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While we can each have our visions of how the countryside will or may change over the next few decades, I think human nature tendencies of today will remain pretty much the same.
Essentially, folk may wish to escape some of the undesirable aspects of the places they live in now ... but they bring with them the same wants/needs/attitudes that brought on the undesirables. They still want the goods, services, entertainment, and other aspects that their population centers could afford to provide.
Having just spent the last few weeks on the road through Eastern MT and much of central/western NE, the small towns there are economically depressed. Much of the commercial square footage of yesteryear is sitting vacant for a long time, decaying away. I stopped at many small towns seeking a place to camp in my RV for 8 nights on the road, and it was readily apparent from the lack of activity that many of the residences were vacant. Come evening time and there was no traffic, no lights on in many of the houses, few signs of life, and there was no commercial activity ... no restaurants, no open motels, not even bars open. These places were functionally dead except for a small number of residences showing some activity.
Absent a huge influx of new residents to support new businesses and the entrepreneurs willing to go into business there, there’s simply nothing to attract folk to these locales other than the low cost of a house with low population density nearby. Other than utilities/infrastructure to the house, there’s nothing else there. No shopping, no grocery store, no entertainment, few services, etc..
IMO, your vision for Wyoming is way off. The attributes of Jackson area are not to be found in most of Wyoming, and at that, they’ve long been priced out of reach for 99% of the population that might consider living there. With a current state population total of under 600,000, your projection of a 30% population increase doesn’t make sense to me. Even with the current influx interest in Wyoming, the climate realities make this state residency far less desirable than lower altitude riparian states with more temperate climates that have infrastructure, access, and support so many of the desired attributes that folk want ... even if they move to a rural area, their nearby access to all the things they’re acclimated to having are there now, already. That’s a bigger set of factors than being so remote and hoping that those developments will come soon in their lives.
I'm right on board with your thought that "very" small towns are not going to grow much / if at all, many of these only survived for decades on business from locals (agricultural or ranching), which do not employ nearly as many people as they once did due to mechanization and consolidation. Boswell, WY isn't going to grow into Missoula anytime soon (I have to wonder if "Toc and Doc's is still there, LOL). I think Jackson grew due to the skiing, beauty, and "exclusivity" of the area, I am more in awe of Mt. Moran than I am of Alan Ladd whenever I watch "Shane". Park City, Ut, Aspen, CO, and others were all magnets for those with big wallets.
I'm talking more about established cities - In Wyoming, that would be Cheyenne, Casper, Laramie, Sheridan, Cody, and Evanston, including smaller towns within some radius of them; cities with hospitals, restaurants, maybe new car dealerships, etc., where someone like me (who currently lives near Chicago with pretty much anything you'd want to purchase or do, all nearby), could move to without a whole lot of hardship, especially in these days of Amazon. Personally, I give a hoot for professional sports, fine dining, Porsche dealerships, concerts and museums (although I hear Cody has a couple of great ones I'd love to visit way before Chicago's Art Institute). Although I agree that most folks in Chicago wouldn't fit into a place like Laramie easily, I did quite well there (for the year I was there) and was actually sorry to leave, great people and beautiful country. But I did go back to Chicago due to family and better opportunities for work, so there's that. But on the other hand, Chicago isn't the same Chicago it was a decade ago, and I want OUT. And so do many of my neighbors and former co-workers. Luckily for Wyoming, most of them want to go where it's warmer: Tennessee, Arizona, and Florida are home to a whole bunch of ex-Illinoisans these days.
We shall see what happens, on that we can both agree. I used to read quite a bit of the Wyoming forum when Elk Hunter was posting, yours is a name I recognize and respect. Cheers.
Family in Star Valley were saying this summer people could put a for sale sign up and have offers that day and closing in just a couple weeks . up here in the NE corner subdivision lot that have set for decades are moving , developers are bugging land owners in the trees and just out side of town . seem we getting neighbors ( over 5 miles away that are willing to haul water and pay $150/ month for wireless internet connection(there a few thousand more to get the set up) they either retired or planning on working from home .
Family in Star Valley were saying this summer people could put a for sale sign up and have offers that day and closing in just a couple weeks . up here in the NE corner subdivision lot that have set for decades are moving , developers are bugging land owners in the trees and just out side of town . seem we getting neighbors ( over 5 miles away that are willing to haul water and pay $150/ month for wireless internet connection(there a few thousand more to get the set up) they either retired or planning on working from home .
Every populous city in Wyoming has an enormous opportunity to sustain itself for the long-term and grow the regional and local economies by bringing new people in. The state has plenty of space. And cities like Casper, Cheyenne, Laramie, and Sheridan each have plentiful space for new business and a corridor to help move goods. There's no denying that Cheyenne's location with two converging interstates makes it attractive to potential suitors. I still make a case for Casper because it's in the middle of the state.
Re: the bolded. For some in WY (perhaps many who live in WY) the bolded is the whole point. Not that there is plentiful space for new business. Just that there's plenty of space..............
There was a tv program about preppers a number of years ago. There was a family from Florida who bought up about 240 ac on Lookout Mountain in Georgia. He spent $5Mn on his castle project - only to not complete it after several years. It went up on the mls for $5Mn and was sold finally for $1Mn - in the meantime they went into bankruptcy. It's back on the market again for $1.340Mn with only 5ac of land. It's the joke of the area. And, it's still not finished and not been used either. There are many stories about it. https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/...r-used/475056/
Beware of people wanting to buy large sections and ordering literally tons of building materiels. Otherwise you could end up with a monstrosity like this one in your county.
There was a tv program about preppers a number of years ago. There was a family from Florida who bought up about 240 ac on Lookout Mountain in Georgia. He spent $5Mn on his castle project - only to not complete it after several years. It went up on the mls for $5Mn and was sold finally for $1Mn - in the meantime they went into bankruptcy. It's back on the market again for $1.340Mn with only 5ac of land. It's the joke of the area. And, it's still not finished and not been used either. There are many stories about it. https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/...r-used/475056/
Beware of people wanting to buy large sections and ordering literally tons of building materiels. Otherwise you could end up with a monstrosity like this one in your county.
it's only a matter of time before they "discover" Wyoming.
Based on the number of California license plates I saw this summer in Casper, it's been discovered. How many are deciding to move to Casper? I can't say, but the real estate market is supposed to be hot. I could see the Casper area going from its current 80,000 to 100,00 over the medium to long term, but it would take a shift in mindset--both for current residents and newcomers. (Provided there's enough water to go around.) But it would probably require some high-density development (and there is some but not lots of real estate for such things in town), which is not what people are looking for in Wyoming.
I don't see 250,000 in the Casper metro. I don't think there's 170,000 people who would want to move to Casper, nor do I think there's enough economic diversity or growing industries here to make that happen.
Based on the number of California license plates I saw this summer in Casper, it's been discovered. How many are deciding to move to Casper? I can't say, but the real estate market is supposed to be hot. I could see the Casper area going from its current 80,000 to 100,00 over the medium to long term, but it would take a shift in mindset--both for current residents and newcomers. (Provided there's enough water to go around.) But it would probably require some high-density development (and there is some but not lots of real estate for such things in town), which is not what people are looking for in Wyoming.
I don't see 250,000 in the Casper metro. I don't think there's 170,000 people who would want to move to Casper, nor do I think there's enough economic diversity or growing industries here to make that happen.
Oh no
The weather will turn them around after one winter.
methinks we're going way off track when we conflate "urban sprawl" and "preppers".
Urban communities in Wyoming will still be limited by the availability of domestic water supplies and the potential need for water supply/waste processing of industry/commerce. There simply isn't the excess of water availability in Wyoming to support such growth. Bear in mind that just because you see water flowing in a river, doesn't mean that it's available by permit for the locals to use; by federal compact agreements, Wyoming is a "headwaters" state and much of that water must be delivered downstream, out of Wyoming to other states. Similarly, there's a limit to how much water can legally be pumped from wells to supply a water system for a community or development. And part of the requirements for developers, especially those who wish to be "incorporated" into existing city domains ... is to have a legal water supply sufficient for the number of residences that are platted.
By way of comparison, Denver's leaders a century ago had the foresight to buy up water rights far in excess of their wildest dreams of needs even when the technology and money to develop delivery was not available. For decades, the urban growth cities around Denver relied upon Denver selling and delivering their surplus water to them. In more recent times, Colorado's Front Range Growth has dealt with the challenge of water supply by going back to the agricultural sector and forcing them to abandon water rights, freeing up supply for other (domestic) users. The premise was that the original ag water rights had been improperly awarded/adjudicated through state agencies and the only way many users could continue to utilize their ag water was to find "replacement" water rights elsewhere which could offset the water that they were drawing upon. It's why so many front range irrigated farms are now dryland farms ... or, in a lot of suburban areas, are now lands being developed for residential use.
In any event, most of the preppers I've visited with (or folk planning on their escape destination) have sought remote sites away from any population density at all, and as far away from neighbors as they could afford to be. Hence, the popularity of remote tracts of land providing an opportunity for independent living. A number of aviation friends chose such properties on the basis of sites/parcels located within a 1/2 tank of fuel range for their aircraft from their home airports so that "just in case they needed to bug out" ... they could fly to their rural airstrip home and be as far away from the disturbances/unrest as possible. I think this is about as far away a concept of independent survival as one could imagine, as far away from humanity as possible. With caches of supplies, fuel storage, an assured potable water supply, the opportunity to raise their own survival food/hunt game, independent power generation (solar, wind, hydro) ... they want to be undisturbed. Sprawl isn't part of their equation for survival. I saw a lot of these efforts for year 2000 scares in light of the forecast collapse of society ... and most of the folk didn't ever build out the infrastructure or complete their planned departure to safety.
There's a lot of folk that talk the talk about prepping, but it's a discussion concept. The reality of affordability and realistic access, let alone provisioning and providing for that truly independent self-sufficient long term survival ... simply doesn't meet up with their bank account.
As far as somebody building a monstrosity on "large sections" ... I don't see how it's gonna' adversely affect the local population. The land parcel size is large enough that there will be no neighbors within ear- or eye-shot.
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Oh no
