Non-economically depressed small towns?

Factual Questions
1

So a couple of weeks ago, my family and I went to visit my parents in Houston. Along the way, we stopped to eat in a small town between Houston and Dallas, and due to funky directions from our smartphones, we ended up taking the grand tour of the town.

While it wasn’t a dump exactly, it wasn’t what I’d call economically vibrant. The whole place seemed to be at about the working class/lower-middle class edge as far as the types of retailers and the conditions of the commercial areas went.

This tracks pretty closely with every other small town I’ve been through. While I can only think of a very small handful that were very bad off, I can’t really think of one that I’ve been through in Texas, Kansas or Louisiana that seemed to be thriving. All seemed to be kind of right on the edge of economic disaster- like any jolt to the system would topple the Jenga-game, and cause all the stores to shut.

Are there small towns that AREN’T in that situation, that aren’t either A) bedroom communities within the immediate orbit of a larger city, or B) benefiting from some sort of local windfall, such as the small towns in the Barnett Shale area, or the Eagle Ford area (or other gas/oil plays in the nation).

In other words, are there towns that are economically vibrant, not huge, and doing whatever they typically do in that area?

2

There’s some in Maine, but they are all tourist towns. Bridgton, Bethel, Rangeley and Kingfield(All ski towns in the mountains), as well plenty of small towns on the coast, aren’t depressed, but they are all tourist towns. Or do you count tourism as a local windfall?

3

I’ve seen a lot of small towns that are doing quite well. Whether they’re “economically vibrant” depends on your definition.

  • They don’t have a lot of Main Street stores anymore because the owners gave up trying to comete with the Wal-Mart ten miles down the road.

  • Most of the homeowners have been there a long time. Like many long-time owners, they tend to overlook the peeling paint and the old roof, giving the housing stock a generally run-down look.

  • Because of the general lax zoning regulations, there’s a jumble of old houses, new houses, small car repair shops with a few rusty trucks for sale, etc. all jumbled together, rather than tucked into separate neighborhoods like in the big city.

  • However, if you pulled net worth records on the townsfolk, you’d be surprised.

4

I think I know what you are asking, but not completely sure.

One issue is the definitions of what is a small town, what is vibrant, etc.

I grew up in a small town of about 3,000 people. It is by no means vibrant, in fact, 30+ yrs later, it is still about 3,000 people in the town.

There are businesses. No Wal-Marts or any major chains, but commerce going on (gas stations, car repair places, used car dealers, small chain grocery stores, chain pharmacy, the like. This is sort of what I envision you talking about. It is about an hour or so outside of the nearest city (Atlanta).

Then the town that is very near where I live was very rural 20 yrs ago. It had a McDonald’s but that was about it. Now, it is what I would call booming. The actual listed population is just over 3,000 but the surrounding area is much larger. It is about 20 -30 mins from Atlanta, so close but not really affected by it. It has Wal-Mart, Target, Sam’s Club, every major chain eating establishment, a 12 screen theater, lots of commerce.

Though in both places, I would say it would take something really awful (like a tornado or something) to really cause all the businesses to shutter. Both towns have been around for over 100 yrs and most residents live their whole lives in the area.

Not really sure if that answers your question, but I do see a lot of small towns in GA, that are not exactly booming, but are also a long way from financial ruin.

5

There are plenty of college towns that are doing well.

And I’m sure many of the residents of small towns have a different standard than you of what “doing well” means. Where you want “vibrant”, they might be happy with “stable”, and a bit frightened of “vibrant”.

6

Colorado Tourist/ski towns are doing great. But I guess tourism could be considered a local windfall.

7

I don’t think that tourism or a college count as a windfall: They’re both things that have been there a long time, and can be expected to remain for a long time. If we’re going to count those as windfalls, then we’d need to count any industry in a town as a windfall, and of course a town with no major industries will be moribund.

8

My home area is filled with small towns that are doing well. Tourism is a part of it, but the towns have had summer people for decades.

9

Yep. I’m thinking of Carmel and Mendocino in my neck of the woods. Both very small towns, both doing very well and have been for decades. But they are places where people have 2nd homes and there are lots of tourists.

10

Hermann, MO is the hub of the state’s wine producing region, and a tourist destination. Wiki says the population is less than 2500. It’s a nice town. If my marriage survives long enough, I’d like to go there with my wife for their Oktoberfest.

Touristy towns will probably be over represented on this list. Eureka Springs AR is a pretty thriving town of about 2000 people. Fun place to visit.

11

My home town (historically 10k or a little less; 15k for the last 5-8 years) is economically stable, pretty much against the odds. Even though it’s pretty much Nowheresville, with little tourist or other draw, town and schools are well-funded, houses tend to sell quickly, and established businesses are doing as well as they ever have. (Let’s not talk about the frustration of new business development right now.) Essentially no local industry worthy of the name since farming became a niche here. Many towns around us are in much worse shape even with local industry and a much larger commercial base. Residential tax base is a little heavy but it’s one of those cases where you get what you pay for (unless, of course, you’re 60+ and bitch nonstop about all the money wasted on services you [del]don’t[/del] ^[no longer] need, like schools and IT infrastructure upgrades.

Pretty unusual combination, from what I can tell. Most towns have a financial tentpole of some kind, or are “depressed.”

12

How small is small? Fulton, MO, with about 13,000 people, seems to be doing well. Two small colleges, the county seat, and the nearby nuclear power plant are economic drivers. It might be too much in the orbit of Jefferson City or Columbia to meet the OP’s definition, though.

13

I think a lot of your impressions are wrong, because you aren’t familiar with what a small town looks like. You probably have a mental image of what a vibrant commercial area “should” be–because that’s what you are used to : large big-box stores, modern strip malls where all the buildings are in the same architectural style, and their signs neatly arranged symmetrically, maybe with identical colored backgrounds.

Small towns aren’t like that. As kunilou said above–they may be a jumble— of stores, old-fashioned car repair shops, a lumber yard, and a vet clinic that treats more horses than puppies.
And the residential areas are the same–a jumble, which contains not just houses, but people’s lives.
There are no Homeowners associations that force you to trim your grass and keep your garage door closed…Instead, people proudly leave their pickup truck with their work tools outside their house, and park their 4-wheel drive jeep or boat trailer in front , where it’s easily accessible for use every weekend…
It’s a different lifestyle than you are familiar with, and so the visual clues which you expect to see are not there. To you, it looks depressed. To the folks who live there, it looks like a good community to spend your life in.

14

The town I lived in when I lived in NJ was just under a square mile, and is and was doing really well. That’s because its good elementary school attracted people from nearby research centers (at least 3 PhDs on my small block) who always voted for school bonds, and who volunteered for town activities.
We visited last year, and we’re going to move back, since it is even nicer than when we lived there.
BTW, hardly anyone commuted to NY or Philadelphia - almost everyone worked reasonably locally.

15

As several posts have mentioned, there are many pretty, well kept and obviously prosperous small towns outside major metro areas. By number a lot of them are resort/tourist/second home type areas or college towns or both. This in fact seems a big enough category of town to either specifically include or disallow. And more generally ‘local windfall’ v ‘doing whatever they do in that area’ is rather ambiguous.

Also, the area the OP mentions, at least TX and LA are places which were quite far below the US national average in prosperity for a long time. In recent decades that’s less true, but a lot of change has occurred in more urban areas of the South. Traditionally the countryside had a lot of poverty, with small pockets of wealth, and that’s still somewhat true. In some other regions of the country rural areas were more broadly prosperous in the past and it also carries over somewhat to today.

Another general category of relatively prosperous small towns are ones in rich agricultural areas, though it still varies over the cycle of that industry (big growth in farm income in fairly recent years but somewhat reversed just recently), and whether it’s a town that has been able maintain critical mass in serving a larger agricultural region as farming has become more automated, rather than one of the towns losing that critical mass and falling into a demographic death spiral.

How various areas of the US look to the casual drive through is very interesting though, one reason I love road trips staying off the Interstates. The deep South IME is still a relatively depressing place to the casual observer compared to most other parts of the country.

16

Emmaus, PA and Hershey, PA seem like good examples. Lots going on, well taken care of, good schools, etc.

I live in the South now. I would argue that the small towns in coal country PA are way more depressing when compared to almost anything found in the south. Partly because you can see that they probably used to be nice. Most of the depressing southern small towns I’ve driven through were probably always dumps…

17

There are small resort towns across the Four Corners states that are booming: Moab, Durango, Telluride, Taos etc.

18

I didn’t think of tourist/resort towns, but I’d prefer to exclude them, as that’s sort of a special case.

I guess where I’m coming from is that to me anyway, most rural small towns have had a lot of the hallmarks that I (a city boy) would associate with lower income areas of town. Stores like Dollar Genera/Family Dollar. Local restaurants that obviously are running on a shoestring. Deferred maintenance on retail establishments- ratty signs, faded/peeling paint/sun-bleached stuff in shop windows, etc…

What I’m wondering is whether this is a sign of creeping decrepitude on the part of the towns, or a sort of adjusted expectations due to lower overall cash flow (what I think Chihuahua is getting at). I mean, the town may have a relatively low, but steady and stable average income, meaning that it’s not in dire economic straits, but merely not as wealthy overall as somewhere else. Or it could be somewhere where everyone’s poor, and there’s no opportunity, and the retail infrastructure reflects that. I just can’t tell which is the case, and was wondering if there are literally small rural towns where the average existence is a middle class lifestyle, with some upper-middle and some lower-middle, and very little poverty or extreme wealth. The appearance, to my untrained eye, is more that of poverty than moderate wealth, and I’m just curious if I’m misreading it, or if small towns on the whole are that down and out.

19

My home town in southern Minnesota has a current population of about 25,500. It is about 60 miles south of the Twin Cities. There are a ton of jobs there, including insurance, industry, retail, etc. When I was in high school, there were about 40 companies that made products that went out across the USA, and about 12 went international.

Products include industrial tools and equipment, glass (including glass in the newly built Freedom Tower in NYC), jewelry and awards (including many Super Bowl rings and the 1984 Olympic medals), window hardware, musical equipment, etc.

The town has a cute downtown area that is a little rough around the edges. There is also a retail area just off of the freeway outside of town. Plenty of parks. Good schools and generally a good place to live and raise a family.

20

The smaller towns around Toronto are in many cases thriving. The sheer volume of business and commerce to be done exceeds the capacity of Toronto itself to contain, so the business moves to smaller towns, especially if it’s business that needs space. Similarly, housing costs in the city are high and people looking for more room leave. Towns like Woodstock, Innisfil, Port Perry, and the like are growing and thriving. Some small towns so much so that you can’t call them small anymore. None are college towns or tourist traps.