My response is intended to help you gain some research skills so you can find these kinds of information easily for yourself in the future.
You can find some relevant demographic census data about Manville on the Wiki:
Manville, Wyoming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- How long would it take (ordinarily) to drive from Manville to Cheyenne? Use
Google Maps and type in Lusk, Wyoming. When Lusk shows up on the map click on "Get Directions", and type Cheyenne, WY in the "A" window. Google maps will show you route and tell you how many miles it is and how long it usually takes to make the drive. You can see from the map that there are only about a dozen or so short streets.
If you switch Google Maps into Satellite view you will see the town is sparsly populated with houses and structures, only a few on each block. If you zoom all the way down into "Street View" the map changes into a virtual reality camera view and you can move back and forth down the streets, like you are taking a walk and see what the houses and structures look like. There is something titled "3 Sisters Truck Stop" on the north edge of Manville.
- Is Manville remotely like the town described above? If not, do you have another suggestion? Most small towns are like what you describe.
- Is there a lot of flooding? Drought? Snow Storms? Lightning? More often cloudy or sunny? Any other weather info. Not many places flood in Wyoming, its an arid state with low rainfall. If you go to the City-Data data pages you can look up almost any town/city in the US and get detailed information about weather history, as well as other demographic data such as crime rates, businesses, race, industries, employment, etc.
Unfortunatly, Manville is so small the data for it is not available yet on City Data so I went to the neighboring Lusk for the following.
- Are there any stores, diners, convenience stores or other public areas inside the town? In Google maps if you click on the "more" button and check "Photos" it will show you links to photos that people have posted of the area. While looking at the Lusk map if you type words like "Food" in the window where you previously typed "Lusk, Wy", Google will give you a list of places you can get "Food" as well as links on the map showing you where they are located. You can also type in key words like "Police", "Rental", "Apartment", "medical", etc. for similar results.
- On average, is each residential lot large or small? The City-Data data page will show you the "House Values Distribution", a graph of the number and value of houses in town.
- What would the main source of income be for a single mother? Apparantly there is a the "3 Sister's Truck Stop" in Lusk, and using the "key words" tip above will give you an idea of what kinds of businesses there are in the area, mostly in Lusk.
- Child Care services available? More likely a formal day care, or an at home babysitter? Google Maps will show you that there is at least one child care business in Lusk. But in small towns child care is often more along the lines of "baby sitters" or another Mom who will take care of another child that parent is at work. Or they go to daycare in Lusk while Mom or Pop are working in Lusk.
- Which school do the children attend? WHich town is it located in? Google maps will show you that there are 9 facilities related to schools in Lusk but none in Manville, so the kids are probably bussed to Lusk.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how you can research a lot about an area using the internet tools.
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