Janna Emmel has always paid attention to her dreams. In 1994 she awoke one morning in her house in Dana Point, California after a dream about the Black Hills. After she told her husband Randy Berger, he said, “I guess we better go.”

For Janna and Randy, the visit became a relocation. They bought a 700-square foot cabin on an acre of land near Hill City for $42,000 – a price that seemed incredibly low compared to Southern California real estate prices. And for awhile Janna was happy to “hang out in my house in the woods, and unwind from the California pace.” But when the euphoria of inspiration and impulse began to wear off, the couple realized that their employment opportunities in the Hills were not what they had hoped.

Sioux Falls natives, Janna and Randy had met and married in the 1980s. She was an Augustana graduate with a degree in Social Work and Sociology; he was a carpenter. In Sioux Falls winter weather often affected his ability to get work, so they decided to move to California. He became a master craftsman, doing high-end woodwork for expensive homes in coastal communities like Laguna Beach and the Newport Coast.  Janna went looking for work. The job she found challenged her intellect, provided an outlet for her creativity and eventually offered her a path to the untethered world of New Pioneers. But it started as a simple typing position.

Registered with a temporary employment agency, Janna was sent one day to the offices of a Laguna Beach-based film production company that needed someone to type a script. MacGillivray Freeman Films had pioneered the development of spectacular IMAX films like TO FLY, which debuted with the opening of the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. in 1976. By 1987, it was involved in a variety of exciting projects.

Over the next seven years, Janna’s work with MacGillivray Freeman expanded from typist to producer’s assistant to researcher to premiere planner. She worked on dramatic films about the nature of time, sailing and the wind, the performance limits of the human body, the cultures of Indonesia, life on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and the wonders of the world ocean.. It was exotic work. She collaborated with smart, creative people from all over the world.  “Essentially, I got paid to learn,” she adds, “it doesn’t get better than that.”   Nevertheless, she and Randy never imagined that they would live the rest of their lives in California. Continue reading this post…

Matthew Reinbold dreams of moving home to Timber Lake, South Dakota. He grew up on a farm about nine miles southwest of town and graduated from high school in 1996 “when the Internet was just a buzz word,” he says. “People told me there was no future for me in agriculture. If I ended up in Timber Lake, then someone had messed up.”

At the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City, he studied computer science and thought about becoming an astronaut. That dream dissolved, he says, after he spent several months as an intern at IBM in Rochester, Minnesota. “I realized that if I kept chasing this unrealistic dream, I would end up in a cubicle somewhere doing something I wasn’t passionate about.”

Instead, after graduating, Reinbold took a job with Digitech, maker of the famous “Whammy” pedal for electric guitars. With his college classmate and new wife, Valarie, he moved to the suburbs of Salt Lake City to work in the town of Sandy.

Despite the Whammy’s role in the music industry, Reinbold discovered that his job wasn’t especially creative. Then came the attacks of September 11. In the economic downturn that followed, Digitech laid off staff and just before Christmas, Reinbold found himself without a job.

“I had been weaned on WIRED magazine,” he says, “and believed that if you write code, you will be set for life. That Christmas I discovered the stark reality: you have to fend for yourself.” Continue reading this post…

For decades the demographic story of the northern Great Plains has been the same. People have been leaving the rural areas and sparsity has been increasing. While a handful of urban areas have grown, the population of the region has remained generally stagnant. Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual update of population estimates for the nation. For folks working in rural and economic development in the eastern portions of Wyoming and Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska, the question is: is there any sign of change in the decades-old pattern of exodus?

For big city dwellers the answer is yes. Most of the major metropolitan areas in the region grew at a healthy rate between July 2007 and July 2008. Seven of ten major cities (Billings, Bismarck, Casper, Cheyenne, Fargo, Rapid City and Sioux Falls) expanded by an average of 1.9 percent. These growth rates don’t compare to the boom in some parts of the West and the South, but they are significant to a region that has been losing population for such a long time.

Not all metro areas in the region were winners. Grand Forks, Great Falls and Sioux City grew by just under half a percent over the year. These cities have been struggling to hold population throughout this decade. Since 2000, for example, Grand Forks has lost nearly 200 residents. Meanwhile, the metropolitan population of the Sioux City area has been essentially flat for eight years.

But did urban growth rates come at the continuing expense of rural counties and micropolitan communities? Out of 20 “micropolitan” areas (see Census definition) with populations ranging from 15,878 to 70,694, growth rates between 2007 and 2008 were all below the average of the metropolitan areas. Collectively, they grew by an average of just over half a percent. Communities that lost 1 percent or more of their population included Pierre, SD and Wahpeton, ND-MN. Micropolitan areas that gained more than 1 percent included Brookings, SD; Grand Island, NE; Huron, SD; Laramie, WY; Riverton, WY and Sheridan, WY. Thus, with some variation, the micropolitan communities are holding their own within the northern Great Plains region, but they are not growing as fast as the metropolitan areas.

State-to-state variations are significant as well. With its energy resources, eastern Wyoming’s metropolitan and micropolitan areas all have net positive growth in this decade. In North Dakota, however, while the metropolitan areas have shown healthy growth, the micropolitan have, for the most part, lost population since 2000. Meanwhile, in South Dakota and Nebraska, micropolitan areas have experienced more uneven growth with some communities growing by several percentage points since 2000 and others losing population.

What about the rural counties? In all of the counties in easter Montana, Wyoming and the states of North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, population outside the metropolitan areas has continued to decline. The economic opportunities offered by the Internet and telecommuting have not begun to influence the larger demographic wave of history that has carried people out of these rural communities and into the major towns and cities of the region. The slow growth of some micropolitan regions, and even the slowing of the exodus from some rural communities, may reflect the presence of new pioneers working remotely from the northern Great Plains, but until we get richer data from the 2010 Census, we won’t know for sure.

(An earlier version of this post also appeared on www.dakotaday.com)

(For direct access to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent population estimates, visit U.S. Census)

Matthew Orstad remembers the hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While his wife, a new doctor, attended a medical conference, he worked on a website with a collaborator in Huron, South Dakota. For hours they talked and wrote code using the hotel’s wi-fi and the speaker phone. “I was electrified by the experience,” he says. He could envision breaking free of the nine-to-five world.

Orstad grew up in Crooks, South Dakota, a small farming community along the rail line northwest of Sioux Falls. Surrounded by corn and soybean fields, his high school served several nearby towns and rural areas. After graduation in 1997, he moved across the state to attend the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology or “Tech,” where he majored in computer science and fell in love with a classmate named Keri Bachmeier. She graduated in 2001. He graduated the following May, and they were married in June.

“At Tech it was assumed that you would move out of state to find a job,” he says, but that option wasn’t open to Matthew. Keri had been accepted at the University of South Dakota’s School of Medicine in Sioux Falls. For the next three years, while she went to school, he worked for the EROS Data Center northeast of the city.

“As a student I figured I would a traditional job,” Matthew says, “and so did most of my classmates.” As traditional jobs go, EROS was an interesting place to work. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) operates the Earth Resources Observation and Science center to collect and manage satellite data. But after Keri finished her course work and accepted a residency in Mason City, Iowa about 225 miles away, Matthew had to decide what he was going to do for work. Continue reading this post…

The number of Americans who telecommute occasionally rose 39 percent over the last two years according to a study released this week. Rising fuel prices in 2008, improving technologies for communications and growing concerns for work-life balance among the newest generation of employees no doubt contributed to this dramatic increase. Today, an estimated 17.2 million Americans work from home or some other remote location at least one day a month.

Data in WorldatWork’s TELEWORK TRENDLINES 2009 report also suggests, however, that the New Pioneers trend of working full time from a remote location may be stalling out. According to the report, the number of  people who telecommute on contract, are self-employed or are business owners has remained essentially flat for four years, increasing from 16.2 to 16.6 million. In 2006, 77 percent of the nation’s 28.7 million employed telecommuters worked out of the office at least one day a week. In 2008, that percentage fell to 72 percent. Meanwhile, those who telecommuted “almost every day” fell from 51 percent of all telecommuters to 40 percent. The absolute number of these full-time remote workers dropped from 14.7 million in 2006 to 13.5 million in 2008.

If the number of hardcore telecommuters is on the wane, other changes suggest that telecommuting is becoming a more serious and less social activity, at least within the context of the local community. When asked where they telecommuted from, respondents offered answers that were somewhat different from two years ago. The number of those who worked from home (as opposed to an airplane, hotel, car etc.) rose from 76 percent to 87 percent. Working from a customer or client’s place of business also rose from 28 percent to 41 percent. More people also acknowledged telecommuting while on vacation (up from 18 percent to 23 percent).

One of the most interesting patterns seems to be a decline in telecommuting from what some sociologists and planners call “third places” like cafes, libraries and parks. Continue reading this post…

With President Obama set to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill this week, one provision could have a significant impact on rural Great Plains states. The bill allocates $7.2 billion to expand access to broadband technology across the country. At least $2.5 billion of this money will go to rural communities.

For years the debate has raged over the need for federal telecommunications subsidies to rural areas. Opponents argue that it is basically unfair to tax urban Americans to provide a lifestyle benefit to people who choose to live in the country. If rural Americans want broadband, they say, they should pay the cost of laying cable, stringing wire or erecting towers to beam signals to distant homes.

Advocates for government subsidies insist that affordable broadband has become a basic necessity and all Americans are entitled to service. If the market can’t provide affordable service because the cost of construction is too high relative to the number of users, then, just as we did for rural electric and telephone services in an earlier era, government should help out. Having more people on the network will benefit everyone in the long run.

Aside from the philosophical debate, the issue becomes more complicated because no one really knows how many people in rural America still need or want access to broadband. To answer that question, the stimulus bill provides $350 million to map the nation’s broadband infrastructure.

Opponents of the study argue it’s a waste of money. Telecommunications companies, they say, already have this data. The government just needs to get them to release it. The companies say that if they release it, it would help their competitors identify market opportunities. Consumer advocates say that would be a good thing — it would stimulate competition.

Coincidentally, a major study just released by the Department of Agriculture provides some insight into the question of who has broadband access and who doesn’t in rural America. As part of its regular survey of agricultural producers, the government asked farmers throughout the country in 2007 if they had high speed internet service. The results confirm many assumptions, but also raise questions. Continue reading this post…

Nearly half of all Americans think the grass is greener somewhere else. For small towns and rural areas like western South Dakota, these dreams suggest great opportunity.

According to a recently released nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of all Americans say they would prefer to live in a small town or rural area. Of those who haven’t already acted on this dream, most live in cities (as opposed to suburbs) and are over the age of 30.

What keeps these people from moving? For most, it’s the lack of a job. But as more Americans discover opportunities to work remotely, many are likely to seek their ideal communities in rural America. The New Pioneers profiled are already moving to small towns and rural communities in South Dakota and working for employers or clients far away. Continue reading this post…

Years ago, plutonium was allowed to contaminate the soil near the Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal in Colorado. When the wind blew hard, nearby neighborhoods were exposed to invisible, potentially toxic, radiation. Pouring over weather data and writing elaborate calculations, Jill Weber Aanenson mapped the path of these radionuclides to understand where they went and who might have been exposed. 

With this work in 1995 Jill began her professional consulting career studying radiation and other contaminants in the environment. In recent years, she has collaborated with teams of scientists evaluating sites including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Although she travels to collect data and meet with colleagues and clients, most of her work is done from her home office in the small town of Freeman, South Dakota.

Growing up in Sioux Falls, Jill loved math and science, as well as playing basketball and the alto sax. Her teachers recognized her academic talents and encouraged her to look far and wide at colleges, but Jill chose to stay close to home. “I am a momma’s girl,” she confesses, “and I just wasn’t ready to leave yet.”

At Augustana College in Sioux Falls, she was challenged academically. During the summers, she applied for and accepted interships at various national laboratories, including Brookhaven in New York, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, D.C. These jobs gave her a chance to see other parts of the country and work with top scientists from around the nation. Continue reading this post…

Hollywood stars and their lawyers have been buying Montana ranches for decades. Now, with retirement on the horizon, many urban and suburban baby-boomers with less tinsel but plenty of cash are looking for their own piece of paradise in rural America. In a recent story in The Wall Street Journal demographer Peter Nelson suggests that these “new gentry” are transforming the economies of many rural communities, shifting them from resource-extraction to an “asthethic-based” economy focused on place-related amenities.

In the Rocky Mountain West the influx of the new gentry sparks demand for everything from interior design to organic produce, but the biggest impact is on land values and uses as wealthy urbanites buy acres of newly subdivided farms and ranches. The impact of the new gentry on communities in the northern Great Plains is not as dramatic as in the Rocky Mountain West, but it is evident. Continue reading this post…

When she graduated from high school, Kara Elsberry wanted to be an artist. “Since I could pick up a crayon,” she says, “it was all I ever wanted to do.” She dreamed of being a Disney animator or illustrating the gothic world and characters of a computer game. But in 1997 the cards seemed stacked against her.

Winner, South Dakota was a long way from Disney’s studios in southern California. The town of 3,000 people offered no role models or mentors for a would-be animator. At 18 she had shouldered serious adult responsibilities, becoming the mother of a baby girl. She and Albert Miller, her daughter’s father, needed to make some tough decisions.

Growing up, Kara had lived in various small towns in South Dakota. Her father was a teacher and school administrator. Between kindergarten and graduation Kara had lived in McGlaughlin, Hurley, Hoven, Freeman and Winner. Her mother worked as a writer and editor for various small town newspapers. After her parents divorced when Kara was in third grade, she and her four brothers had lived off and on with each of her parents.

With their new daughter, Kara and Albert decided to move closer to Kara’s mother who was living in Grand Island, Nebraska. Trying to keep herself on track, Kara enrolled at the University of Nebraska, Kearny as a graphic design major. She took various jobs so that she and Albert could keep a roof over their heads, but trying to be a student and a working mom didn’t go well. When her younger borther was killed in a car accident, the family was devastated. Kara’s mother moved to Columbus, Ohio to be closer to her own parents. Kara and Albert packed up the baby and went with her.

Columbus was a shock. With as many residents as the entire state of South Dakota, the city “was a mad house,” Kara says. The day that she and Albert moved in an FBI agent knocked on their door to ask questions about a neighbor. Continue reading this post…