Last year I wrote about the Poppers, Frank and Deborah, the Rutgers University husband-wife duo who theorized that the Great Plains—from Texas to North Dakota and from Oklahoma to Denver—were fit to be nothing more than a “Buffalo Commons.”

The couple predicted that the Great Plains, whose largest city is Lubbock, Texas, will slowly dwindle to a waste land because of it5 general inability to support human life, and that the federal government would be wise to make it a national grasslands park before it be comes one by default. The Poppers have appeared in Bismarck twice, by invitation, since their paper came out, and reports from here and other Great Plains states indicate that residents respond to the doomsday news with polite scorn. No one has dignified the Poppers’ proposal with a response-until now.

Coming to the rescue of the sane midriff of our nation are Stephen and Barbara Ragan, a husband-wife team from Minot State University in Minot, North Dakota. The Ragans—he in structs special ed teachers and she lectures in the English department-have published an 11-page scholarly paper promoting an “International Parkade” and proposing that New Jersey-home of Rutgers University, the Poppers, and most of our nation’s ills, so they contend-be turned into a giant park ing lot with a walled-off coastal section for gamblers, drug users, prostitution—and tourists. The seven million New Jersey residents would be moved to the toxic waste dump of the nation, the North Central Plains: North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.

“Today [New Jersey] serves as a bedroom community for New York, even though it is a separate state. This proposal would change that relationship only slightly, making New Jersey a federally operated playground and park ing lot-an International Parkade—for the state of New York and surrounding areas,” write the Ragans. “While this proposal may involve a great deal of individual suffering and community hardship for New Jersey, it seems that the greater good of the region must prevail. Without this sacrifice, the region is destined to become an urban prison in a sea of asphalt.”

Frank Popper responded gallantly. “I’m all for it,” he told the Bismarck Tribune. “It’s a brilliant solution. [It] should be right up there at the top of the Interior Department’s priority list.” He suggested that the two couples get together for “mixed doubles land-use planning,” and added that the removal of seven million people from New Jersey to the Great Plains, including North Dakota, “would be a gain for both states.”

Stephen and Barbara Ragan spent six long hours researching their topic. “I learned some things about New Jersey,” Stephen told the Tribune. “It’s worse than I thought.”

The Ragans compare a Middle Atlantic region comprised of nine states and the District of Columbia with the four-state North Central Plains region. The Middle Atlantic region, which contains 60 million people, 25 percent of all US residents, has an average population density of 359 people per square mile, compared with seven people per square mile in the North Central Plains states.

The Middle Atlantic region is heavily industrialized and highly dependent on tourist and government spending. “With the possible exceptions of potatoes and tobacco from Virginia, the agricultural output of the region is insignificant,” say the Ragans. Their paper declares that the federal government’s practice of giving tax breaks to East Coast heavy and light technological industries “constitutes the largest and longest-running industrial and environmental miscalculation in American history” (precisely what the Poppers said about federal agricultural programs in the Great Plains states). Frank Popper, upon hearing this statement, told the Tribune that “the authors of this proposal plainly know New Jersey and have traveled the length (165 miles) and breadth (70 miles) of our beautiful state.” The Ragans, who hail from Washington—the state, not the city-state—have never set foot in New Jersey, and appear to be proud of it. 

Their plan addresses six problems:

1. Air transportation. Eight huge East-Coast airports would be closed and five larger mega-airports, “similar in structure to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport but larger and more complex,” would be built in New Jersey. Each new airport would serve only one segment of arriving and departing traffic. “For example, the air port just west of Pleasantville (which would, under this plan, be depopulated, of course) would serve European and Southern states’ traffic,” explain the Ragans. Since there would be few residents of the Parkade State, noise pollution wouldn’t be a problem.

2. Ground transportation. People flying into the mega-airports would take a high-speed (100+ m.p.h.) “Metrorail” to their destination cities: Boston, New York, Washington. In the major Eastern cities, all automobile traffic would be banned except for emergency vehicles and taxis. Those who insist on driving would have to park in New Jersey and take the “Metrorail” to wherever they’re going.

“Since New Jersey is so centralized and so small, no major city will be more than 1½ hours from any airport,” the Ragans write. “This is approximately how long it now takes to drive the 38 miles from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. on a fair day by automobile as the driver listens to the traffic announcer on AM 530 plead with him to ‘try to survive.'”

3. Stress and density. “In New York, sportsmen who purchase fishing licenses are warned to eat the fish they catch ‘sparingly if at all’,” say the authors. In their plan, the northern part of New Jersey would be reforested and become a man-made wilderness area. No more than 50 people per square mile would be allowed into the wilderness. This would give every one of the 60 million regional residents one day each year to vacation in an area that is not seriously overpopulated.

4. Crime and drug abuse. The walled-off coastal strip would contain the entire US criminal element, be coming a “drug-usage zone, free of government interference.” Inhabitants would be left alone but never allowed to leave. Tourists could come and go, although “for the tourist wishing to gamble in Atlantic City, gambling will take on a whole new meaning,” say the Ragans.

5. Poverty and homelessness. “The jobless masses in the large cities could be put on the federal payroll as parking lot attendants” in the Parkade State and would live in houses left by those New Jersey residents moved to the Great Plains. The houses would be moved into separate compounds and spread evenly over the 4,000-mile parking lot to provide permanent supervision of the cars and alleviate crowding.

6. Depopulation. “There appears to be two alternative solutions,” write the Ragans. “The first is to move the [New Jersey] population into contiguous states where the population is already so dense that seven million more people would make little practical difference. . . . On the other hand, this option would have the disadvantage of placing additional stress on an already critical situation. It might be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, causing the immediate and complete compromise of the en tire region.”

The couple suggest shipping the seven million New Jerseyites to the North Central Plains, which would raise the population density of those states from seven to 27 people per square mile. This “would hardly be problematic” for the New Jerseyites, but the Ragans don’t say how it might benefit the recipient states.

“No doubt the [remedies] suggested herein will be considered extreme by many,” say the authors. “However, it is an extreme situation that threatens nearly one-fourth of our nation’s population. If a foreign power had imposed the living conditions endured by 25 percent of our people upon them, it would be sufficient cause to declare war. That kind of situation calls for extreme action.”