A 1974 North Dakota State University interview-poll of long-time residents, newcomers, and local officials found that four out of five respondents believed the Safeguard project had been beneficial overall by increasing business activity and employment opportunities, while only one in ten considered its effects detrimental. Employment rose 47.1 percent, total sales for Langdon businesses increased 40.2 percent, personal income in Cavalier County increased 202 percent, seventy businesses opened in the region, forty-five existing businesses expanded, and Langdon's population nearly doubled in three years from 2,182 in 1970 to 3,957 by 1973. Infrastructure changes included a $1.3 million expansion of water and waste systems, construction of a new water tower, more than one hundred water main breaks during the winter of 1970-71, installation of 1,170 new phone lines, $11.6 million in street and highway repairs for roads damaged by heavy construction traffic, with seventy-four percent of that cost paid by federal funds, and the arrival of natural gas. School systems in the area gained 637 students, Nekoma school enrollment increased 155 percent, and truancy and dropout rates did not change significantly. Housing growth included seventy-two single-unit homes and more than 270 rental units built from 1971 to 1975. Public opinion and police data conflicted on whether criminal activity increased because of Safeguard construction; Langdon police recorded higher rates of drug and alcohol violations, shoplifting, and burglaries, while Cavalier and Grafton reported no increase. Medical effects included Cavalier County Memorial Hospital expanding from twenty-eight to thirty-eight beds, increases in industrial and traffic accidents, venereal disease, and depression, reports of higher-caliber medical services because of added staff and capacity, increased complaints about doctor-to-patient ratios and long waits for appointments, and reports by Langdon doctors of mental depression among spouses of new employees. Seventy percent of employees at the site relocated from elsewhere, and Western Electric employees received an allowance for arctic clothing because they were unaccustomed to the harsh weather. The Safeguard deployment was said to have helped begin the end of the Cold War, and after visiting the site in September 1972, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kenneth Rush called the Anti-Ballistic Missile Site in North Dakota the catalyst that made agreement possible between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks. A protest called the Festival of Love and Life drew an estimated five hundred people on May 16, 1970, and local officials accommodated it with a stage, generators for bands, and outhouses; protesters flew kites, threw Frisbees, ate and drank, moved through mud left by earlier rain, listened to rock music, danced, marched to the excavation site of the Missile Site Control Building playing kazoos, removed two-by-fours from the mud slab to form a peace sign, buried a tomahawk, smoked a peace pipe, voiced demands for peace, and planted trees and durum seeds, and the event remained peaceful overall.