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 [...]

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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. [...]

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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 [...]

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