What are the reasons why the small towns on the Great Plains continue to shrink, or disappear completely, while its larger cities continue to grow in population, industry, commerce, and economically? What are the impacts to the small towns and their inhabitants from an economic standpoint? Are there possible solutions that can be used to stop this trend from taking place?
There are several reasons for why smaller towns are decreasing in population size, or disappearing altogether, within the Great Plains region. Among these are the fact that the regional economy has been changing; farm sizes are getting larger which means the population is getting smaller; the fact that many small towns were created for specialized reasons, such as being a stop on a railroad line before the prominence of the railroad faded; the fact that towns were placed in locations based on earlier transportation routes that are no longer in use, or have faded in importance; the distance for hauling grain has increased since the paving of roads and the use of motorized transport, leaving less need for the smaller towns; motorized transport has allowed for people to travel farther to use restaurants and stores, while motivating businesses and chains to decrease the amount of stores and services in the smaller towns and move to a more central location for cost-effective purposes; and the growth of larger cities which draw people and businesses to them from the smaller towns for economically beneficial purposes.
The first, and probably, the most important reason for the shrinking of smaller towns is the fact that as modern farm machinery allows less people to do more work, in terms of planting, tending, and harvesting fields of grain, or tending to livestock, it has meant that the need for people to produce our food has shrunk. This has tended to cause the population of these small towns to shrink, as less people are needed – the others tend to be drawn to the growing cities of the region, such as Denver, Kansas City and Omaha.
Another factor that has caused smaller towns to shrink is the fact that, many times, the towns were placed in locations based on how far a farmer was willing to travel to get his grain to a storage facility which would buy his grain. This was back when farmers hauled their grain in wagons pulled by horses. These days, since the roads are mostly paved and people tend to use motorized vehicles to get their grain to dealers, vehicles which can go much further, and faster, than the horse-drawn wagons did in former days, it has allowed for granaries to consolidate to less locations, and become larger. This has meant that the previous granary locations are no longer needed, and the towns which built up around them have all but disappeared.
Another factor at play is the fact that towns many times were planned, and then placed along transportation routes, where traffic was sure to be passing through. Of particular importance was the corridor where railroads would pass through. The train service would determine where train stops would be, and a town would be created in that location. Since then, the railroads, and train stops, have faded in importance, causing the need for those towns to all but disappear. Besides this, as new transportation corridors sprang up, such as the Interstate Highway corridor, it tended to be away from the railroad corridor, meaning that these earlier small towns were no longer in important transportation corridor locations.
Businesses, also, instead of having smaller locations in many small towns, see it as being more cost-efficient to have fewer locations, and have those locations be larger. Since motorized transportation has allowed people to travel further away, this is seen as being more cost efficient. This has caused smaller towns to shrivel up, and sub-regional, or larger primary regional locations, to grow, as the businesses are drawn there. Such can be seen in locations such as Wichita, Grand Island, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Fargo, Amarillo, as well as a host of other locations. Most prominently in the region would be the Denver metropolitan area, which is probably the largest urban area in the Great Plains region, although Winnipeg, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio have become large cities as well. As businesses move to the larger urban locations, it has drawn people from these numerous small towns, causing them to shrink even more.
All in all, there are many reasons for why the small towns on the Great Plains are shrinking or disappearing. They all add up having a strong effect on small towns, while helping sub-regional and regional metro areas to continue growing. Some smaller towns have found solutions to this problem, where some help to start a new manufacturing facility which employs local workers, or where town homesteading laws give away abandoned houses for free to people who are willing to live in it and fix it up over a period of five years or more. We may continue to see small towns in the future, although more will dry up. The ones that are spared will more than likely be spared because efforts have been made to save that town by its own residents, or because it has become a tourist destination, or because it is in close proximity to a larger town or city.
