Rural Texas - Towns are dying off

Though I've only lived in urban areas, I've visited rural Texas towns for the past few decades. My sister has lived in a few small towns in East Texas. I don't know if it's as simple as boiling it down to local politics, though that could influence any level of brain drain a bit. It's more that these towns, counties, and regions are really primarily producers of raw materials in terms of local economies. If you don't want to go into forestry/timber, oil/gas/energy, or ag/cattle then your options for making a living there are limited to municipal bureaucracy, education, and service industry. Pretty similar to my parents' hometowns in rural Iowa through the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Even the existing industries tend to shrink as corporate efficiency leads to consolidation. As an increasing rule, money simply doesn't flow into these places, it flows out. I figure that the local politics are more a reaction to that fact than a leading cause. But I could be wrong, probably missed some important details.

In all fairness, there was never really much going on in that part of TX. Those towns are all Ag communities that were at their peak in the 1920s. They were on the southern edge of the dust bowl in the 1930s that pretty much killed off the small family farms and ranches. Those that survived eventually would fall victim to the farming crisis of the 1970s and early 80s. Now, most of the agriculture is corporate and the residents are now mostly low wage immigrant farm workers. This area has very little oil and gas as it is just outside of the productive parts of the Permian basin.

Texas is definitely dominated by the big urban areas, but there are some big success stories in rural Texas. Out in the Permian basin, Midland, Odessa, Lubbock, Big Spring, etc. are thriving (albeit in a very volatile boom/bust fashion depending on whether the Saudis open the spigots). In the Hill Country, retirees, second homes and tourism have communities like Wimberly, Fredericksburg, Dripping Springs and Brenham thriving with lots of service sector work and construction jobs. Even though TX wine is horrible, there are tons of new wineries around Fredericksburg. Out west around Big Bend, real estate in Marfa has become so expensive that locals cannot afford to live there.

Shale plays along the coastal bend, the panhandle, and east-northeast TX have helped rural communities like Athens, Victoria, and panhandle communities hold together and do about as well as any rural community in TX.

Cottle county has 1381 people over 902 square miles. Yes, I understand most is desert, but it's still insane how spread out it is.

Most people can't comprehend how big Texas is. There are places that are almost completely uninhabited. Loving County has a population of 64 people in 677 square miles. Glasscock county has 1,116 people in 901 square miles.

30 million people in Texas can't all be city folk.

Of the three houses I own one is in the fastest growing counties in Texas. Kaufman County but it is still mostly rural. I moved out here for the lake but it's nothing special. I just hope people keep coming this way so I can flip this one before real-estate prices hit rock bottom.

Same with small towns in California.

No country for old men. Or young men. Or women. Or children. Hard living in rural areas these days.

Yes West Virginia not doing well either

This is happening in a few towns in my state. The problem is that some of these places boomed in the late 1800s early 19 and whatever made them a popular place to live is no longer useful or they've ran out of it. For example, where I live used to have a ton of iron and now there's barely any left and the towns that were supported by it are dead.

yup, when all the yokels look at election maps and can't understand how a few blue dots contain magnitudes more people than a sea of red, this is why. The electoral college is a joke these days. Voters in Wyoming have 3x the voting power of people who actually make up the tax base.

Abilene is also doing well. 2020 brought the most new businesses ever to Abilene. Reasonably priced real estate, four universities, two hospitals, and an air force base have kept it growing.

But, yes, the small towns around the population hubs are struggling.

It is actually very interesting how so many of the small towns around the DFW area have held together quite nicely over the years and actually have seen there downtowns redeveloped over the past 20-30 years. Mineral Wells, Weatherford, Decatur, Greenville, Bonham, Sulphur Springs, Corsicana, etc. all have beautiful old downtowns with lots of shops and restaurants. I think the N. Tex. region has been more stable economically compared to the extreme booms and busts that the Houston area has seen and these small towns have held together quite well.

Go to Scotland Neck NC or Robersonville NC

Plymouth NC, dead towns after the paper mills left.

Problem with Texas is that it has more small rural towns than any state, even though Texas has 5 of the 13 largest cities in the nation.

I've lived in TX all my like and this not new by any means. I can remember going back say 30-40 years ago this was happening

Roy, wasn't Larry McMurtry writing about dying Texas towns decades ago. The fictional Thalia based on Archer City in The Last Picture Show. Thankfully that area (Wichita Falls) has a mega Air Force Base.

Roy, wasn't Big Spring in the opening sequence of Midnight Cowboy?

Don't you worry about the Hill Country. Worry about the towns east of Austin & San Antone.

Fair?

This is exactly why our founders created it...

The people who oversee our natural resources and infrastructure and feed those in the cities should have a high say as they manage more of our environment... With this logic if we look at a pollution map and put if over an election map we just need to bad liberals from making laws about the env because they manage the area's that have the most net carbon output, most litter etc..

Aren’t small towns in the middle of nowhere dying everywhere?

My mom grew up in a Belton which had 10,000 people but it’s near a bigger town Temple and only an hour from Austin and I assume is doing just fine now especially with explosion of Austin. But I’m curious why it existed in first place but are lots of little town like that.

Its also on i35 .

but the town above is in middle of nowhere. Not easy to get to by any means of transportation unless you’ve got a private plane.