While I wind down county highways across the United States, I am struck with how many towns appear to be struggling, a slow death march of empty storefronts and faded roadside signs. It’s apparent in every state I’ve visited, from Michigan to Maine and beyond.
It appears that small town America is at a crossroads. Many industries that once sustained these places have shuttered: factories have moved overseas, mills have closed, some mines have gone the way of alternative energy. It’s left residents in a lurch, grasping for employment and wondering what’s next.
“High speed internet is going to save this town,” one man mused in southern Indiana. At the time, the concept seemed ludicrous — it’s 2019, how could they not already have high speed internet? — but as quickly as the thought crossed my mind, I had to own my privilege and lack of awareness. Here, less than two hours from Indianapolis, I was lucky to get two bars of cell service. The one place with WiFi was 45 minutes away, and the video I tried to upload took hours where in cities, it takes minutes.
High speed internet very well could save that town, or at least help it. Access to reliable, fast internet would increase the job opportunities for residents and thus stimulate the local economy, creating options that people in cities take for granted.
In other places, residents are leaning hard into tourism as the saving grace for their communities. In Gaylord, Michigan, their main street, spanning just a handful of blocks, is blossoming with only a single empty storefront. A few years ago, one resident told me, more than half of these were empty. It was a shadow of what once was mom-and-pop businesses, that died off when Walmart and chain stores moved in a mile down the road.
But today, the residents have rallied with the changing flow of spending and re-invested in their downtown, leaning into breweries, restaurants and other service industries. They’ve marketed themselves as one of the top golf destinations in the country, with access to beautiful courses in all directions, and it’s paid off: their summer season is now flourishing.
Tourism, however, can bring its own downsides — and in some cases, residents are unsure they even want it in the first place. Ontonogan, a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, is at the foothold of the Porcupine Mountains and the shores of Lake Superior. To the outside observer, it seems to be promising as a year-round tourist destination.
Compared to many downtowns I’ve seen over the past four months, their small main street is mighty, more than half full with small, local businesses. There’s no Walmart or chain store to be seen, not for miles.
And while some small business owners see the potential to grow and flourish with tourism, the local paper owner told me about the opposition from long-time residents. She’s been pushing for a steakhouse or other restaurant to re-open for years, citing that even when visitors do come, they hardly stay — there’s no where to eat. But she thinks people want it like that.
“Some people here, they don’t want outsiders,” she said, shaking her head. But she raised a question— with that attitude, how could this place, with its aging population, survive?
There don’t seem to be clear answers on how a small town should reposition itself to survive. While tourism can restore, it can also sabotage, creating rifts in community culture or pushing out long-term residents with an increased cost of living and rising real estate. And when it happens only seasonally, it raises questions of how they can survive the remaining months of a year.
But craving the return to long-held industry doesn’t seem realistic either. Mills and factories aren’t typically reopening in this new phase of digital industrialization, especially when the low costs of operating business overseas entices corporate overlords.
Some towns are simply not built in places that entice visitors, making tourism a no-go from the start. Others are facing the aftereffects of leaning too deep into tourism, with their residents being forced farther and farther out from their towns due to a flood of second-home owners moving in. And others, still, are simply dying — residents are moving to where the jobs are, where the schools are, where the opportunities are, since they are no longer there.
So where does that leave small towns? What’s the move for going forward?
The future feels palpably unclear.
