Across the county, unemployment is down. But crime, mostly alcohol-related, is up, said Sheriff Clinton Walters. There was even a shooting at a Towanda tavern a few months back.
"We didn't have shootings in this area unless it's family members," said Jim Meehan, regional housing coordinator for Futures Community Support Services.
So many title researchers have descended on the Bradford County Courthouse to examine deeds for gas leases that the county extended office hours and installed tables in the hallways to accommodate the crowds. The rotunda looks like a college library during finals.
"Hey, this was a dead area, so the excitement is mostly good," said Shirley Rockefeller, the county's register and recorder of deeds. Her office has even recorded several marriages of local women to Gulf Coast roughnecks, she said.
According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, 355 of the 1,368 Marcellus wells drilled in Pennsylvania this year were drilled in this rural county on the New York border. Bradford County also leads the state in gas production.
Suddenly, in an agricultural region of 62,000 people that had been suffering long-term population decline, decent housing is in short supply.
So many outsiders have flooded in that rents have doubled. Despite the expansion of mobile-home and RV parks, longtime tenants are priced out of the market.
Gas operators have booked most of the motel rooms here and across the border in New York, where the state has a temporary ban on drilling so it can study the controversial extraction process called hydraulic fracturing.
Even modest lodgings are pricey, and social-service agencies that relied on motels for emergency shelter are out of luck.
