provided by Research Papers in Economics
DIVERSITY OF RURAL PLACES—TEXAS
David D. Field
Dallam County, Texas
Government is like a big baby that never grows up! This is a truth
that can be demonstrated by this simple statement: “When govern-
ment is bad, we expect it to change itself.” Not only is this statement
ludicrous, but it disobeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics
which, put simply, states that any system left to itself will always
move from a state of order to a state of disorder. As a pragmatic op-
timist, I can safely say the federal government is hopeless. State gov-
ernments are also hopeless on a smaller scale, but you can still
change local government. It still responds to the squeaky wheel.
The only thing worse than an armchair quarterback is an arm-
chair expert on government, big business, education, or any other
social or political dilemma. In solving the problems of rural areas
there is no room for those who want to sit around debating and ana-
lyzing those problems. There is only one solution. Look on the up
side, not the down side, and start where you are. The independent
nature of rural people will prevent rural communities from ever uni-
ting to become a single special interest group. Therefore, some local
person or group must take the initiative to work together to start
somewhere. Community leaders must recognize that the futures of
rural business and agriculture are intertwined. Challenges, such as
providing effective rural education and adequate health care deliv-
ery in rural areas, must be addressed collectively even when in con-
flict with the generally independent nature of rural people.
The town of Dalhart, Texas, began addressing these issues in 1988
through a series of public meetings held with the help of the Texas
Agricultural Extension Service and a grant from the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation. We soon established what the most critical rural devel-
opment policy issues were and developed economic growth strat-
egies in response. Since no single town or local entity could finan-
cially support any approach on a grand scale, we had to look at our
“economic geography.”
Governmental units formed a century or more ago need the per-
spective of economic geography, the essence of community develop-
ment and strategic planning. Dalhart sits astride the boundary of
Dallam and Hartley counties. Dallam County is located in the north-
west corner of the Texas panhandle, bordering New mexico and
Oklahoma and less than fifty miles from Colorado and Kansas. The
number one priority was to take control of economic geography by
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