I love Google Maps, so I just pick random small towns and turn on Street View and "walk" through the neighborhoods. They all seem deserted, no one even on Main Street, most places seem dilapidated and deserted. Houses are so far apart in some cases that you don't even have real neighbors.

College Station is the smallest town I've lived in so I don't know how it is to live in places like Dime Box, TX or Loda, IL.

Is it really as depressing as it seems? What do residents of these towns do for work?

Sounds amazing. I'd love to live in a small quiet town. Or where I can't see my neighbors.

It's fantastic.

Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town

Stay in the city; small towns are terrible places to live. Out in the country on a piece of land is even worse.

You can even pee off of the back porch!

I don't know about all small towns, but in Allentown, they closed all the factories down. So the people just killed time by filling out forms and standing in line.

EclipseAg said:

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I don't know about all small towns, but in Allentown, they closed all the factories down. So the people just killed time by filling out forms and standing in line.

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And doing loads of Oxy. Don't forget about the Oxy.

Living in town in a small town would be terrible. Like a neighborhood in downtown Lampases…. Worst. Living on a giant ranch would be awesome.

I live out in the country and our town is quite small. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Where do you actually live for context of this post

Sheridan, Wyoming is an interesting example of a small town. Poverty with a view for a lot of people, lots of trailer parks and meth. Also a lot of rich people living there. The middle class seemed like a minority when I was there. Housing is pretty expensive but the job market is horrible. Lots of $12-14/hr jobs or less.

Green2Maroon said:

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Sheridan, Wyoming is an interesting example of a small town. Poverty with a view for a lot of people, lots of trailer parks and meth. Also a lot of rich people living there. The middle class seemed like a minority when I was there. Housing is pretty expensive but the job market is horrible. Lots of $12-14/hr jobs or less.

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I'm pretty sure OP isn't talking about towns with 18,000 people living in them. There's plenty of jobs in a town that size. Both of the towns in his examples have less than 500 people.

True, Sheridan isn't Dime Box. Depends on what you mean by a "small town".

Yeah they really suck. Don't move here.

"Small town" =/= "microscopic town".

infinity ag said:

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I love Google Maps, so I just pick random small towns and turn on Street View and "walk" through the neighborhoods. They all seem deserted, no one even on Main Street, most places seem dilapidated and deserted. Houses are so far apart in some cases that you don't even have real neighbors.

College Station is the smallest town I've lived in so I don't know how it is to live in places like Dime Box, TX or Loda, IL.

Is it really as depressing as it seems? What do residents of these towns do for work?

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Being your point of reference is overcrowded India where Indians who come to the US sit on top of each other even in a large empty room, you'll never be able to figure out small town America.

Now, sadly small town America is dying. Small towns that 30 years ago were quaint and had some life to them are ghost towns and as my daughter says "totally suicidal" if you spend too much time there. Abandoned homes with weed infested yards can ruin a neighborhood. Small towns once were also independent (you had shopping, banks, insurance agencies, mechanics, doctors, respectable small hospital, restaurants, etc.) but are no longer self sufficient. If one wants to be away from the big city, you need some acreage to build your own environment.

My town has less than 500 people. Two restaurants, two gas stations. It's awesome! I had to help my neighbor get one of their longhorns back on their side of the fence this afternoon before I did my workout. How many city people get to do that?

Originally, Walmart killed main street. Now Amazon has twisted the knife.

It is depressing. I drive through a lot of them all over the US for work.

Dilapidated, drug riddled towns with virtually no opportunity. Just sad. It's called rural rot, anyone with possibility just leaves.

You want depressing? Drive through a big city.

TxAG#2011 said:

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It is depressing. I drive through a lot of them all over the US for work.

Dilapidated, drug riddled towns with virtually no opportunity. Just sad. It's called rural rot, anyone with possibility just leaves.

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I feel this way about towns you know we're once a big deal, be it the cotton or timber industry. So many old gas stations made into...donut shops, florists, or anything but gas. And they leave the old pumps.

jja79 said:

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You want depressing? Drive through a big city.

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Worse, look at some of the residential neighborhoods that surround the CBD of Detroit. They are nice and green from the satellite view. From the street view you see one or two houses (usually run down), and the rest is just streets and weeds where people used to live. Look at some of the boarded up church buildings and realize all the baptisms, weddings, funerals, and other life events that happens there, and now the buildings are abandoned. Lots of towns like this in the rust belt.

Tha Packard Factory is a Google Earth adventure all its own.

Most people in Dimebox work for the school, ranching, or in Giddings/Caldwell.

Appalachia small town is some of the most depressing sights I've seen.

Some sad scenes in cities too depending on which one.

What depresses me is row upon row of cookie cutter houses so close together you can almost touch both at the same time interspersed with the same cookie cutter replicated strip centers with the same chain stores and restaurants over and over in every suburb. A vast sea of boring consumerism. That is depressing.

I've learned that geography doesn't much change anything. For wherever you go, there you are.

Hint: It's not the scenery.

Small towns are great, but your neighbors and friends will look much different than a suburb. I grew up in a small town. Very few of my friends' parents had college educations. Their parents were truck drivers, disabled people on government assistance, non-working mothers, farmers, ranchers, commuters to the city for blue collar jobs, etc. If their parents went to college, they were most likely teachers.

In the suburbs, my kids' friends' parents (our neighbors) are engineers, lawyers, finance and accounting of all kinds, real estate professionals, and a doctor or two.

I enjoyed growing up in a small town, but I'm kind of glad my kids have the role models they do in the suburbs.

MAROON said:

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Where do you actually live for context of this post

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I live in a suburb of a big city that everyone has heard of.

For a comparison, imagine that I live in a town like Plano which is a suburb of Dallas. But I don't live in TX so it isn't Houston, Dallas etc. My town officially has about 75k people.

The smallest town I lived in was College Station. Which was not too small. By small I mean population of a few 100s along an interstate. Like Hot Springs in the Cars movie.

Psych said:

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Green2Maroon said:

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Sheridan, Wyoming is an interesting example of a small town. Poverty with a view for a lot of people, lots of trailer parks and meth. Also a lot of rich people living there. The middle class seemed like a minority when I was there. Housing is pretty expensive but the job market is horrible. Lots of $12-14/hr jobs or less.

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I'm pretty sure OP isn't talking about towns with 18,000 people living in them. There's plenty of jobs in a town that size. Both of the towns in his examples have less than 500 people.

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Yes, I mean towns like Iola, TX. Pop 401.
Here's a link to the place on Google Maps. https://maps.app.goo.gl/xHN2YV2jXAqNc2Qy9

Or Dime Box, TX (love the name)
https://maps.app.goo.gl/GJr3rSNvyQBbyqt79

Philo B 93 said:

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Small towns are great, but your neighbors and friends will look much different than a suburb. I grew up in a small town. Very few of my friends' parents had college educations. Their parents were truck drivers, disabled people on government assistance, non-working mothers, farmers, ranchers, commuters to the city for blue collar jobs, etc. If their parents went to college, they were most likely teachers.

In the suburbs, my kids' friends' parents (our neighbors) are engineers, lawyers, finance and accounting of all kinds, real estate professionals, and a doctor or two.

I enjoyed growing up in a small town, but I'm kind of glad my kids have the role models they do in the suburbs.

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Interesting, thanks for posting!

I wonder if these small places are remnants of the past and dying off since you need to move to the cities to make good money in most cases.

Philo B 93 said:

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Small towns are great, but your neighbors and friends will look much different than a suburb. I grew up in a small town. Very few of my friends' parents had college educations. Their parents were truck drivers, disabled people on government assistance, non-working mothers, farmers, ranchers, commuters to the city for blue collar jobs, etc. If their parents went to college, they were most likely teachers.

In the suburbs, my kids' friends' parents (our neighbors) are engineers, lawyers, finance and accounting of all kinds, real estate professionals, and a doctor or two.

I enjoyed growing up in a small town, but I'm kind of glad my kids have the role models they do in the suburbs.

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Non-working mothers. Lol I would have said that is a good thing.


And small town Appalachia or areas near reservations … holy crap.


I much prefer small towns.

I grew up in a small town and went to a high school of 300 people. After A&M we did a bit of hopping around. At one point we decided to retry small town life and moved. We lasted about a year before I decided that moving back to the city to get an MBA was the right move. I much prefer the income and access to things that living in Houston provides. We'll probably move one day but it will most likely be to another large city or retirement suburb like Evergreen, CO.

Re: reservations, I'll never forget how excited my wife was to see the reservations around Santa Fe until she realized they were mostly just old trailer parks like we had near our respective hometowns.

Tanya 93 said:

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Most people in Dimebox work for the school, ranching, or in Giddings/Caldwell.

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Thanks for the info! One time when I was driving back from Austin to CStn, I decided to take a drive inside one of these towns to see what happens there. I expected to so see some people walking around, it seemed dead. I don't remember the name of the town though.

If you have a population of around 10,000 or more, and there is some semblance of a downtown revival, and maybe one or two decent employers, small towns seem very livable.

Lots of service entrepreneurs -- coffee shops, restaurants, breweries, etc. -- are moving away from places like Houston or Austin and setting up shop in small towns because everything is so much cheaper. The suburbs are choked with chains and the wealthy enclaves are out-of-reach. So if you're an up-and-coming chef, you don't have a lot of choices about where to go.

Texas Monthly did a big spread on this phenomenon awhile back.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/high-rents-rural-renaissance-new-generation-is-reviving-small-town-texas/