Last fall the head of economic development in Mitchell, South Dakota admitted to me that most of his peers were still “chasing semis down the Interstate.” Semis meant somebody somewhere was making something that had to be shipped, and those were the kinds of jobs that city officials wanted. But in some towns there is a growing recognition that talent can sometimes do more than tax incentives to bring income to a community. In Western Michigan, for example, economic development folks working through an organization called the West Michigan Strategic Alliance are hoping to keep and attract talented people. They want to make sure their communities are “telecommuter friendly.” They are looking at innovative ways to support home-based entrepreneurs, including setting up “third places,” where these entrpreneurs can meet or teleconference with clients far away. The group in Michigan recently received a $15 million grant from the Michigan Department of Labor to help them help displaced workers transition to the knowledge economy and to attract knowledge workers to their community.  The approach reflects a growing emphasis on the importance of human capital to economic growth and prosperity.

WATERTOWN, SD – Farmers and ranchers sit on the boards of most of South Dakota’s remaining telephone cooperatives. For more than a century, they have been surprisingly innovative when it comes to providing telephone service to their members. I had a chance to present an overview of The New Pioneers to the members of the South Dakota Association of Telephone Cooperatives in Watertown this week. While most of the attendees were over 50, one young man from a telecom company in Mitchell asked why I was only focusing on people moving to or moving back to the state. It was a good question. The story of out-migration has been the talk of the region for several generations now. In-migration offers the most dramatic evidence of the change that the Internet Age is bringing. But it’s also true that with new employment and entrepreneurial options available to them, young people in South Dakota can think twice about leaving the state.

Across the Great Plains, rural communities have been losing population for more than four generations. Today, new pioneers, enabled by a technological revolution in communications, are moving or returning to these communities searching for a quality of life that has become elusive in urban and suburban America.

This diffusion of population to rural America has the potential to become the fourth great demographic shift in American history – as important as the agricultural, urban, and suburban migrations of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries.

To understand this migration, The New Pioneers, a new work in progress by historian Eric John Abrahamson, explores the lives and livelihoods of these new immigrants and raises fundamental issues for policymakers concerned with the future of the Great Plains and other rural communities.

Join me as I travel the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska to talk to new pioneers about the choices they have made, the communities they call home, and way they work.

Eric