Texas’ uneven inhabitants growth is creating ghost cities in lots of rural counties

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GOMEZ — The railroad modified the whole lot.

Lengthy earlier than the open plains had been full of rows of crops, they had been brimming with the hopes of prosperity from households who flocked to Gomez. It was the primary settlement in Terry County, simply southwest of Lubbock within the Texas South Plains. Companies opened, a cotton gin ushered in agriculture manufacturing, and a vote was coming as much as title a county seat. The founders, in 1904, boasted Gomez was the “metropolis of the plains.”

Then all of it vanished.

Brownfield, about 4 miles east, grew to become the county seat and obtained the prized South Plains and Santa Fe Railway. Minimize off from the remainder of the world, Gomez and all its guarantees died.

All that’s left of the city is a cemetery and a historic marker engraved with the city’s misplaced legacy.

“They thought the railroad would go through Gomez,” mentioned Sandy Fortenberry, chair of the Lubbock County Historic Fee. “It didn’t, and the town just up and moved to Brownfield.”

Gomez is considered one of an estimated 511 ghost cities in Texas — fully abandoned and deserted locations. Its short-lived existence provides a cautionary story to a number of Texas cities which can be at present dealing with existential threats. These communities — equivalent to Becton, Estacado, and Bartonsite — at one time had been greater than only a place to drive by on the best way to larger cities, however at the moment are one other historic marker within the barren area’s panorama.

Historical past is repeating. Fashionable-day ghost cities are popping up round Texas, communities that also exist, however have misplaced most of their inhabitants and are on the trail towards vanishing in the event that they lose any extra. It’s the results of different losses — a important trade like a hospital closes, a freeway is diverted or the agriculture trade has just a few dangerous years. Folks transfer, companies shut, and the native financial system dries up.

“The day of the small town is probably gone,” Fortenberry mentioned.

These cities are dropping their lifeblood as Texas booms. Greater than 50 million folks may reside within the state by 2050. Whereas many of the state grows — specifically the bigger city and suburban facilities close to and east of Interstate 35 — rural counties within the Texas Excessive Plains and West Texas are dropping their residents, and tax bases, at a gentle clip.

Counties lose populations for 2 causes: there are extra deaths than births, and folks transferring away. Information from the Texas Demographic Middle exhibits 75 counties misplaced inhabitants from 2022 to 2023. This contains 27 counties within the Excessive Plains that misplaced inhabitants as a result of residents moved elsewhere, probably the most seen in any area of Texas For instance, Muleshoe, Littlefield, Plainview and Floydada — the county seats for 4 counties surrounding Lubbock — collectively misplaced 400 residents throughout this time. On the alternative aspect of the state, dozens of rural and suburban counties in Central and East Texas grew throughout the identical time, pushed by folks transferring in on the lookout for land close to well-established metro areas equivalent to Dallas and Fort Value.

The Excessive Plains and West Texas areas are dwelling to billion-dollar industries with agriculture and vitality manufacturing — lawmakers have lengthy boasted it’s the place the nation will get its meals, gas and fiber. Nevertheless, the illustrious industries are held collectively by folks dwelling in rural Texas, who at the moment are transferring to anchor cities like Lubbock and Amarillo, the resource-rich hubs within the area that may present the roles, housing and alternatives {that a} small city can’t.

“Economic opportunities are more and more limited in rural parts of the state,” mentioned Lloyd Potter, the state demographer. “As the population starts declining, you have limited capability to operate retail, same thing with health care.”

State Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican who represents many rural areas on the Texas Legislature, mentioned sure communities can reinvent themselves. Those who can’t are dying off. After the state injected billions into rural Texas for water, broadband and vitality infrastructure, Perry hopes the Legislature is able to speak about even higher investments within the uncared for areas of the state.

“I’ve said forever, and it’s not a slam on my colleagues — if you would have left just a fraction of the wealth for this side of I-35, we could’ve had Six Flags in Lubbock,” he mentioned.

Perry can’t reverse historical past. Nevertheless, he mentioned he can advocate for an excellent chunk of the wealth that’s made within the area to remain there. Not all rural residents need to reside in a giant metropolis, or perhaps a midsize one like Lubbock or Amarillo. They only need their properties and communities to have a greater high quality of life, and state leaders should guarantee they will.

“Rural Texas is hard,” Perry mentioned. “The weather is pretty intense, the economy and opportunities for kids to stay are limited. Those that are there are partly by choice, but most are there because they were born and raised there, and don’t have any other real options to move out.”

Simply off a winding highway in the midst of open, remoted prairie land is King County, about 108 miles east of Lubbock. In 1900, the 944-square-mile county was dwelling to extra cows than residents — 38,000 cattle to 490 residents.

Not a lot has modified at present. The 2022 federal agriculture census discovered there have been greater than 18,000 cattle in comparison with 216 residents. A 2023 evaluation by the San Antonio Categorical-Information estimated King County led the state within the ratio, with 87 cattle for each one particular person.

It’d sound barren to some. It’s precisely what others hunt down.

“It’s just the way of life out here, it’s the way we are,” mentioned King County Choose Duane Daniel, who runs the second-least populated county in Texas, and third least within the U.S. “What we’ve got now is what the county needs, so I’m hoping the numbers stay in this area.”

Guthrie and its 156 residents are the center of the county. The freeway used to undergo it however doesn’t now, very similar to the railroad that by no means made it to Gomez, stopping folks from stumbling upon the city on highway journeys. There’s a restaurant, a church and some provide shops. The Guthrie Frequent Faculty District, which Daniel calls the heartbeat of the group, has about 95 college students enrolled, some from surrounding areas.

It’s additionally considered one of two large employers within the county, together with the sprawling 260,000-acre 4 Sixes Ranch.

“If something happens to the school, that’s probably where we lose some population,” Daniel mentioned. “As long as the doors stay open, I think we’re good.”

Rural areas sometimes have only one or two main employers. One is normally a faculty district or a hospital, and the domino impact begins when a type of companies closes. Hospitals have closed in rural areas at a gentle tempo since 2010 — greater than 120 rural hospitals throughout the U.S. shut their doorways. Texas leads the nation in rural hospital closures, with 26 throughout the identical time interval, in accordance with the Texas Group of Rural and Group Hospitals.

“It’s hard for any community to survive if they don’t have the jobs,” mentioned Rick Rhodes, rural engagement coordinator for Texas Rural Funders. “You’ve got to find ways to attract jobs to your community.”

Rhodes served because the mayor of Sweetwater, about 122 miles southeast of Lubbock, from 1993 to 2001. After his final yr in workplace, he moved to Austin. When he left Sweetwater, there have been almost 11,400 residents and never a single wind turbine. Now, it’s a wind vitality powerhouse with greater than 1,400 wind generators in Nolan County. The group, he mentioned, took an opportunity on the brand new vitality market and it paid off with the job market. The inhabitants has moved up and down through the years. Sweetwater now has 10,550 residents.

Guthrie leaders face extra limitations to restarting their financial system, equivalent to restricted housing. The dearth of properties is so dangerous that even some leaders can’t reside locally they serve. Ed Sharp, the interim-superintendent for the Guthrie faculty district, drives 129 miles from his dwelling in Whitharral to work.

Sharp mentioned there’s a romanticism with folks desirous to reside within the nation and ship their children to small colleges the place everybody is aware of everybody. Solely a type of fantasies for households can come true in Guthrie, and it’s enrolling their kids within the faculty system there. There aren’t any homes for folks to lease or personal.

“If somebody just decided they wanted to retire and move to Guthrie, they’d have to find the land and build a home,” Sharp mentioned. “Or find a place, but that’s difficult because there’s not any.”

It’s a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Sharp mentioned housing builders gained’t construct within the county out of worry nobody will purchase a house. And nobody can transfer to the county as a result of there aren’t any properties to purchase. To offer some aid, each the college district and the agriculture trade have begun to supply housing. The varsity district owns 16 homes within the small city, all reserved for academics and coaches. With out that supply on the desk, Sharp mentioned, recruiting could be inconceivable.

“There’s nowhere to live in, and the ranch and school can only employ so many people,” Sharp mentioned.

Perry, who represents King County within the Texas Senate, mentioned lawmakers should be strategic when companies knock on their door. A 3,000-employee Toyota manufacturing facility in a really small city wouldn’t make sense, he mentioned, due to the shortage of housing and infrastructure. Nevertheless, lawmakers might help determine what does.

“There are markets that rural communities don’t have the resources to develop and identify, and the state does,” Perry mentioned. “It’s incumbent upon the state to have those conversations.”

When these alternatives are recognized, it will possibly change the way forward for a group. Lubbock averted the curse that struck its neighboring cities. Fortenberry, the chairwoman for Lubbock’s Historic Fee, mentioned by 1930, eight totally different railroads ran by Lubbock. This created the hub metropolis standing that Lubbock nonetheless has to this present day, because it has two main hospital techniques, is surrounded by the agriculture trade, and is dwelling to Texas Tech College.

“The paved highways followed those railroads,” Fortenberry mentioned. “Then you get all the businesses that come with it.”

The sources in Lubbock make it an anchor metropolis, a spot with establishments which have a big effect on a metropolis’s high quality of life. This is similar for city cities like Dallas and Austin, and midsize cities like Amarillo, Lubbock, Odessa, and others, that are all thought of anchors of their areas.

This can be dangerous information for its neighboring communities as a result of anchor cities inadvertently pull folks and sources in from close by cities. It’s a typical incidence in city areas, although the impacts are extra noticeable in rural areas. Lubbock’s pull has solely added to the decline within the Excessive Plains.

There’s a center path. Tania Moody, government director for Texas Downtown, a rural advocacy community, mentioned small cities have to spend money on quality-of-life infrastructure to maintain younger folks and keep away from the phenomenon referred to as mind drain — the funneling of sensible, proficient youth from rural areas for higher alternatives. Analysis exhibits mind drain has plagued rural communities because the early 2000s.

With out facilities, which will be something from a pool to a movie show, cities threat driving away their youthful populations after graduating highschool, even when the cities do have sought-after jobs.

“Kids don’t go somewhere for a job anymore, they go somewhere they want to live,” Moody mentioned. “They’ll find a job.”

From the South Plains east to Dallas-Fort Value, Texas modifications dramatically. Gone the combination of tilled earth and open prairie land, the grass turns a bit greener. Timber begin to line the roads. The solar shines off small our bodies of water.

For small cities to outlive, or come again from the lifeless in some circumstances, consultants say they’ve to search out methods to reinvent themselves. And a few try — Levelland is reviving its historic Wallace Theater, the prize in Cornudas’ chili cook-off earlier this yr was 10 acres of land within the far West Texas desert, and Sweetwater is including facilities like pickleball courts. Nonetheless, it might be slightly simpler towards the “Texas Triangle” — which contains the Dallas-Fort Value, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin metro areas that now maintain 68% of the state’s 30.3 million residents.

Potter, the state demographer, mentioned there’s a frequent sample for financial success within the Dallas-Fort Value space particularly. Plano is an financial powerhouse with the Toyota headquarters — and 20 different Fortune 500 corporations — and he says it drew in different industries that multiplied this impact as folks moved in. Potter mentioned the counties within the North Texas space are among the many quickest rising within the U.S.

“All those people need houses now, restaurants, schools, we’re going to need to build roads for them,” Potter defined. “It feeds the construction industry, it fuels the economy.”

Proper in the midst of that financial growth is Celina, the fastest-growing metropolis within the U.S. Forty miles north of Dallas, Celina’s inhabitants was simply 6,000 folks in 2010. As of July 2023, it’s estimated to be greater than 43,000. Census information estimates Celina’s inhabitants skyrocketed by almost 27% from July 2022 to July 2023.

The town has a deep historical past within the agriculture trade, primarily with corn and cotton. The trade nonetheless exists within the space, with farms and ranches round regardless of city sprawl. Metropolis leaders noticed the growth of their inhabitants coming due to the “golden corridor” — the Dallas North Tollway increasing into extra suburban areas within the Dallas-Fort Value space. They usually ready for it.

Ryan Tubbs, Celina’s mayor, mentioned the city invested in options that draw folks in, together with public security and their faculty districts, constructing new properties in suburban communities wealthy with facilities, and equipping each dwelling within the metropolis with a gigabit of high-speed web.

The town grew to become the first “Gigabit City” in Texas in 2017, earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic put heightened consideration on the necessity for equal broadband entry within the U.S. In line with Tubbs, greater than 30% of Celina residents earn a living from home — that is greater than the reported 13% of people that labored from dwelling in Houston final yr, and about 6% in Lubbock in 2022.

The broadband funding has “paid off tremendously to make that decision at 10,000 residents and not 50,000 residents,” Tubbs mentioned.

The remainder of the state is making an attempt to catch up. Final yr, voters authorized $1.5 billion to increase broadband improvement, on prime of $3.3 billion in federal {dollars} from the Broadband, Fairness, Entry and Deployment Program. Perry, the state senator, mentioned it’s important to provide rural Texas residents alternatives.

“You can’t survive without a legitimate, dependable, affordable broadband connection,” Perry mentioned.

New improvement in Celina primarily pays for itself, Tubbs mentioned. Charges paid by builders have constructed the infrastructure wanted to maintain up with the stream of recent residents.

Celina hasn’t figured the whole lot out. Boomtowns and ghost cities alike face a dwindling water provide.

“Right now, we are OK,” Tubbs mentioned. “But I think over the next 10 to 15 years, we’ll see how that evolves.”

A lot like the agricultural corners of the state, North Texas is dropping water on account of ageing infrastructure and excessive warmth. Dallas and Fort Value collectively misplaced 23.5 billion gallons in 2023. Dallas had the second-highest improve in reported water loss, with 18% when officers anticipated solely a 4% improve.

Potter mentioned new development could possibly be a profit or a curse. Calls for on housing provide, colleges, water, vitality and transportation can all create challenges.

Nonetheless, it’s what some small cities have to survive. Texas Downtown is a member-based group that assesses downtown areas and helps leaders revitalize them. Moody, the group’s government director, says some small cities which have achieved this aim of their downtowns now attract guests from surrounding areas. This contains Goliad and its Market Days, a month-to-month open market that highlights native companies, and the revitalization of the Wallace Theatre in Levelland.

“There’s no reason we can’t have a kitschy brand like the City of Mosaics and have something that draws in tourists to our town,” mentioned Moody, who lives in Levelland. “Something that shows we care.”

A profitable renaissance should embody group enter, Moody mentioned. In some cases, rural residents — individuals who have at all times recognized rugged individualism and small city values — worry development and alter. In Levelland’s case, development may complicate the land boundaries with Smyer, a mere 13 miles east. Nevertheless, sensible development is best than the choice.

“It’s better than dying and being a ghost town that was once thriving and is now a dust bowl,” Moody mentioned.

For the final eight years, Tessa Waddell has poured her desires into FarmGirl Frosting, her vivid turquoise clothes retailer off Freeway 287 in Claude, about 30 miles east of Amarillo.

Waddell prides herself on being there for the women and girls within the small city of 1,200. They could want an outfit for a marriage or a present for an important day, and Waddell’s retailer helps them keep away from a drive to Amarillo.

Besides, she will be able to’t at all times be there. Waddell often closes the shop and travels to larger cities for conventions. There, she can have extra clients in a single weekend than in a complete month at her downtown retailer.

The technique is the distinction between retaining her enterprise on the map or shutting her doorways.

“For my store to stay open, I have to be gone,” mentioned Waddell, who was again after a weekend present in Levelland. “My customers know to get here when I’m here, because I might not be here for a month.”

Claude is the form of place folks think about after they consider small-town dwelling. It’s surrounded by grassy plains, its few companies are centrally positioned within the downtown space, and it’s a fast drive from all the companies and sources in Amarillo. The city has one site visitors mild. It was put in final yr to assist handle 15,000 automobiles a day touring on Freeway 287, which connects to Interstates 27 and 40, and finally Interstate 35.

Regardless of the heavy site visitors, the city inhabitants continues to steadily decline. From 2021 to 2022, Claude’s inhabitants fell by about 7%, from 1,307 to 1,218.

Joe Minkley, the city’s mayor, says Claude is particular as a result of it has nearly the whole lot a resident or traveler wants. There’s a giant grocery retailer, expansive fireplace and ambulance stations for first responders to be comfy in — even two Airbnb areas. It offsets the impacts of small swings of their inhabitants, Minkley says. And it could possibly be a mannequin for some small cities.

“We’re a thriving little community,” Minkley mentioned. “I don’t know that we need a major industry here.”

Minkley has spent most of his 70 years in Claude, solely leaving for school earlier than coming again. When he was six and president of his class, Minkley acquired the important thing to the town whereas on a area journey. It’s the one ornament on his workplace partitions at present.

His love for his hometown is what retains Minkley optimistic about Claude’s future. They don’t make a concerted effort for development, Minkley says, as a result of they need individuals who know the city’s enchantment.

“It’s certainly not that we have an overabundance of places to go out and eat,” Minkley mentioned. “It’s because of the people that live here and make it what it is.”

Minkley additionally credit ahead pondering from metropolis leaders to make use of $1.3 million in reserves to construct two new water storage tanks as an alternative of issuing a bond. Perry, the state senator, agrees a giant manufacturing facility wouldn’t make sense in Claude. Nevertheless, he mentioned it’s as much as lawmakers to be diligent and assist rural communities determine what is smart to assist them thrive.

“These are hardworking people who don’t ask for much,” Perry mentioned. “But there are some things they need that, by virtue of policy, aren’t there. It requires us to be diligent about being strategic. We can’t ignore infrastructure and some of the basic needs, or we’ll never see that economic growth.”

Disclosure: Texas Tech College have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no function within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full record of them right here.