Land of the Free

By Daniel Kadlec

The last thing that goes is the grain elevator. Shortly before that, the post office. Preceding those, more or less in order, go the hardware store, lumberyard, gas station, grocery, pharmacy, bank and then, most dishearteningly, the schools. Those precious schools. After the kids are gone, it's just a matter of time before Main Street--and what remains of the once cheery little houses rimming it--gets boarded up for good.

Abandoned homes? Usable yet worthless real estate? It sounds crazy at a time when house prices in most parts of the country are soaring and the Internet has allowed millions to set up virtual offices and Web-based businesses anywhere they like. But for vast stretches of rural America, this is cold reality. The kids moved away for college or work and never came back, and now the World War II generation that stabilizes so many small towns is fast reaching the limits of mortality. As town elders die, even their money flees, inherited by offspring who long ago headed for the city--quickening the community's descent into dust. Yes, back home in Kansas they're minting ghost towns by the dozen.

But here's where things get wild. Hoping to reverse the decline, enterprising small towns across the Great Plains have begun offering land at little or no cost to anyone who will build a house and move in. The programs have taken wing in the Kansas towns of Marquette, Ellsworth and Minneapolis. "So far, I like what I see," says Jim Wymore, 40, as he is shown around Ellsworth on a gusty May afternoon. He's in town with his brother Shawn, 39, to check out the land deal. Both are from Chicago, and would be prize catches for any population-challenged community. They have five kids between them--which would bring the school district thousands of dollars in state aid--and jobs that keep them on the road, letting them live anywhere. They're looking for a place where they can get more for their money and raise their kids in a wholesome environment. "My daughter is growing up. She's in middle school," says Jim. "She's getting a little too ghetto, a little too urban. We want to be someplace with family values."

This scene is being replayed often throughout the Plains as a fast-growing band of land-granting imitators has taken root from La Villa, Texas, to Chugwater, Wyo., to New Richland, Minn. Dozens of towns have some version of a land giveaway, and dozens more are considering it. "The giveaways worked once, after the Civil War," says David Darling, an expert in rural affairs at Kansas State University. "They have potential to work again."

This modern-day Homestead Act is a pale version of the one authorized by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, when settlers were given 160-acre tracts to encourage building out the frontier with farms and ranches. Today there is no central authority; the programs are initiated and run locally. Yet Washington has taken note. In March, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota reintroduced a bill that would forgive college debts, grant tax credits for a home purchase and fund small-business start-ups in counties that have lost at least 10% of their residents over the past 20 years. In Hagel's home state, 56 of 93 counties qualify.

It's in Kansas, though, that land giveaways are sprouting faster than wheat. The state has at least 11 locally run programs and is the most organized, with a website kansasfreeland.com that spells out details. Others are playing catch-up. In Whiting, Iowa, ground has been set aside while a decision is awaited about whether to charge people who take land for utilities. "There will be new houses on that land no matter what," promises Mayor Nancy Brenden. In Chugwater--aptly named, considering its place on the long, dry Oregon Trail traveled by early settlers--the first taker has just signed up. "We have all this new energy in town," says Mayor Krista West. "People are excited."

Be clear about this: no one is giving away choice property. The typical tract runs one-third of an acre in a new subdivision in which streets and utility lines have been laid. The parcels range in value from $2,000 to $20,000, depending on the town. But it will still cost $80,000 to $130,000 to build. Some folks come for the free land but see those numbers and decide instead to buy an existing home, which typically goes for considerably less. Towns aren't cutting any sweetheart deals for doctors or lawyers or other professionals needed in a thriving community. "One guy told us he wanted to build a bed and breakfast, so we were trying to figure out how to give him a bigger lot," says Steve Piper, mayor of Marquette and owner of its only grocery store. "After all our work, he never followed up. Now we just treat everybody the same."

By attracting new blood, these towns hope to avoid the fate of hundreds of hamlets across the Plains that have passed the point of no return--even if they don't know it. Kansas State's Darling says that once a town is down to its post office and silos, the decay is fatal. He estimates that 20% of Kansas' 627 incorporated communities are on the slippery slope to extinction.

Consider Paradise, Kans., which is just about lost. "We buried 12 here last year," says Garnett Angel, whose husband of 60 years, John, was one of the latest. That's a major hit in a tiny town, where the eroding school building hasn't been used in more than 10 years and a forest of mature trees sprouts within four walls of what used to be a bank on the main strip. Paradise was never big. But it bustled. Now its storefronts are shuttered, and the only action other than the, yes, tumbleweeds that roll through town is at the grain elevator, where the occasional farmer weighs and deposits wheat. Lucille Shearer, 58, who went to school here, works alone in the post office. Ask her how many folks live in Paradise, and she starts counting from a two-page phone book. "These days, about 50," she replies.

In Gem, Kans., where the three-story, hollowed-out brick Public School 21 looms over rows of abandoned homes, about all that's left functioning in the business district is, again, a grain elevator and a severely weathered tiny wooden post office with the ever present wind whipping an American flag out front. A rusting sign recalls better times: RESERVED FOR U.S. MAIL VEHICLES--as if there's any competition for a parking spot.

In Jennings, Kans., students from kindergarten through high school total about 30 in a single building. Next year only the elementary grades will remain; Grade 6 and up will be bused some 30 miles to Oberlin or Hoxie. It's expected that the younger kids will be bused away as well. "It's beyond fighting," says Sharon Hickert, a loan officer at the Jennings Bank. The bank and a cafe are the last businesses on the strip. "We've seen a heckuva decline in the 12 years that I've been here."

A 140-mile stretch in Kansas on Route 4, from Geneseo to Shields, about 40 miles south of Interstate 70 is a veritable death valley. In town after town, schools have been boarded up, and the only preserved building is the American Legion post. These parts have so emptied that a turtle crossing the street has a decent shot at getting to the other side uninterrupted. Entire city blocks sell for $100 at sheriff's auctions, only to be abandoned, tax delinquent and on the block again a few years later.

Rural America has been hemorrhaging population for decades, of course, with small towns trying--and failing--to reverse the outflow by wooing a big manufacturer with tax incentives. "That was the whole game--elephant hunting," says Anita Hoffhines, who heads economic development in Ellsworth. The new approach, known as "economic gardening," is to bring in people and let businesses follow. Not big businesses but shops and cafes that employ two or three people and that would slowly re-energize Main Street. It's a bit of a catch-22. With no jobs available, who will move there? And if no one moves there, how can you start a business? The land giveaways are meant to break this cycle by giving folks an economic reason to take a shot.

It isn't a new idea. Locally organized land giveaways have been tried sporadically for years, without much success. Typically, a town springs to action only when there is talk of shutting down the school. Yet by then the town is already on the slippery slope. In July 1981, Harley Kissner, then a 72-year-old bachelor who owned 640 acres near Antler, N.D., was alarmed by plans to shut down the school. He ran ads in three area newspapers offering ground to anyone who would build a house, move in with children and stay at least five years. The ads got national attention. "People started showing up overnight," says Janet Tennyson, 58. She and her husband run the only gas station in town. In a matter of weeks, Kissner found six takers and put them on generous 5-acre or 9-acre tracts. The new families brought in enough kids to keep the school open. But only for a while. Unable to keep jobs, the families left town a few years later; some had never built a house. The school closed in 1987. Kissner has since died.

Such failures offer lessons. Free land alone is not enough. Struggling towns need to attract folks who bring incomes with them or will commute to a larger city for work. And the towns are not above a little salesmanship. So Ellsworth, where Wild Bill Hickock once roamed and locals insist they know more about Wyatt Earp than his biographer does, promotes itself as "the wickedest cow town in the West." Prowers County, Colo., appeals to bird watchers with its 400 species. Atwood, Kans., tells hunters about its bountiful wild turkey, pheasant and deer. Six counties in northwestern North Dakota share a website prairieopportunity.com and play up the area's high-speed Internet access.

But for all the effort, the fate of these rural towns may have more to do with their proximity to a large city than anything they can do for themselves. Last October the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb., published a study on land giveaways that concluded, "The most successful projects are those towns close to and within easy commuting distance of larger cities." That's where the jobs are, pure and simple.

The first real success was scored by Hendrum, Minn., less than 30 miles from Fargo, N.D. Since launching its land giveaway in 1994, Hendrum has added 18 homes--not exactly a boom but the first construction in at least a decade. "It has brought a lot to our town," says John Kolness, head of the local economic-development authority. Land values are rising, he says, and Main Street is picking up. The population decline has slowed significantly, and the town still offers free land to folks who will build on it.

Minneapolis, Kans., started a successful program in 1999. But it wasn't until Marquette enjoyed huge success with its program in 2003 that word spread, inspiring copycats. Marquette, within an hour's drive of Salina and Hutchinson, bought 50 acres of wheat field on the west side and began laying streets and utilities. All 82 lots have been taken; 23 new homes are finished or being built. The city's population, which had been falling, is now 650--up from 527 a year ago--and 45 kids have been added to the elementary school, says Mayor Piper. The giveaways "saved our school and rekindled a lot of pride in this town."

Jose Carillo, 35, is so convinced that land values are coming back in Marquette that after building his own house on a free lot, he took another and is building in hopes of selling quickly for a profit. "This is a great opportunity," he says. For the town too. --With reporting by Sarah Sturmon Dale/New Richland, Pat Dawson/Chugwater, Rita Healy/Denver, Chris Maag/Whiting, Marguerite Michaels/Chicago and Eric Roston/Washington

With reporting by Sturmon Dale/New Richland, Pat Dawson/Chugwater, Rita Healy/Denver, Chris Maag/Whiting, Marguerite Michaels/Chicago, Eric Roston/Washington