Alert – Charming Midwest city that featured in 1990s Oscar-winning movie is America’s next biggest boomtown

The North Dakota city of Fargo became a household name in the 1990s as the setting of the black comic crime thriller with the same name.

Today, Fargo and its roughly 133,000 residents are gaining notoriety for a different reason.

The city has just been ranked as America’s fastest-growing boomtown by the financial news outlet 24/7 Wall St.

It’s the only North Dakota city to make it in the top 10 US boomtowns, with the shortlist dominated by up-and-comers in Texas.  

By the end of the century, Fargo’s population is set to balloon by 238 percent to nearly 430,000 people, said the outlet.

That’s a big change for a city that was in the 1996 Coen brothers movie depicted as a desolate, snow-covered backwater, where unaffected locals spoke with flat accents.

The Fargo Theater in the downtown historic district offers entertainment to Fargo’s roughly 133,000 residents.  

The city became a household name in the 1990s thanks to the thriller Fargo, starring Frances McDormand as a pregnant Minnesota police chief

North Dakota’s most populous city was founded in 1871 and is a cultural hub for the region and home to North Dakota State University.

The website livability.com scores Fargo as ‘one of the best places to live in America’ thanks to its ‘friendly residents and a diversified, recession-proof economy.’

Locals talk up their entertainment options, from historic buildings to the Red River Zoo, a theater, a gallery and an air museum.

Bonanzaville USA, in West Fargo, is a reconstruction of the area’s 19th-century farming boom.

The city is also close to pine forests and lakes, where residents can mountain bike, canoe, camp, and hike.

But that’s been harder to enjoy in recent weeks, as the Fargo area has been deluged with smoke from wildfires across North Dakota and Montana, which are blown eastward.

Fargo residents benefit from more affordable living, with the average home selling for $299,000, well below the US average, says property website Zillow.

‘Those who put down roots on the prairie find that their dollar stretches further in Fargo,’ says livability.com.

Yet that’s changing, as its population swells — median house prices jumped 6.5 percent this past year, Zillow says.

Locals and visitors have posted about rapid construction and the changing face of Fargo on social media.

They show houses and apartments going up on vacant lots in the downtown and other areas. West Fargo is a rapidly growing suburban community.

Still, the city, which merges across the Minnesota state line with Moorhead, has maintained a small-town charm.

Fargo is set to balloon by 238 percent to nearly 430,000 people by the end of the century, according to a projection.

Locals and visitors have posted about construction and the changing face of Fargo over recent years.

Though it is growing, Fargo has not lost it’s small-town charm and sense of community, locals say.

One X/Twitter user recently posted a photo of a heartwarming sign on a pizzeria’s door.

Staff of Little Caesars Pizza had seen a vagrant rifling through their ‘trash for their next meal,’ says the sign.

‘You’re a human being and worth more than a meal from a dumpster,’ it says.

It invites the cash-strapped person to visit ‘for a couple of slices of hot pizza … no charge.’

The cordial Midwestern attitude is typical of many of the secondary characters in the movie, Fargo.

The film, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen, made lesser-known Fargo a household name, when it won two Oscars in 1997.

It starred Frances McDormand as a pregnant Minnesota police chief investigating a triple murder resulting from a car salesman’s botched plan to hire kidnappers to seize his wife and extort a ransom from her rich dad.

The film also stars William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi.

The movie in 2014 spawned a television series starring Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman and others that’s run for five seasons.

Fargo is the only North Dakota city to make it in to 24/7 Wall St’s list of future boomtowns. 

Texas dominates the top 10, with appearances by Denton, College Station, Sugar Land, Frisco, and Round Rock.

Other high-ranking cities include Fort Collins, Colorado, Murfreesboro, Tennessee,  Lincoln, Nebraska, and Renton, Washington.