I grew up in a valley 60 miles long, with 12 small towns scattered throughout farmland. The population reached 6000 if one counted the summer homes community nestled within rural, picturesque mountain living. The first place my parents lived after moving there was a sparsely populated area with four “neighbors”. The second place had a population of 250. When I lived there, the largest town in the valley had maybe 2000 residents. The jr. high and high school were in that town, and most of the businesses that weren’t small grocery or gas station related were there. I rode a bus 20 miles to get to my education. It was the rural existence my parents wanted, away from the “damaging” influences of a black and white world where evil reigned supreme.
Many who lived in the valley felt the same. It was, and still is, a conservative Mormon community; my graduating class had 125 teens, and only 4 of us were not Mormon. The conservatism led to a staunch belief about outside attack on their way of life. People were quite afraid of the world outside valley borders and the terrible beliefs that might make their way into the heads of their children if they allowed even small bits of it into their living space. I knew elderly Mormon inhabitants who had never traveled to Salt Lake and visited the temple there despite its relative nearness (4 hours) because they feared the outside—and believe me, that says something. They stayed on their farms and shuddered to think about contaminating themselves and their families with views and beliefs that interfered or even contradicted their ‘simple’ way of living (I found it incredibly sad as a teen to listen to a 70-year-old brag about having never left the valley in all those years. I still find it incredibly sad, for even more reasons).
This had a profound effect on business and work. How? The city council in that oh-so-large town of 2000 voted to deny permits for outside businesses to build anything, even when it was sorely needed. The valley had a lumber mill that died when I was in elementary school (Reagan-era casualty), and the cheese factory (yes, there are a ton of dairy cows raised there) was open, closed, open, closed. Where to go for work if one did not own a farm? Fish and Game trout stocking only employs so many, and being a hunting guide is not exactly lucrative. One could drive 2 hours or more to work in the mines or a larger ‘city’ in Idaho. One could drive 70 miles to a job in the nearby tourist trap, but the low-paying, mostly service industry jobs available there barely paid for gas to get to them, let alone for anything else. One could do as my father did, and work for a trucking company in Salt Lake (4 hours away, remember) and spend weeks at a time on the road because there was no need for “local” drivers anywhere near the valley.
It would have seemed that any business would have been welcome. Work opportunities were few and far between (your kids take care of the cows and change pipe in the fields when needed, you don’t pay someone else for that privilege), which meant the kids, once they graduated from high school, left, for college or to find a home elsewhere. Even if the teens wanted to stay, a picturesque mountain environment does not immediately grant money and a home out of thin air. Jobs were in dire need, but businesses were actively turned away. The city council denied permits to a company wishing to build a ski resort there (lots and lots of snow during winter. Lots and lots. I do not miss it). They denied permits to a beer company who wanted access to the “natural spring water” available because BEER IS EVIL. They denied permits to every business that could have made a difference in the working lives of valley inhabitants because *gasp* they were from the outside. They would contaminate the rural existence the people of the valley worked so hard to maintain, maybe even bring in undesirables to work at the new business, further eroding the veneer. So the kids kept leaving after graduating high school, a few returning to take over inherited farmsteads, but the majority finding a life elsewhere. Rural, uncontaminated environments are pretty, but that prettiness means little in everyday life if you can’t make money while living within them, and complaining to high hell about it as the extent of pro-active action won’t change that dynamic.
When I read about the lack of job prospects in rural America, I always wonder how many of those communities drove away every opportunity at some sort of development, far more intent on keeping their rural, pristine existence rural and pristine rather than providing viable living opportunities for their residents. They can complain all they want about the lack of opportunity, but sometimes, that lack is on purpose.