One of the issues it seems is that many of these bigger towns/smaller cities were built around a single industry and sometimes a single employer. When that business goes under, not only do you have massive unemployment but the tax structure collapses. The only people that stay are the ones that can’t get out.
Plainview was once a bustling, growing city between Lubbock and Amarillo. Busy downtown, decent schools, thriving economy. And at the center was Cargill beef processor with 3,000 employees and $60 million in payroll. Good life for many people and all those in the area that provided services to those employees.
Then the rain stopped. The local feedlots couldn’t afford to ship corn/feed into a system that was used to getting it brought from across the road. The cattle were liquidated. Very quickly there was no beef to process in Plainview. Cargill shut down, the feedlots shuttered, the teams that grew the corn went broke, the cafe that fed the meat packers and the cowboys went out of business and so on and so on….
Wife’s family had a farm west of there, and I was back and forth through Plainview as it collapsed—rapidly. When we were trying to sell the farm, we were there weekly sometimes and there was nothing left but the worst Chili’s I have ever seen and a Sonic. Whole areas of town are abandoned. Left behind rib-showing dogs walking the streets.
Glad to say I may never see it again other than to visit the graves of the in-laws.
These towns that were built around military bases and a single industry are either dead, dying or doomed and don’t know it yet. The rain will stop for them one day as well.