Will Cody survive?? (Valentine, Valley, Gordon: sale, foreclosures, high crime)

[noduleman]

Hi,

With the extreme rural location of Cody and its 150 or so population,
can this tiny remote town and the high school really survive, long term,
or is its days numbered?

What do the high school graduates do for work or college? Do the high school kids despise Cody and cant wait to leave, or do that embrace it and love the rural life?

[SCGranny]

Originally Posted by noduleman

Hi,

With the extreme rural location of Cody and its 150 or so population,
can this tiny remote town and the high school really survive, long term,
or is its days numbered?

What do the high school graduates do for work or college? Do the high school kids despise Cody and cant wait to leave, or do that embrace it and love the rural life?

Well, right now, Cody school district is expanding its coverage and bus service to Crookston. They are trying to encourage parents and students to be a part of the smaller classes and emphasis on education. They already get a steady 'diet' of kids who attend the elementary school in Merriman (Sheridan County) but whose only other choice is Gordon to the West for high school. One ranch family I know of sends one student in a car almost 50 miles over ranch roads to Merriman to catch the bus there. Cody schools are fighting to maintain their district status and not be swallowed up by Valentine. This will be the second year they will be incorporating their 6th graders into their junior high sports teams - they have to apply to the state yearly for a waiver to do so.

The question is - will it work? Do the expenses offset the income per pupil? Are people going to prefer a small-town bureaucracy to a larger (Valentine or Gordon) bureaucracy? The classes are shrinking in size, as many parents are having fewer children. If you have a son who is heavily into sports, he may not have a team large enough to play on, in a few years.

Kids who graduate from Cody HS usually go on to college - whether it is UNK, UNL, a tech college, or an out of state college. A few every year join the military. Some come back. Most don't. Unless they have something to come back TO - Mom and Dad's ranch to work, or their business to run, or their long-time gf or bf will marry them so that they can both take over those parents' ranch or business - they will likely not come back.

Nebraska is losing population, especially the rural areas. There are many reasons for this, just in my observations. 1) The weather is harsh. Many folks as they get older choose to move to warmer climes, or at least head that way in the winter. 2) Ranch work is hard and strenuous and dangerous - and doesn't pay well. Farmers may get subsidies - ranchers do not (Uness you count Ted Turner's 'beefalos' tax-supported boondoggle). The Sandhills area is not conducive to heavy farming; the prairie sand is too fragile of an environment to tolerate much intensive farming. Cattle have to be medicated and fenced, bulls have to be steered, heifers have to be bred - a lot of hands-on and physically demanding labor. 3) There is not much room for mismanagement - if a rancher has a drinking problem, or has too many creditors, or his children try to take more out of the ranch than the sale of cattle puts in - ranches go up for auction. Even a 'slight' error - such as buying three breed bulls that are supposed to be certified, and not finding out until 10 months later that only 1/3 of the heifers are bred, because two of the bulls didn't do their jobs - is costly. A/I is expensive and not guaranteed. Corporations -even foreign corporations - that buy these properties do not have children, and they try to hire a minimal amount of people to produce a maximum of profit. 70% of America's beef is now imported, which affects prices at the cattle auctions.

All of these are factors that these now-college-educated children must consider. Why move home and try to take over a ranch that is run on a shoestring, or a business that, every year, has fewer and fewer customers, when the whole world awaits? As much as some of these kids love working cattle, riding horses, driving tractors, and cutting hay, their choices are limited, as will be their income.

The school district is encouraging entrepraneurship, and is even trying to start a grocery store. They have received several grants and are assiduously working towards establishing a grocery store to encourage growth. What effect that will have on the community - and how well their current educational resources can teach what needs to be taught, and whether the store could ever stand on its own without taxpayer subsidies, even how well a bureaucratic organization, no matter how enthusiastic, can deal with the nuts and bolts of building a small business, will the recent Presidential executive order about investing in (i.e., controlling rural communities through funding) help or hurt Cody - all remain to be seen.

So in answer to your question - can Cody survive? The real answer is - it depends. As the ranching population ages and retires (although I would be careful about counting them out; one 80 year-old I know still ranches on his son's ranch), will there be anything other than corporate concerns to take their places? Will those folks who are looking to Nebraska be willing to work 20 hour days, in ice-slick conditions to deliver 10 calves in a night, or are they more interested in 8-hour-a-day jobs with higher incomes and benefits, and countless, easily-accessible amenities? Will the US population shift to a more agrarian-dependent, buy-local philosophy, or will they continue to buy imported beef at Wal-Mart, not asking about quality but only about cost?

[noduleman]

Granny,

Thanks for taking the time to write down your thoughts? That was very
well thought out!

So, in you opinion, what will become of rural Nebraska as the population
continues to dwindle? Will the area eventually turn into a desolate, barren
landscape with nothing left but memories and abandon structures?

That would be so sad if the whole rural Great Plains area goes this route.

Michael

[iamjacobm]

I think it will center in rural "cities." Gone are the days of thousands of 300 people towns scattered across the countryside. It will and already is centering into larger cities(by cities I mean a few thousand residents). Not every single one will disappear, but it isn't very cost effective to run small towns any more.

[noduleman]

So ,what becomes of the tiny 100-300 people tiny rural towns in
NE, KS, ND and SD...they become abandon wasterlands?

[geog-fanatic]

If they become completely empty, they will probably be converted to farmland or back to rangeland. That has happened to other tiny towns in the past. In some cases, you would never know they were there to begin with. Occasionally, the only indicator is if there are more trees in a small area than you would expect based on the other neighboring areas.

[SCentralNEGuy]

Originally Posted by noduleman

So ,what becomes of the tiny 100-300 people tiny rural towns in
NE, KS, ND and SD...they become abandon wasterlands?

With the exception of me and SCGranny no one so far who has posted actually LIVES in rural Nebraska. 100-300 is not tiny, maybe it is for states further east but not here. Some of the smaller towns as we call them of 100-300 are dying, houses run down, not as nice as others. Some of them are quite decent it depends on how they are run. The county seats, towns within commuting distance of a larger employment area, and towns with specific employers have usually fared the best. I know our town stayed almost completely stable during the last census and we are around 1000. The areas outside of town have lost population with farm consolidation etc but that trend is mostly at an end as most of the consolidation and loss of people in the country has already happened. Most of the retail that can be lost was already lost. We've actually seen a renaissance with some new businesses and with baby boomers that don't have a ton of money to retire on we offer a nice, affordable, safe community with a hospital, senior center, retirement home, and all sorts of amenities for them to want to live here. Ag is doing well and there are a number of jobs in the ag or ag support industry. We have a very low unemployment rate - most people here work and most people have a comfortable middle class lifestyle.

Nodule I see you have made some people very mad asking about poverty in West Virginia and have asked about Cody already in a negative way (aren't people bored to death out there?) about a year ago. You said on one post that you want to move to small town NE, KS etc and then the other you want to move to Greenfield, IN a built up strip malled, big box store suburb of Indianapolis. Do you want to hear that the Great Plains are dying or want to see them shrivel up? They are not maybe there are some places that are or have already shriveled up but at least here in corn/cattle country we are doing well and holding up well. I think thats better than big metro areas with myriad foreclosures, shuttering retail stores, massive budget deficits, high crime, traffic, and way too many people.

If there were no towns here and at one point there weren't we would be far from a barren desolate wasteland. You've obviously never enjoyed looking out into the hills over acres and acres of tall grass waving in the wind, old buffalo wallows, and prior to 1860 herds of wild buffalo. Currently in areas outside of towns there are thousands of acres of grazing cattle, ponds, grass, cottonwoods, elm, red cedar, creeks. Up on the prairie thousands of acres of center pivots and at this time of year knee high corn, grain elevators in the distance, farmhouses, barns, windbreaks made of trees, windmills, clear blue sky, big clouds, and views as far as the eye can see. At one point there were no trees but it was still beautiful. Wasteland to me is miles and miles of traffic lights and strip malls where the land has been destroyed. To each his own but if you are looking for bad news maybe post on urban Detroit you're not going to gleefully find the shuttering of the Plains by posting on here.

[iamjacobm]

No I don't live in rural Nebraska, but I have a lot more experience with rural life than most of the other city slickers. My grandpa is the mayor of one of those 300 people towns and my cousins have a huge ranch both in central Nebraska. I have been around quite a few times.

[geog-fanatic]

True, I also do not come from rural Nebraska (or Nebraska at all....yet). I would never qualify that I know a lot about rural Plains living other than what I have read or seen through my many travels, especially through your state, but I am very intrigued by the history of the area and hold great admiration for those with a pioneering spirit that work hard to make a living out there. SCGranny and ItsMeFred are just two I can immediately name on this forum who seem to fit that description.

Basically, I was just responding to the OP's question about what could become of small towns if they deplete of residents, as he was implying. Nebraska does seem to have a number of "ghost towns", so to speak, that disappeared back in the late 1800's/early 1900's, especially if they weren't logistically advantaged near a rail line. Its actually kind of fun and informative to seek out these historical places, and in most cases, there is barely an indication that they existed. That's all I was saying. The OP must be from the eastern US because that is the only place I've seen other than some of the old gold boom towns out west where dead or dying towns just sit and rot for a number of years.

[SCentralNEGuy]

Originally Posted by iamjacobm

No I don't live in rural Nebraska, but I have a lot more experience with rural life than most of the other city slickers. My grandpa is the mayor of one of those 300 people towns and my cousins have a huge ranch both in central Nebraska. I have been around quite a few times.

Well maybe Sandhills is different than the Platte River Valley but not everywhere is dying and down here our "cities" are 700-1000 not 3000 and are cost-effective and working fine.