Family Men Go It Alone in North Dakota's Oil Fields Photographs by Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times A Long Way From Home Bob Ripka, left, travels to work in the Williston oil fields from Pine City, Minn.; Randall Ervin comes from Beaverton, Ore.; Guy Miramontes from Las Vegas, NV. LAST spring, Bob Ripka decided the time had come for drastic change. His once-robust income from his job at a printing company was dwindling. His family lost its house in the real estate crash. And employment prospects around his home in Pine City, Minn., more than an hour north of Minneapolis, appeared scant. He heard talk around town about plentiful work in North Dakota, where new drilling technologies are driving an oil boom. "And I decided, "Well, I'm going to go make some money," " he recalled in an interview. So on Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Ripka, 48, removed the rear seats from his 2003 Dodge minivan and replaced them with a mattress. He threw some clothes in a bag, said goodbye to his family and drove 10 hours west to Williston - ground zero in the North Dakota petroleum explosion. After filling out a round of applications and sleeping in his car for several nights, Mr. Ripka was offered a job driving heavy trucks for an oil services company, helping to pour cement to secure casings for new wells. He passed a drug test and trained for two weeks in Denver before settling, in July, into his new home away from home: a 7-by-11-foot cubicle at a "man camp." A sort of cross between a military barracks and a college dormitory, temporary man camps have sprung up in and around Williston to help house the influx of workers from around the country. Mr. Ripka is one of thousands of men with similar stories. They have descended on Williston and its environs over the last two to three years, pulled by the magnet of jobs created by an oil boom with the potential to make the region one of the largest petroleum resources in the country, and pushed by the hope that a steady income can put their finances back on track after a grueling downturn. While the national unemployment rate is 8.3 percent, in North Dakota it is 3.2 percent - and it is 1 percent in Williams County, where Williston has grown from a population of 12,500 before the boom began in 2008 to an estimated 20,000 now. Many newcomers are, like Mr. Ripka, middle-age family men angling for a fresh financial start. Builders cannot throw up homes fast enough to house them; an estimated 1,200 housing units are expected to be completed in Williston in the next few months, and one-bedroom apartments rent for $1,700 or more a month, if they are available. With an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 job openings in the area, many men live where they can - in their cars, or in illegally parked campers - and send their earnings to their families while they hunt for housing. Because of the fast pace of oil well development to tap the Bakken shale field, the men often are on call around the clock and are away from their families for extended periods. A typical schedule might be to work 15 days straight, followed by six days off to go home. Airfare out of Williston can be steep, though, so many workers drive or take an Amtrak train, which adds travel time that cuts into their visits. Some companies occasionally offer to put family members up in local hotels for visits. But not everyone goes home. The men can earn extra money - $150 to $200 a day or more, depending on the job - by working their scheduled days off, so many do. That means, though, that they are away from home for five weeks at a stretch, or even longer. Mr. Ripka, for instance, was home in January but then stayed in Williston, working, through early March. It is worth the sacrifice financially, he said. Back home, he said, he made $27,000 for the last six months he worked at his printing job; after six months in Williston, he had earned $45,000. Mr. Ripka plans to continue for about five years, long enough to pay down some debt, including a loan his parents took out to help finance the purchase of the home in Pine City where his family lives. He said his credit was marred by the loss of the family's former home in a short sale, in which the lender agreed to accept less than what was owed, so his parents pitched in to help. "I'd rather be home every day and see my family," he said. But this economy nowadays, you got to do what you got to do. Mr. Ripka is one of the lucky ones in Williston, as far as housing: his employer, the Sanjel Corporation, contracts to house its workers at a man camp, so his lodging and meals are subsidized. One afternoon last month, Mr. Ripka gave a tour of his camp, operated by Atco Structures and Logistics, a Canadian company. The "lodge," as Atco calls it, comprises four, 49-room modular dormitories. His room has a twin bed, a cabinet, a television and DVD player, a chair and a single window. A blue felt blanket hung tenuously over the blinds, secured with tape - Mr. Ripka's attempt, when working night shifts, to block out the daylight while he sleeps.