Texas’ uneven population boom is creating ghost towns in many rural counties

From The Texas Tribune:

GOMEZ — The railroad changed everything.

Long before the open plains were filled with rows of crops, they were brimming with the hopes of prosperity from families who flocked to Gomez. It was the first settlement in Terry County, just southwest of Lubbock in the Texas South Plains. Businesses opened, a cotton gin ushered in agriculture production, and a vote was coming up to name a county seat. The founders, in 1904, boasted Gomez was the “metropolis of the plains.”

Then it all vanished.

Brownfield, about four miles east, became the county seat and got the prized South Plains and Santa Fe Railway. Cut off from the rest of the world, Gomez and all its promises died.

All that is left of the town is a cemetery and a historical marker engraved with the town’s lost legacy.

“They thought the railroad would go through Gomez,” said Sandy Fortenberry, chair of the Lubbock County Historical Commission. “It didn’t, and the town just up and moved to Brownfield.”

Gomez is one of an estimated 511 ghost towns in Texas — completely deserted and abandoned places. Its short-lived existence offers a cautionary tale to a host of Texas towns that are today facing existential threats. These communities — such as Becton, Estacado, and Bartonsite — at one time were more than just a place to drive through on the way to bigger cities, but are now another historical marker in the barren region’s landscape.

History is repeating. Modern-day ghost towns are popping up around Texas, communities that still exist, but have lost most of their population and are on the path toward vanishing if they lose any more. It’s the result of other losses — a critical industry like a hospital closes, a highway is diverted or the agriculture industry has a few bad years. People move, businesses close, and the local economy dries up.

“The day of the small town is probably gone,” Fortenberry said.

These towns are losing their lifeblood as Texas booms. More than 50 million people could live in the state by 2050. While most of the state grows — in particular the larger urban and suburban centers near and east of Interstate 35 — rural counties in the Texas High Plains and West Texas are losing their residents, and tax bases, at a steady clip.

Counties lose populations for two reasons: there are more deaths than births, and people moving away. Data from the Texas Demographic Center shows 75 counties lost population from 2022 to 2023. This includes 27 counties in the High Plains that lost population because residents moved elsewhere, the most seen in any region of Texas For example, Muleshoe, Littlefield, Plainview and Floydada — the county seats for four counties surrounding Lubbock — collectively lost 400 residents during this time. On the opposite side of the state, dozens of rural and suburban counties in Central and East Texas grew during the same time, driven by people moving in looking for land near well-established metro areas such as Dallas and Fort Worth.

The High Plains and West Texas regions are home to billion-dollar industries with agriculture and energy production — lawmakers have long boasted it’s where the nation gets its food, fuel and fiber. However, the illustrious industries are held together by people living in rural Texas, who are now moving to anchor cities like Lubbock and Amarillo, the resource-rich hubs in the region that can provide the jobs, housing and opportunities that a small town can’t.

“Economic opportunities are more and more limited in rural parts of the state,” said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer. “As the population starts declining, you have limited capability to operate retail, same thing with health care.”

State Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican who represents many rural areas at the Texas Legislature, said certain communities can reinvent themselves. The ones who can’t are dying off. After the state injected billions into rural Texas for water, broadband and energy infrastructure, Perry hopes the Legislature is ready to talk about even greater investments in the neglected areas of the state.

“I’ve said forever, and it’s not a slam on my colleagues — if you would have left just a fraction of the wealth for this side of I-35, we could’ve had Six Flags in Lubbock,” he said.

Perry can’t reverse history. However, he said he can advocate for a good chunk of the wealth that is made in the region to stay there. Not all rural residents want to live in a big city, or even a midsize one like Lubbock or Amarillo. They just want their homes and communities to have a better quality of life, and state leaders must ensure they can.

“Rural Texas is hard,” Perry said. “The weather is pretty intense, the economy and opportunities for kids to stay are limited. Those that are there are partly by choice, but most are there because they were born and raised there, and don’t have any other real options to move out.”

Just off a winding road in the middle of open, isolated prairie land is King County, about 108 miles east of Lubbock. In 1900, the 944-square-mile county was home to more cows than residents — 38,000 cattle to 490 residents.

Not much has changed today. The 2022 federal agriculture census found there were more than 18,000 cattle compared to 216 residents. A 2023 analysis by the San Antonio Express-News estimated King County led the state in the ratio, with 87 cattle for every one person.

It might sound barren to some. It’s exactly what others seek out.

“It’s just the way of life out here, it’s the way we are,” said King County Judge Duane Daniel, who runs the second-least populated county in Texas, and third least in the U.S. “What we’ve got now is what the county needs, so I’m hoping the numbers stay in this area.”

Guthrie and its 156 residents are the heart of the county. The highway used to go through it but doesn’t now, much like the railroad that never made it to Gomez, stopping people from stumbling upon the town on road trips. There’s a restaurant, a church and a few supply stores. The Guthrie Common School District, which Daniel calls the heartbeat of the community, has about 95 students enrolled, some from surrounding areas.

It’s also one of two big employers in the county, along with the sprawling 260,000-acre Four Sixes Ranch.

“If something happens to the school, that’s probably where we lose some population,” Daniel said. “As long as the doors stay open, I think we’re good.”

Rural areas typically have just one or two major employers. One is usually a school district or a hospital, and the domino effect begins when one of those businesses closes. Hospitals have closed in rural areas at a steady pace since 2010 — more than 120 rural hospitals across the U.S. shut their doors. Texas leads the nation in rural hospital closures, with 26 during the same time period, according to the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals.

“It’s hard for any community to survive if they don’t have the jobs,” said Rick Rhodes, rural engagement coordinator for Texas Rural Funders. “You’ve got to find ways to attract jobs to your community.”

Rhodes served as the mayor of Sweetwater, about 122 miles southeast of Lubbock, from 1993 to 2001. After his last year in office, he moved to Austin. When he left Sweetwater, there were nearly 11,400 residents and not a single wind turbine. Now, it’s a wind energy powerhouse with more than 1,400 wind turbines in Nolan County. The community, he said, took a chance on the new energy market and it paid off with the job market. The population has moved up and down over the years. Sweetwater now has 10,550 residents.

Guthrie leaders face additional barriers to restarting their economy, such as limited housing. The dearth of homes is so bad that even some leaders can’t live in the community they serve. Ed Sharp, the interim-superintendent for the Guthrie school district, drives 129 miles from his home in Whitharral to work.

Sharp said there’s a romanticism with people wanting to live in the country and send their kids to small schools where everyone knows everyone. Only one of those fantasies for families can come true in Guthrie, and it’s enrolling their children in the school system there. There are no houses for people to rent or own.

“If somebody just decided they wanted to retire and move to Guthrie, they’d have to find the land and build a home,” Sharp said. “Or find a place, but that’s difficult because there’s not any.”

It is a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Sharp said housing developers won’t build in the county out of fear no one will buy a home. And no one can move to the county because there are no homes to buy. To provide some relief, both the school district and the agriculture industry have begun to provide housing. The school district owns 16 houses in the small town, all reserved for teachers and coaches. Without that offer on the table, Sharp said, recruiting would be impossible.

“There’s nowhere to live in, and the ranch and school can only employ so many people,” Sharp said.

Perry, who represents King County in the Texas Senate, said lawmakers must be strategic when businesses knock on their door. A 3,000-employee Toyota factory in a very small town wouldn’t make sense, he said, because of the lack of housing and infrastructure. However, lawmakers can help figure out what does.

“There are markets that rural communities don’t have the resources to develop and identify, and the state does,” Perry said. “It’s incumbent upon the state to have those conversations.”

When those opportunities are identified, it can change the future of a community. Lubbock avoided the curse that struck its neighboring towns. Fortenberry, the chairwoman for Lubbock’s Historical Commission, said by 1930, eight different railroads ran through Lubbock. This created the hub city status that Lubbock still has to this day, as it has two major hospital systems, is surrounded by the agriculture industry, and is home to Texas Tech University.

“The paved highways followed those railroads,” Fortenberry said. “Then you get all the businesses that come with it.”

From the South Plains east to Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas changes dramatically. Long past the mix of tilled earth and open prairie land, the grass turns a bit greener. Trees start to line the roads. The sun shines off small bodies of water.

For small towns to survive, or come back from the dead in some cases, experts say they have to find ways to reinvent themselves. And some are trying — Levelland is reviving its historic Wallace Theater, the prize in Cornudas’ chili cook-off earlier this year was 10 acres of land in the far West Texas desert, and Sweetwater is adding amenities like pickleball courts. Still, it may be a little easier toward the “Texas Triangle” — which comprises the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin metro areas that now hold 68% of the state’s 30.3 million residents.

Potter, the state demographer, said there’s a frequent pattern for economic success in the Dallas-Fort Worth area specifically. Plano is an economic powerhouse with the Toyota headquarters — and 20 other Fortune 500 companies — and he says it drew in other industries that multiplied this effect as people moved in. Potter said the counties in the North Texas area are among the fastest growing in the U.S.

“All those people need houses now, restaurants, schools, we’re going to need to build roads for them,” Potter explained. “It feeds the construction industry, it fuels the economy.”

Right in the middle of that economic boom is Celina, the fastest-growing city in the U.S. Forty miles north of Dallas, Celina’s population was just 6,000 people in 2010. As of July 2023, it’s estimated to be more than 43,000. Census data estimates Celina’s population skyrocketed by nearly 27% from July 2022 to July 2023.

The city has a deep history in the agriculture industry, mainly with corn and cotton. The industry still exists in the area, with farms and ranches around despite urban sprawl. City leaders saw the boom in their population coming because of the “golden corridor” — the Dallas North Tollway expanding into more suburban areas in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And they prepared for it.

Ryan Tubbs, Celina’s mayor, said the town invested in features that draw people in, including public safety and their school districts, building new homes in suburban communities rich with amenities, and equipping every home in the city with a gigabit of high-speed internet.

The city became the first “Gigabit City” in Texas in 2017, before the COVID-19 pandemic put heightened attention on the need for equal broadband access in the U.S. According to Tubbs, more than 30% of Celina residents work from home — this is more than the reported 13% of people who worked from home in Houston last year, and about 6% in Lubbock in 2022.

The broadband investment has “paid off tremendously to make that decision at 10,000 residents and not 50,000 residents,” Tubbs said.

The rest of the state is trying to catch up. Last year, voters approved $1.5 billion to expand broadband development, on top of $3.3 billion in federal dollars from the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment Program. Perry, the state senator, said it’s critical to give rural Texas residents opportunities.

“You can’t survive without a legitimate, dependable, affordable broadband connection,” Perry said.

New development in Celina essentially pays for itself, Tubbs said. Fees paid by developers have built the infrastructure needed to keep up with the stream of new residents.

Celina hasn’t figured everything out. Boomtowns and ghost towns alike face a dwindling water supply.

“Right now, we are OK,” Tubbs said. “But I think over the next 10 to 15 years, we’ll see how that evolves.”

Much like the rural corners of the state, North Texas is losing water as a result of aging infrastructure and extreme heat. Dallas and Fort Worth collectively lost 23.5 billion gallons in 2023. Dallas had the second-highest increase in reported water loss, with 18% when officials expected only a 4% increase.

Potter said new growth could be a benefit or a curse. Demands on housing supply, schools, water, energy and transportation can all create challenges.

Still, it is what some small towns need to survive. Texas Downtown is a member-based organization that assesses downtown areas and helps leaders revitalize them. Moody, the organization’s executive director, says some small towns that have accomplished this goal in their downtowns now draw in visitors from surrounding areas. This includes Goliad and its Market Days, a monthly open market that highlights local businesses, and the revitalization of the Wallace Theatre in Levelland.

“There’s no reason we can’t have a kitschy brand like the City of Mosaics and have something that draws in tourists to our town,” said Moody, who lives in Levelland. “Something that shows we care.”

A successful renaissance must include community input, Moody said. In some instances, rural residents — people who have always known rugged individualism and small town values — fear growth and change. In Levelland’s case, growth could complicate the land boundaries with Smyer, a mere 13 miles east. However, smart growth is better than the alternative.

“It’s better than dying and being a ghost town that was once thriving and is now a dust bowl,” Moody said.

For the last eight years, Tessa Waddell has poured her dreams into FarmGirl Frosting, her bright turquoise clothing store off Highway 287 in Claude, about 30 miles east of Amarillo.

Waddell prides herself on being there for the girls and women in the small town of 1,200. They might need an outfit for a wedding or a gift for a special occasion, and Waddell’s store helps them avoid a drive to Amarillo.

Except, she can’t always be there. Waddell regularly closes the store and travels to bigger cities for conventions. There, she will have more customers in one weekend than in an entire month at her downtown store.

The strategy is the difference between keeping her business on the map or shutting her doors.

“For my store to stay open, I have to be gone,” said Waddell, who was back after a weekend show in Levelland. “My customers know to get here when I’m here, because I might not be here for a month.”

Claude is the kind of place people imagine when they think of small-town living. It’s surrounded by grassy plains, its few businesses are centrally located in the downtown area, and it’s a quick drive from all the businesses and resources in Amarillo. The town has one traffic light. It was installed last year to help manage 15,000 vehicles a day traveling on Highway 287, which connects to Interstates 27 and 40, and eventually Interstate 35.

Despite the heavy traffic, the town population continues to steadily decline. From 2021 to 2022, Claude’s population fell by about 7%, from 1,307 to 1,218.

Joe Minkley, the town’s mayor, says Claude is special because it has just about everything a resident or traveler needs. There’s a big grocery store, expansive fire and ambulance stations for first responders to be comfortable in — even two Airbnb spaces. It offsets the impacts of small swings in their population, Minkley says. And it could be a model for some small towns.

“We’re a thriving little community,” Minkley said. “I don’t know that we need a major industry here.”

Minkley has spent most of his 70 years in Claude, only leaving for college before coming back. When he was six and president of his class, Minkley received the key to the city while on a field trip. It’s the only decoration on his office walls today.

His love for his hometown is what keeps Minkley optimistic about Claude’s future. They don’t make a concerted effort for growth, Minkley says, because they want people who know the town’s appeal.

“It’s certainly not that we have an overabundance of places to go out and eat,” Minkley said. “It’s because of the people that live here and make it what it is.”

Minkley also credits forward thinking from city leaders to use $1.3 million in reserves to build two new water storage tanks instead of issuing a bond. Perry, the state senator, agrees a big factory wouldn’t make sense in Claude. However, he said it’s up to lawmakers to be diligent and help rural communities figure out what makes sense to help them thrive.

“These are hardworking people who don’t ask for much,” Perry said. “But there are some things they need that, by virtue of policy, aren’t there. It requires us to be diligent about being strategic. We can’t ignore infrastructure and some of the basic needs, or we’ll never see that economic growth.”