HUMBOLDT, Kansas: This town is the exception that proves the rule.
It’s a slight increase in population in recent years fueled by efforts to get this Allen County town of just under 2,000 people on board with the upscale dining and shopping trends that define rural Kansas.
A group called A Bolder Humboldt spent years revitalizing a handful of older buildings that would otherwise sit empty and run-down with a coat of hipster glitz.
“There was a feeling of ‘Let’s make the city we want to live in,'” said Paul Cloutier, the group’s leader.
The efforts have met with moderate success, with the city generating buzz beyond its borders and attracting the attention of the New York Times as “an oasis of unexpected and affordable freshness surrounded by fields of wheat and soybeans.”
It’s behind the rarest of trends: a rural Kansas county that has seen slight population growth (0.5 percent) in recent years after seeing a sharp decline in the previous decade.
But Humboldt remains a rarity.
In 2014, when he was governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback made the bold prediction that the state would soon reach a new population milestone: Kansas would surpass a population of 3 million by 2020.
Three years after the date he predicted, Kansas is still waiting for that three millionth Kansan. US Census figures show Kansas had a population of 2.93 million people in 2020. That’s an increase of just 85,000 residents in a decade, driven by the growth of its largest cities and suburbs, not its towns little ones
Rural areas of the state continue to experience significant declines. People like Cloutier and some state officials are trying to stem the seemingly endless bleeding.
Politicians have also focused on issues they believe are to blame. Republican lawmakers claim the taxes are pushing people out of state. And Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly argued that new laws restricting transgender rights scare away businesses and new residents.
But Ken Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, suggests the decline in the rural population is far greater than any state policy. In the grand scheme of things, it comes down to one simple truth: young people like to move to bigger, flashier cities.
“A lot of rural counties,” Johnson said, “especially rural agricultural counties, of which there are a number in Kansas, tend to be more likely to lose young adults than anyone else.”
Reimagining rural life
A bolder Humboldt has spearheaded several projects that have turned rough-looking historic buildings into shiny new destinations for out-of-towners.
The Honeybee Bruncherie is a good example. Located in the northeast corner of downtown Humboldt, the restaurant has a custom look. Cloutier said it’s the kind of bright, vibrant restaurant you’d never expect to see in a small town.
Dylan Lysen
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Kansas News Service
The Honeybee Bruncherie is a great example of how A Bolder Humboldt helped launch trendy restaurants and bars to freshen up the community center.
Several other restaurants, cafes and bars backed by the group adopt a similar aesthetic. And now the city has a community garden and gym with an architecturally progressive design.
“(The organization) works to revitalize the city,” Cloutier said, “restart the economic engine and also energize the community to bring that vibrancy back to the city.”
The group’s efforts seem to be working. Humboldt has a great reputation in other parts of the state. And after losing more than 6% of its population in the last decade, Census figures now project real growth in Allen County.
But Humboldt may only be able to grow so much. The city does not have enough new housing to live in, and construction prices are higher in rural areas than in cities and suburbs. This could stop the growth of the community.
“We have people who want to move here,” Cloutier said. “But there is still not enough demand to justify building new homes.”
This is a problem that the state wants to solve.
Barriers and resources
Kansas launched the Office of Rural Prosperity in 2019 to help revitalize the state’s rural areas.
Through this office, the state invested hundreds of millions of dollars in housing for rural areas in recent years. Downtown areas have also been revamped to attract customers to smaller communities.
Dylan Lysen
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Kansas News Service
The efforts of Paul Cloutier and A Bolder Humboldt may have helped grow the population of Allen County. But Cloutier said Humboldt already faces a housing shortage that threatens the potential for further growth.
The state is also tempting people to move to smaller cities by forgiving up to $15,000 of student loan debt through its Rural Opportunity Zones, which were created during Brownback’s first term in 2012 and include the vast majority of rural Kansas counties.
Trisha Purdon, director of the office, said the people who access the grant are mostly teachers and health workers. But he said it could soon include people with other jobs, such as home builders needed in Humboldt.
The state hopes this can keep young people closer to home and attract more people to smaller towns. Purdon said her office also wants to address the lack of childcare and slow internet speeds in rural areas.
“When 2030 comes around,” Purdon said, “I want to see some of our rural counties that haven’t seen growth, are seeing growth.”
Politicians have also addressed the issue this year. Republican state Sen. Mike Thompson called for cutting all taxes on retirement income to keep older Kansans from leaving the state. That plan was not enacted, but it was one of several instances in which Republican lawmakers suggested that cutting taxes would help slow out-of-state migration.
So with all these efforts and ideas, why hasn’t Kansas reached Brownback’s projection yet? The reality is that it is a much bigger phenomenon than any policy can solve.
Continued decline
Between 2010 and 2020, rural America not only grew more slowly than the rest of the country. For the first time, actually decreased.
Johnson said rural areas rely mostly on births, rather than in-migration, to grow. But they are losing people in their growing years to metropolitan areas. And for all kinds of reasons, like going to college or finding a better job.
This leaves rural areas with fewer young adults and more elderly people.
“So that combination,” Johnson said, “produces a natural decline, especially when birth rates are low like they are now.”
Like in Kansas. The state’s largest population loss occurred in rural communities with fewer than 10,000 people in 2010. Additionally, all 14 counties along Oklahoma’s border saw population declines over the last decade Half of them saw a drop of more than 10%.
Institute of Politics and Social Research
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University of Kansas
The vast majority of rural Kansas counties saw population loss between 2010 and 2020.
Xanthippe Wedel, a researcher at a data center at the University of Kansas, said the decline of rural Kansas began nearly a century ago during the Dust Bowl.
Take Morton County, for example. The southwestern Kansas county had its largest recorded population in 1930, just before the Dust Bowl. Between 2010 and 2020, it suffered the highest loss rate in the state.
Wedel said Morton County’s migration patterns show that more than half of the population that left moved to Flint Hills, which is home to both Kansas State University and Emporia State University.
“Young people in these areas,” Wedel said, “(are) leaving to seek education and employment elsewhere.”
The trend seems to continue. Although Allen County grew, over the past three years, the total population of Kansas is estimated to have declined.
So while some hip rural scenes like Humboldt are creating ways to survive and even thrive, the vast majority of rural Kansas has yet to figure out how to keep up.
“Historically, many rural counties,” Johnson said, “have experienced prolonged population loss.”
Dylan Lysen reports on politics for the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanLysen or email him at dlysen (at) kcur (dot) org.
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