be more active, with farmers being able to work on their properties.
The downside, however, is that people may not take the virus so seriously because the communities are very small, said Adams.
“Because of the real rural areas, sometimes people don’t necessarily think it is in their community,” said Adams. “When that happens, it is a little harder to encourage testing or to encourage people to continue to mitigate the things that are happening.”
Romanyshyn said he wants people to understand that rural areas are very different from cities and should not be grouped in terms of COVID-19’s response.
The Four Corners Café is once again open for meals in person, and he said he hopes his business will continue to survive during this pandemic, which unfortunately closed many rural businesses.
Readers can contact Forum reporter Michelle Griffith, a member of Report for America, at [email protected].