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Old 09-25-2007, 10:08 PM
 
4 posts, read 20,377 times
Reputation: 10

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OMG, some of these threads have me scared........my hubby is up for a job in Gillette with BNSF. We are currently in Southern California and have been all our lives. California is overpriced, overrated, and NO place to raise a family. We are ready to leave, but it looks like our only opportunity right now is Gillette. I already know to expect the big weather difference....used to 120 degree summers here. I'm just worried that it might be as hard to find a place to live as what these forums make it seem. I have searched online, it doesn't seem like finding a home to buy would be such a problem, but I don't know that we want to buy since we don't know the pace and all. Ideally, I would love to get into a rental with a one year lease to see if we agree with the area before we buy. We are a family of six with 2 dogs and 3 cats. We own a 28 ft toy hauler, but I was thinking about selling that before the move. Is it wiser to hold onto it as it seems this might be our only shelter here until we buy?
I'm under the impression that the population is roughly 25,000. Is this correct? I'm really hoping to hear some good things about Gillette and Wyoming as we are in desperate need to get out of California and introduce our children to a better way of life. Are the schools traditional there, I mean here, elementary is k-4th, middle school is 5th and 6th, Jr.High is 7th and 8th, and high school is 9th-12th. I don't like the elementary-middle school separation. It forces my 5th grader to become more grown up and face more responsibilities than I feel should be placed on a 5th grader. Is school year round? I'm assuming they probably have quite a few snowed out school days?? Forgive my lack of knowledge in this area, I've seen real live snow maybe 5 or 6 times in my life and I am 31! lol Pretty sad huh? Anyhow, any info, advice, or comments good bad or indifferent would be great. I am a bit scared, but the truth will help me out best even if it's not pretty! Thanks!
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Old 09-25-2007, 10:17 PM
 
Location: Spots Wyoming
18,700 posts, read 41,886,322 times
Reputation: 2147483647
Gillette can be a very busy terminal. East pool and loadouts are kept running pretty heavy.

Housing can be a bear. But here's what I've found. It goes so fast, people don't advertise anywhere. There are houses there, but you have to look. Plan on a motel for a while if both are going right away. Husband could probably stay in the complex is you and kids weren't along. But there's housing, just gotta find it.

BNSF normally gives a 1.5 hour call so if you can slap on your long johns and make it to the terminal, you now know what distance you can safely commute. haha

If your husband has any kind of seniority, he can build for a couple more years and get out of Gillette to more desireable places. Not that Gillette is not a nice town but I'm talking areas of track. For instance, Sheridan has runs up to Forsyth and Laurel Montana so they get good miles in. Where as in Gillette, because of all the mine traffic, you might pull your 12 and be a mile out of town.

Brace yourself for the winter. I've always told people, it's 75 in my house, and 75 in my office, so what's your question? haha

Don't try and fight the winter. Work with it. You don't need a heavy coat. You need layers and layers of lighter coats. Then you can add layers or drop layers as the day progresses.

Your coming from Earthquake country. Remember all the things they kept giving brosures for. "In Case of Earthquake, insure you have 2 weeks of food, insure you have 2 weeks of water, etc..." Replace the word Earhquake with the worn Snowstorm. Don't happen often, but when it does, you may spend a few days in your home and can't get out.
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Old 09-26-2007, 03:35 PM
 
4 posts, read 20,377 times
Reputation: 10
rgr that, and thanks. It sounds like this is a high turnover rate for living. We are looking for a place to call home for good. Hubby is a mechanical supervisor with BNSF so I'm not worried about getting the 1.5 hour call before, his shifts are scheduled and consistant since he doesn't take the trains out. lol A lil more concerned about finding a home and having to drive the kids to school in the snow. How close is the nearest big airport? Maybe we'll have to take a flight out there before we go any futher trying to land this job. Anyhow, thanks again and anyone with any info on how the schools run, I'd love to hear about it!
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Old 09-26-2007, 08:41 PM
 
Location: pensacola,florida
3,202 posts, read 4,411,679 times
Reputation: 1671
well gillette,and wyoming in general,is a lot different then many picture it so i would suggest you visit before committing to a move.schools are very well funded and are broke down k-5/6-8/9-12.school is almost never cancelled for snow.rentals are impossible,especially with pets.gillette has a small airport but its real expensive to fly there.fly into rapid city,south dakota and rent a car and drive over,if you move to gillette you'll likely spend a fair amount of sparetime in the blackhills around rapid city and west into wyoming anyway so you as well start your trip from there.some people love gillette and many hate it.you'll have to visit and make up your own mind.
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Old 09-30-2007, 07:23 PM
 
19 posts, read 68,776 times
Reputation: 15
Schools in Gillette are good....but overcrowded.
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Old 03-30-2008, 11:52 AM
 
2 posts, read 8,299 times
Reputation: 13
Default Relocating to Gillette

I have been searching the net for info on Gillette, I am considering relocating to Gillette. I will graduate as an RN in May, my wife is originally from Rapid City and wants to move closer to her family. I'm cool with that and I'm still negotiating my position with the local Hospital. We have 3 kids, I have heard that the schools there have great sport programs for the students. Only one of my kids are into sports, but my youngest is beginning to express an interest. That alone is not enough to warrent moving to Gillette. I see that housing is a major concern, since I have been in school for the past 3 yrs, no bank is going to give me a loan right off the bat to buy a house. Plus the houses are well over 200,000.00. So we will need a rental that is reasonably priced and will allow my daughters cat. I will not under any circumstance make her get rid of the cat, it is traumatic enough uprooting them from their support system, and getting rid of her cat is just wrong. Right now we live in a small community in Iowa, we have also considered moving to Rapid City, we have lived there in the past and loved the area, but the potential offer from Gillette is much better. We have visited Gillette a couple of times, but still do not know much about the community.

I have read in horror some of the postings on this site about Gillette and am beginning to wonder if it is the best thing for myself and my family?? So anyone with updated info on Gillette, please give me a "heads up" about Gillette.
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Old 03-30-2008, 01:23 PM
 
Location: Spots Wyoming
18,700 posts, read 41,886,322 times
Reputation: 2147483647
The housing situation in Gillette is still pretty bleak. You might think about Moorecroft or Buffalo. Moorecroft doesn't always have places available but sometimes you can find something there. Buffalo, on the other hand, can be a little expensive but you can usually find something. Buffalo would be about a 50 minute (60+ mile) commute. But it would give you time to get on a list or find a house that is opening up.

For some reason, the apartments in Gillette are pretty tough to get a pet into. So you'll probably want a house and then it will still be tough. Might have to lay down a pretty hefty pet deposit.

Gillette has sprawled a lot in the last few years. Specially South of town. But they've done a pretty good job of it so traffic isn't real nasty, although it can be frustrating at times on the Douglas Hwy.

Gillette is right in the peak of an energy boom. But I don't see it going away anytime soon because mostly it's coal with some methane. Unlike Sheridan, which is peaked, but it's methane and I personally think it's going to bust in the next couple of years.

Once you get into Gillette, you'll like it. Schools are good. But remember, it's a construction town. Rough, hard workers. So you're not going to find all the fancy stuff you would in Denver, but you'll still find plenty to do.

Weather can be pretty rough some times. This year we got off real easy and only had a few days with troublesom snow. Not sure about Gillette, but here in Sheridan the schools did well. I don't remember any snow days.
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Old 03-30-2008, 02:37 PM
 
Location: Gillette
208 posts, read 906,925 times
Reputation: 146
Hey LeavinCali....

Some people transition well and others really don't; what you experience up here will really depend on you and what your likes and dislikes are. If you need to have a mall down the street and the "multicultural" dining choices of SoCal you're going to be disappointed with Gillette.... well, most places in Wyoming for that matter. If you're looking to slow down your life a little bit Wyoming is the place for you.

Gillette could be considered a very nice town or a very poor town... it all depends on what you're used to. I'm very familiar with the CA lifestyle; I was born in Modesto back in the late 70's when you could still go to Graffiti Night without having to worry about getting shot or stabbed by some little gangster punks. My sister lives in Santa Monica about a block from the beach, and my parents and in-laws are still in Modesto. My younger years were spent swimming in canals and rivers, cruising McHenry Ave and watching races (wouldn't ever consider doing something illegal like street racing my 468-inch big block-powered truck ) on California Ave and Paradise Rd.

The area I grew up in is nothing like it used to be..... the orchards and farmland that I like have been largely turned into cheap subdivisions anywhere close to town. Modesto, Ceres, Turlock, Oakdale, Ripon, Manteca, Lathorop etc are all connected now; you can drive from town to town without so much as a break in the sidewalk in many places. The cost of living has so far outpaced the wages (thanks to the Bay Area for that one) that most people in the Central Valley can't even think about owning a home in a normal market. My 29-mile (one way) commute to Lathrop could take up to two hours on a bad day; just driving across Modesto could be an hour-long ordeal on a normal day.

The taxes were outrageous.... every time I turned around I was getting charged for something; the state had this "it's really our money and you should be grateful for anything you get to keep" mentality. The bloated CA government keeps growing on the backs of the people and then demands more money because they can't stop spending more money than they have coming in on state social entitlement programs.

The regulation was burdensome and backwards; you were good to go if you wanted to get high or kill an unborn baby, but anybody who wanted to own a scary-looking gun, carry a means of self-defense, keep their own hard-earned money, change a component on their own vehicle, or own a business was viewed as a potential criminal. The last vehicle I sold in CA was my little '83 Toyota 4x4.... I was building it into a little mountain rig, and decided to sell it about a year ago because I didn't have the time to really finish it. When I went to get it smogged they wouldn't pass it (even though it ran very clean) because I had a locking fuel cap on it. I had to put the factory fuel cap back on my personal property to get signed off to sell my personal property. CA regulated my fuel cap.

The other huge problems were illegal aliens and meth. Those two issues are intertwined; people who are in CA illegally and don't care about consequences..... they'll just run back to Mexico and come back later with another load of ephedrine or crank that's already made. You must speak Spanish to get a job in many parts of CA; this is very apparent in the construction trades and anything where a business is communicating with the public. They hire "cheap" labor.... unskilled, uneducated and low wage earners. The businesses get this "cheap" labor (no such thing) while the taxpayers subsidize it through taxes for the burdened schools, correctional facilities, medical facilities and public infrastructure. The "border brothers" out there cook a ton of crank in meth labs around the county. I hear about all of the drug problems up here, but coming from a county (Stanislaus) where approximately 80% of the nation's crank is made the small problems up here pale in comparison.

When all of the above is considered Gillette is nice little town. The people are friendly for the most part (I have never seen the place where everybody is a peach), there is enough city to get most things you'll need but not so much that you'll have to fight 10,000 other vehicles to get where you're going.

The housing here is NOT out of touch with the wages; I hear a lot of people complain that the housing is so much more expensive than where they came from. The difference is that where they came from the economy probably wasn't the greatest and the wages were likely much lower. I don't care how many $100,000 houses you had in your old neighborhood..... If you were only able to make $25k per year there instead of $60k here those half-priced houses are not really a deal are they? If they were people wouldn't be coming here.

Finding a house to buy is not a problem here right now. We bought a house in the $200k range..... we had it closed within 3 weeks. With both of us working we are very comfortable; without her income we would still make it but it would be tight. I decided to make less for now in sales to have more advancement opportunity in the future. I could have made $10-20k per year more as a welder or mechanic or haul truck driver/equipment operator, but in a couple years I'll still have my eyes, back, lungs, and I have a ton of room to move up. If I had wanted to I could have hired on at a mine or with an oil/gas company and been making more now.

My wife just got her real estate license, so whatever she can do in that field will be ok with me; as long as she's making something we'll have extra income. I can tell you one thing.... it wouldn't have been this kind of situation back in CA. This house would have cost us $350k or better at the time we moved (I know down in SoCal it would be 2x that), my wages were lower, and my wife couldn't find a job after her car accident (two discs blown by the girl who hit her... nearly a year of doctors and such); she looked for several months and couldn't find somebody who would hire an administrative assistant/secretary who only spoke English.

The weather here is not extreme at all; people who think it's windy here have never been to places where it's truly windy.... I lived north of Cody when I was younger, and I've seen 100 mph++ winds over there. I still have some friends on that side of the mountain, and they had 127 mph winds just before Thanksgiving. You will get some snow in Gillette as well, but it's not a lot. There will be some cold temps (I think we got -12 this year) but as long as you're dressed for it there is really nothing to it, and it's for relatively short periods of time in the winter. You will not have 115-120 degree summers like you can get in CA.... I'll take colder winters over hotter summers hands-down; at least in the winter you can put more clothes on and be good. In 115 degrees there is really nothing you can do short of staying indoors or swimming all day. We had about two months of the really hot weather in Modesto last year... it was miserable.

I can say that I wouldn't come to Gillette to retire, but with the Big Horns and the Black Hills there are a ton of very scenic options close by if somebody had ties to the Gillette community. It's not a bad area at all, and I think a lot of people who come here and don't do well are destined to be unhappy anywhere. It is a HUGE step up over most places in CA if you don't like government meddling and a "progressive" culture. The schools are excellent, the community has a lot to offer, and as long as you don't go out looking for trouble it is likely that you won't find it.

Just my $.02.... we've been up here several months and with very few exceptions have no complaints. If you move up here with an open mind and don't go looking for LA in Wyoming you'll probably be fine.





Quote:
Originally Posted by LeavinCali View Post
OMG, some of these threads have me scared........my hubby is up for a job in Gillette with BNSF. We are currently in Southern California and have been all our lives. California is overpriced, overrated, and NO place to raise a family. We are ready to leave, but it looks like our only opportunity right now is Gillette. I already know to expect the big weather difference....used to 120 degree summers here. I'm just worried that it might be as hard to find a place to live as what these forums make it seem. I have searched online, it doesn't seem like finding a home to buy would be such a problem, but I don't know that we want to buy since we don't know the pace and all. Ideally, I would love to get into a rental with a one year lease to see if we agree with the area before we buy. We are a family of six with 2 dogs and 3 cats. We own a 28 ft toy hauler, but I was thinking about selling that before the move. Is it wiser to hold onto it as it seems this might be our only shelter here until we buy?
I'm under the impression that the population is roughly 25,000. Is this correct? I'm really hoping to hear some good things about Gillette and Wyoming as we are in desperate need to get out of California and introduce our children to a better way of life. Are the schools traditional there, I mean here, elementary is k-4th, middle school is 5th and 6th, Jr.High is 7th and 8th, and high school is 9th-12th. I don't like the elementary-middle school separation. It forces my 5th grader to become more grown up and face more responsibilities than I feel should be placed on a 5th grader. Is school year round? I'm assuming they probably have quite a few snowed out school days?? Forgive my lack of knowledge in this area, I've seen real live snow maybe 5 or 6 times in my life and I am 31! lol Pretty sad huh? Anyhow, any info, advice, or comments good bad or indifferent would be great. I am a bit scared, but the truth will help me out best even if it's not pretty! Thanks!
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Old 03-31-2008, 10:49 AM
 
56 posts, read 156,974 times
Reputation: 28
Well finally, the truth... I try to point out the very same things and there are a lot of people on this board that "gloss" over what it's really like to be from someplace else and move here. If one is accustomed to any sort of middle class lifestyle, it's shocking what the cost of living is here.. and she's right EVERYTHING is more expensive here. We have never felt so ripped off all the time in our entire lives. I feel so sorry for young couples that have to move here and live in what I would consider the ghetto anywhere else.
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Old 03-31-2008, 12:44 PM
j1n
 
Location: Southeast of the Northwest Territories
1,245 posts, read 4,642,356 times
Reputation: 468
hey DJFrog71...
somehow, you managed to give what I perceived to be a very truthful report of your experience...without sounding like you were just being down on Gillette. I see so many instances where folks just let their emotions run rampant through their posts here! You did a nice job of balancing the good and bad things that you have experienced...and you have a good attitude regarding wanting to feel good about where you are.
So kudos (and rep points) to you for really adding some good research-worthy info to these forums. And here's hoping your situation gets sorted out...that you can get to a place where you can really enjoy and love the awesome state you live in!

Last edited by j1n; 03-31-2008 at 12:54 PM..
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