{"id":28643,"date":"2024-03-18T16:52:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T22:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-brain-gain-in-rural-america-and-who-is-behind-it\/"},"modified":"2024-03-18T22:52:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T22:52:24","slug":"the-brain-gain-in-rural-america-and-who-is-behind-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-brain-gain-in-rural-america-and-who-is-behind-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018brain gain\u2019 in rural America, and who is behind it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Looking
Looking southwest over the city of Cortez toward Sleeping Ute Mountain and the Ute Mountain Ute reservation with Mesa Verde to the south. The unique landscapes of this region bring many residents to the area. (Photo by Matthew Tangeman)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

For many people, leaving a rural place is a rite of passage. From higher education to looking for love, many think they have to leave to pursue the rest of their lives. The narrative contributes to the often repeated and not all true story that our rural communities are dying.<\/p>\n

According to University of Minnesota researcher Ben Winchester<\/a>, rural communities are actually gaining residents \u2013 mainly above the age of 35 \u2013 in a trend that he calls \u201cbrain gain.\u201d<\/a> Winchester also said the \u201cbrain drain\u201d trend of 18-year-olds leaving their home communities is not only a rural trend. Overall, 40-60% of all kids end up leaving their hometown. \u201cWhen you\u2019re 18 to 25 you\u2019re generally very individualistic,\u201d said Winchester.<\/p>\n

So who is choosing rural and why?<\/p>\n

Ryan Haley graduated from Montezuma-Cortez High School in 2011 and headed to Grand Junction for college, where he played football and discovered his future career \u2013 chiropractic care. Next, he went to Dallas, Texas, for chiropractic school, where he met his wife.<\/p>\n

During school, Haley started talking to a chiropractor back home in Cortez about coming back and helping out with the practice. In 2018, he and his wife returned to Montezuma County with their first child and started working at 4 Corners Chiropractic.<\/p>\n

Haley sees Montezuma County as a preferable place to raise kids, and he appreciates the tight-knit community that he finds less common in the larger urban areas he\u2019s lived in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m part of a close community that uplifts each other, where I feel like in a city you do not get as much of that. It is kind of every man for himself,\u201d Haley told the Daily Yonder.<\/p>\n

Haley appreciates the way the Cortez community comes together when people are sick or need support. From chili fundraisers or auctions to a helping hand with a car project, it\u2019s a place where people show up to help out.<\/p>\n

The common refrain across interviewees for this story was that leaving their hometown was important, for the perspective that distance provides. Whether they returned home or settled elsewhere they found that trying something new taught them what their values are.<\/p>\n

\"At
At 30, Candelaria is back in Cortez, running the family business, Candelaria Construction. \u201cThere's a lot that I took for granted here that I didn't realize was a luxury,\u201d he said. \u201cThe community really takes care of one another here, and I think that's really special.\u201d (Ilana Newman \/ The Daily Yonder)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

So how do rural areas continue the trend of \u201cbrain gain,\u201d or older demographics returning or moving to rural areas? How do rural areas continue to attract people who want to live there and contribute to the community \u2013 whether they are from the area from somewhere else?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trend I call the \u2018brain gain\u2019 really picked up in the \u2019 90s and filled up almost every vacant home in rural America. And then we\u2019ve seen that trend continue for the past two decades,\u201d said Winchester. He goes on to say that the trend has slowed down more recently, which could be because the rural housing stock is largely filled with older residents, retiring in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis generation of seniors are staying in their homes longer than any previous generation. So it kind of slowed down this brain gain trend,\u201d said Winchester. The trend also contributes higher housing prices as supply in rural areas falls across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you wanted to move to a rural community, you couldn\u2019t because there is really literally nowhere for them to live,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Welcoming the newcomers<\/div>\n

Meanwhile, two states up and over to the east, in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, a rural rebound initiative coordinator has the job of welcoming and supporting newcomers to the community in an attempt to keep them in the community for longer. Through their Grab-A-Bite program, locals take newcomers out for a meal to help jump-start the social network building process of moving to a new rural community.<\/p>\n

Winchester emphasizes the importance of community support for new residents because it\u2019s will be the new residents who step into leadership roles in the future. He said that returning adults already have the community infrastructure, and coming back to where they grew up is going to be a much easier transition than for someone new to a community.<\/p>\n

Emily Spahn moved to Cortez in 2020 from Denver because she wanted to move to a place where the outdoors was more accessible. She loves to ski, mountain bike and rock climb, and she found a place where she could do all of those things without going far. She soon found that the pace of life helped her slow down and get out of the competitive spirit that she felt while living in cities.<\/p>\n

Spahn said that finding community in Montezuma County was a slow process, joking that in her first year, she was sure that she had invited everyone in the area under 40 to her birthday party. There were seven people in attendance.<\/p>\n

In many urban areas, it can be easy to get caught up in a bubble of people who have the same beliefs, said Spahn. But in Cortez, for better or worse, political beliefs and cultural backgrounds overlap. Spahn said that she has now become friends with people who she might never have met in a city because there are fewer options in a small town.<\/p>\n

Three years after moving to the area, Spahn organized a gathering that had more than 20 friends in attendance.<\/p>\n

\"When
When 18-year-old Stephen Candelaria thought about Cortez, things that came to mind were: \u201cNo opportunities, this place sucks, I\u2019m never coming back.\u201d He eventually did leave the area to go to college at Colorado School of Mines in Golden. (Ilana Newman \/ The Daily Yonder)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Community maintenance<\/div>\n

To keep rural communities alive and thriving, not necessarily growing, Winchester said that communities need a plan for turnover in leadership, whether that\u2019s nonprofit boards, county commissioners, city council or other leadership positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver 75% of rural homes are occupied by baby boomers and older. And when they turn over the next 25 years, we\u2019re gonna have the largest turnover of residents in our rural communities that we\u2019ve almost ever seen,\u201d he said. \u201cAre we ready for these succession plans for leadership?\u201d<\/p>\n

Amorina Lee Martinez grew up in Mancos, another town in Montezuma County. She said that school was a defining piece of her life, excelling in high school and then going to the University of Colorado Boulder on a scholarship. After graduating, she returned to Southwest Colorado before going back to Boulder for graduate school, where she studied the Dolores River region. She spent 10 years in Boulder, but she always knew she would want to return to Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to take all this learning and all this big city stuff and bring it back to my community and give back. So that was the value or the motivation of coming back was that why not contribute my energy to the place that raised me,\u201d said Lee Martinez.<\/p>\n

She values the intergenerational connection to place and hopes to contribute to a community where she could choose to raise children someday. Lee Martinez is already taking on leadership roles in the community and plans to continue to support the community that raised her.<\/p>\n

Rural is not one thing, said Winchester. \u201cOur community constantly changes, our culture constantly changes. We\u2019re not a melting pot. We\u2019re a stew, and we are ladling things out and we\u2019re adding things in all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was produced through the Daily Yonder Rural Reporting Fellowship, with support from the LOR Foundation. LOR works with people in rural places to improve quality of life. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

offer unique advantages that inspire many to return and bolster their communities <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28643"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}