Rejuvenating small towns

I was talking to a friend sometime back and we got to talking about small towns in Wyoming and Basin in particular; about how the small towns seem to be shriveling, business are leaving, people are leaving, and the fear is that soon they will become unsustainable. 

I have a couple of thoughts about that. 

First, as I look through the old newspapers I can see that basically Basin is the same size as it was 100 years ago. The populations has risen and fallen over the years, but it has always been pretty stable at about 1000. So population wise, Basin is pretty stable, the business and stores though are a total different story. 

Basin used to have three grocery stores, at least three cafes, two drug stores, a Five and Dime type store, a Gambles store, three to four bars plus the Eagles, a lumber yard, an appliance store, at one time it had two farm implement dealers, and a car dealership. It had a tire shop, three bean mills, three to four hotels and motels, two clothing stores, a saddle shop, up to six gas stations (maybe more), and even a pool hall. 

So what happened? What changed that all of these businesses were lost and how can we revive the kind of place Basin used to be? 

This is my best shot and while I know it isn’t practical, it is what I can see studying the history of Basin that has made the difference. 

Make all of the highways gravel roads again. It would save the state a ton of money, and when it takes two or more hours to drive to Cody, suddenly Wal-Mart isn’t so convenient and stores will pop up because the demand will be there. It has gotten so easy and fast to run to Cody, to run to Billings, to run to Worland. Back when Basin was a multi-business town it was pretty much an all day trip to go to Cody and while Worland was closer, it was still a long ways to drive when the roads were gravel and the cars made maybe 35mph top speed. So people shopped at home, they bought their groceries, medicine, tires, household items, gas, everything here at home. 

Trips to Billings were very rare, usually for serious medical stuff. Trips to Cody were more of a vacation type, even if it was only for a day. Worland was a little more accessible so it was a more frequent destination. 

Now it is easy to hop in a dependable car and whiz to Cody in an hour, to Billings in a little over 2 hours, half an hour to Worland. And all of those towns have things that are cheaper with a  better selection and more stores to choose from. So we go and leave our local stores to struggle. 

Basically we have become a much more mobile society and because of that the people living in small towns don’t shop in their hometown. There is an advantage to the good roads and better cars though, people can live in the smaller towns and still enjoy the advantages of the larger places without having to live there. Which causes another problem that needs to be addressed, housing. That will take a discussion all on its own. 

So what can we do? Remember to patronize the small town businesses as much as possible, by groceries there even if it costs a little more; check out the local hardware store before heading to Worland to a larger store, it might just be a surprise what all they have and the price might be close enough to be competitive especially with the price of gas. Basically think of it as Small Town Saturday (the promotion to encourage people to shop at home for Christmas) all year long.