DEVILS LAKE, N.D. (AP) — Raymond and Laureen Faye Jetty are moving their ranch buildings to higher ground to escape flooding Devils Lake.
The high level of the lake has forced the Jettys to move from the Black Tiger Bay area, about 13 miles south of the city of Devils Lake, to a new ranch site nine miles away. Both ranch sites are in the St. Michael area on the Spirit Lake Reservation.
Jetty, who also is chairman of the Buffalo Committee for the Spirit Lake tribe, believes he is the first rancher or farmer in the area to move an entire ranch site because of the flooding. Officials in Benson and Ramsey counties said they were not aware of any other rancher or farmer making such a move.
Jetty said he finished moving the last of the outbuildings, including five barns and a shop, on Friday. He started the move a few months ago.
He said his one-story house probably will be moved next week, when the house-mover he hired returns to the area.
“If it doesn’t get moved this month, it will probably stay there — it will be ‘islandized,’” Jetty said. “It’s gonna be on a little island and we’ll never get it out of there unless we take it apart.”
While Jetty and his wife wait for the movers, they are living in a mobile home on the new ranch site.
“Our (old) ranch was sitting at 1,435 (feet) and the water is up at 1,438 (feet),” Jetty said. He said his grazing land is not affected by the high water.
Jetty and his brother, Steven, run a cow-calf operation with about 500 animals. Steven Jetty lives on another ranch. Raymond and his wife, Laureen Faye, a teacher at Four Winds Elementary School on the Spirit Lake Reservation, lived on the Black Tiger Bay area ranch since they got married in 1968.
“We should have about $150,000 stuck in the move,” Raymond Jetty said. “That’s a lot of calves.”
Jetty said the Spirit Lake Tribe will help with some of the costs of the move, but he doesn’t know how much yet. “Whatever they do will be appreciated,” he said.
Ramsey County officials said there aren’t any programs available to ranchers or farmers if they have to move their entire operations — just flood insurance, if they have it.
Like others in the Devils Lake area, the Jettys have faced flooding problems earlier. Jetty said that three years ago, he and his wife watched the lake’s level rise.
“One morning we got up and there were waves bouncing off our barns,” he said. “That’s how fast it came in.”
The Jettys built a dike to hold the water back, hoping that an outlet for the lake would be built.
The dike didn’t hold back the water and the five barns went underwater, Jetty said.
He never expected to see all the flooding around Devils Lake, and he said he’s glad his personal experience with the flood is nearing an end.