Big cities’ loss is Kansas small towns’ gain

One of at least three mentions Kansas gets in the latest Time magazine (along with BTK and the immigrant tuition lawsuit), the article “The Land of the Free!” casts Kansas as the leader in the trend of small towns giving away land, noting the communities doing it even have a coordinated Web site, kansasfreeland.com. These offers are not news in Kansas. What comes as a surprise is their success, at least in towns within commuting distance of larger towns: Marquette, for example (see photo), has given out 82 lots and grown by 123 people in a year, adding 45 new elementary schoolkids in the process. Giving away land still seems an extreme measure unlikely to generate more than modest results, but as Kansas State University professor David Darling is quoted as saying, “The giveaways worked once, after the Civil War. They have potential to work again.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

One Comment

  1. Joe Williams
    Posted July 8, 2005 at 12:09 am | Permalink

    I doubt it! The land rush and the Homestead Act actually gave land for people who wanted to farm as a way to settle and survey the land across the Midwest and beyond. People came in droves because everybody was primarily agrarian in nature and free farmland instead of sharecropping seemed a great thing to do and make a fresh start.

    Yes! It helped disperse the population and grow communities, but by the beginning of the 20 century, it back fired when generations of bad farming techniques ruined the land and eventually cause the Dust Bowl of the 30’s.

    Now! There is not much left as far as farm land. It is all done by a few farmers who own large tracts of land for cattle feed farming and ranching. Practically every country with the exception of South Central and North East Kansas has been steadily decreasing in population drastically. This trend will continue to happen as Western Kansas become increasingly dry of equis bed water from over irrigation and the natural gas wells dry up. Nothing will be out in Western Kansas in the next 100 years, except for a very few corporate farms.

    Giving out free lots will not do much at all. That is great that Marquette grew by a 123 people, but how many of them are from McPherson, Salina, or Lindsborg? While it is impressive that a small rural town is actually growing, but 123 people is probably what Wichita will bring-in in less than a week.

    I don’t expect Marquette to grow too much beyond a few hundred people from surrounding areas that are taking advantage of their free land. It’s not really going to bring people from out of state or businesses.

    IMHO ;)