Chugwater, Wyo.
Stand here on old Wyoming Highway 321, in the center of this downtrodden prairie town, and the quiet is startling.
The two-story hotel is boarded shut. The flour mill, barbershop, lumberyard and pool hall all closed years ago.
The only thing that rocks at the River Rocks steakhouse is the for-sale sign out front, which twists and bobs in the wind.
It wasn’t always so.
Kenneth Welty, 85, remembers days when families from the massive cattle operations that stretched across the ocher-colored prairie came to town each Saturday, buying groceries, stopping at the lumberyard, and kicking up their heels at the Saturday night dance.
“This place used to be a very prosperous community,” said Welty, who, except for a stint in Wyoming’s oil fields, has lived his whole life here.
Towns like Chugwater can be found in every corner of rural America, from the North Dakota prairie to the West Texas Panhandle. They are faced with a stark choice: Find ways to attract new blood or blow away like the tumbleweeds bouncing along the plains.
So the town leaders of Chugwater – population 244 – have come up with a plan.
Beginning next month, the town will grant any newcomer a city lot 100 feet by 120 feet for $100. In return, applicants must agree to build a house and live in Chugwater for two years.
The town’s leaders see it as a kind of new Homestead Act – a modern version of the land giveaway of the mid-19th century that drew stakeholders to the West’s vast expanses in exchange for 160 acres of hard-bitten sod.
It’s not for the faint of heart.
In plentiful company
Chugwater has a small bank, a one-room library, and a sparkling new community center. The soda fountain has 48 flavors of milkshakes. And the aging caretakers of a local museum are happy to open the doors on weekdays – if you call ahead first.
But the town has no traffic light, no grocery store, no policeman, and no bar.
What it doesn’t lack in its efforts to draw new residents is company.
Across rural America, 698 counties have lost more than 10 percent of their population since 1980, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Like other towns that once blossomed across the prairie, Chugwater suffers because of consolidation of business and a revolution in transportation. The bustling Chugwater that Welty remembers thrived when coming to town meant a ride in a buggy or a Model-T over rough roads.
Now ranchers and wheat farmers here hop on Interstate 25 for the 45-minute trip to Cheyenne, the state capital, or a shorter drive to Wheatland, a town of 3,500 about 25 miles north. They buy their lumber at Home Depot and their groceries at Wal-Mart.
And advances in technology mean that fewer people can ranch and farm more land.
“When I was growing up, you fed cows with a pitchfork. Now, it’s all automated. One guy can feed 500 cows and still be back in the barn in an hour,” said Richard Clark, an agricultural economist in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Seeking salvation
Desperate to slow the decline, communities across the plains are working to re-invent themselves. They promote direct marketing of organic beef and install broadband Internet. They start small-business incubators and look for marketing niches.
Atkinson, a town in north-central Nebraska, held a community garage sale on eBay, with residents pitching in the contents of sheds and storage rooms to raise money for an economic development project.
Many are looking for the silver bullet – a clean industry that can save an entire community and whose managers prefer the treeless plains to the verdant shores of Oregon or Washington.
After decades of massive federal farm subsidies have failed to slow the decline, some policymakers are beginning to ask: “When do you stop trying?”
“The economic issue is, how long do you subsidize that lifestyle for a few residents?” Clark said.
But Mary Hoyle is unwilling to give up.
A lifelong Chugwater resident, Hoyle’s family has struggled to make a living here. Her husband worked as a carpenter and a ranch hand. For a while, he drove every day to Wheatland to work at a tire store.
They stayed not because it’s easy, but because it’s better.
What’s special about Chugwater can’t be quantified by economists, she said. Doors are left unlocked. Neighbors pull together. And the town’s soda fountain has charms no Wal-Mart can match. A handwritten sign under one shelf stuffed with knickknacks proclaims, “Make an offer.”
Even so, Hoyle recognizes that small towns aren’t the paradise some rural revivalists are pitching.
A few years ago, sheriff’s deputies uncovered a meth lab in town. And teenage drinking is chronic.
“We know we aren’t immune from the problems of the rest of the world,” she said.
Economically, that loss of innocence translates into a downward spiral from which many communities can’t escape.
Boredom and resilience
The town’s young people are no longer willing to stay here once they finish school. Part of that is a lack of jobs, but many don’t want to be limited by small-town life.
Shane Buchholz grew up on a ranch outside of town. Now a high school senior, he ticks off the few jobs worth having in Chugwater: postmaster; a clerk at the bank; working for the state office that plows roads in the winter.
Anything else is pretty much minimum wage.
Buchholz has no plans to stay. In the fall, he plans to go to college to study forestry. Among his friends, others have ambitions to join the military or learn computer programming. One wants to become a chef.
For now, they spend a lot of time fighting boredom.
“I’m not going to lie to you. We drink a lot,” said Patrick Jacobsen, another senior.
But longtime residents say any town that has lasted more than a hundred years in a place where the wind can blow over tractor- trailers like Tonka Toys isn’t going to go away easily.
Karen Guidice, the town clerk, has sent out more than 140 applications for the first eight lots in the development program. Requests for applications have come from as far away as Pensacola, Fla., and Kennewick, Wash.
Rick Emery, a marketing consultant from Bayside, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, said his job allows him to live anywhere, and that he’s long been drawn to the open spaces of the West. He’s investigating the feasibility of using a satellite Internet service before deciding whether to submit the application the town mailed him this spring.
Does Chugwater’s isolation or its lack of amenities many Americans would consider basic to modern life worry him?
“It’d take me an hour and a half to get to the airport in New York, and that’s only 5 miles. What’s driving to Denver or Cheyenne?” Emery said.
“And plus, for a marketing guy, you can’t beat the name Chugwater. Think of it: ‘Chugwater, Wyoming, Springwater,”‘ he said. “You can just imagine the possibilities.”
Staff writer Michael Riley can be reached at 303-820-1614 or mriley@denverpost.com.
