In many areas, one of the big tourism items is the exploration of ghost towns. The official web site for tourism in Nevada proudly touts the state as being number one in the country for ghost towns – and with over six hundred, they more than outnumber the now existing towns.
The town of Austin – no, not that one – in central Nevada was a town of nearly 10,000 people during the peak of the 1860’s silver boom. Today it boasts a population of about 160. Virginia City was central to the Comstock discoveries and quickly became one of the largest towns of the American west with over 25,000 people. But now, despite its proximity to Reno and Carson City, has only nine hundred residents. Other towns founded during the boom have fared much better – Carson City, the state capital, was founded during the silver boom, as was Reno. Smaller towns like Winnemucca and Elko remain viable regional centers and even have active mines.
Natural resource booms often lead to busts as the resources are exhausted or become less profitable to extract. Why do some towns survive while others wither?
As we often say, geography still matters.
In Nevada, the routing of the transcontinental railroad guaranteed success for Reno and failure for Virginia City. The routing of Interstate 80 was largely done on the back of an envelope, choosing the alignment of US 40 over US 50 to the south.
Of course, boom towns are not just historical oddities. After three decades of declining production, the revitalization of the Permian Basin of west Texas through fracking has reverberated through not only the small towns but also the regional centers of Midland and Odessa.
To a large extent, these boom areas are plagued by the same issues that the earlier generation of silver mining towns faced.
Growth can be so rapid that community services, and even home construction, lag far behind demand. In west Texas, low-cost hotels are at nearly every major freeway exit and temporary trailer parks pop up (and disappear) overnight. The town infrastructure lags well behind demand, ensuring that residents don’t truly invest in being part of a community.
Most often, the local economy is highly dependent on the industry and the services required by the new residents, almost to the exclusion of anything else. In Midland, 20% of the labor force works directly in the oil industry, and at least an equal number work to supply the oilfields with drilling and storage equipment. Because of this dependence, minor downturns in the industry can severely impact the economic health of the community.
The role of economic development departments in these resource towns is vital. All too often, municipal governments play defense, always trying to catch up to the demand for services. Indeed, the faster the rise of the community, the quicker will be its demise when the resource is eventually exhausted. The ghost towns of the silver boom never really had the opportunity to become communities.
The challenge for economic development is the need to identify and exploit the unique locational advantages of the community while the community is booming in order to diversify the local economy. All too often, communities fail to begin preparing for the future until the resource has been depleted. Even larger towns can wither away within just a few decades if they have failed to prepare.
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