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“While many of our suburban and urban communities continue to
grow at record pace, rural America has quietly undergone a
transformation. In
the 1970’s and 80s, many families and individuals left the
small, farming communities of their birth to seek jobs, health
care and education in the rapidly growing cities and suburbs.
For many years, it appeared that the “simple life”
was, quite simply, a thing of the past.
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It’s no secret that rural America is rebounding.
Most of the nation's rural areas are growing at the
fastest rate in more than 20 years.
In fact 71% of rural counties in America gained
population from 1990 to 2000, according to two recent studies by
Kenneth Johnson of Loyola University in Chicago.
There are many reasons for this rural rebound.
People who grew up in the country want to get back to it,
or people who dreamed about the lifestyle want to start living
it. Clean air,
safety, and the desire to instill certain values in their
children are all factors. The
advent of high-speed internet gave people who longed for the
land but worked in the city, the freedom they needed, and helped
connect people who have lived on land for generations to each
other; that’s yet another reason rural counties continue to
prosper.
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In 2005, The Progressive Farmer magazine began
ranking rural counties in an effort to examine the recent trend
of “new ruralism” or the migration of people from cities and
suburbs to rural area. The
Best Places To Live In Rural America, released each February in
our magazine and on our Web site at www.progressivefarmer.com
highlight the best of the best.
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 As a writer for The Progressive Farmer magazine, I
spend a great deal of time traveling to those rural counties to
learn what makes them thrive and, more importantly, why more and
more Americans choose to call them home.
I am pleased to report that among the counties our
magazine visited in 2006, Sac County, Iowa ranked number seven
on our list. A
picturesque landscape, great education and wonderful sense of
community were all important reasons why Sac County was selected
as one of the best places to live in rural America this year.
For those of you living in Sac County, or places like it,
the news should come as no surprise. In their own quiet,
unassuming way, rural places have always inspired and
demonstrated what makes this country so great.
Congratulations, Iowa.”
Jamie Cole, Senior Editor, The Progressive Farmer
 As in past years, The Progressive Farmer partnered
with OnBoard LLC, a real estate research firm, to identify the
most desirable rural counties to live in based on several
quality-of-life indicators and statistics: household income,
household spending, home and land prices, crime rates, air
quality, education and access to health care.
After the list was compiled, magazine editors traveled
for several months to visit the top counties and take pictures,
interview residents and get a feel for each place.
Ten counties were chosen as the “Best Places to Live in
Rural America” and an additional 290 counties were selected to
be profiled on the magazine’s Website as other best places to
live in rural America.
We were pleased when Jim Patrico, a photo-journalist for The
Progressive Farmer, came to spend a few days traveling
throughout Sac County, visiting with people, taking photographs
and “getting a real feel for our county.”
Thanks to all of you who were willing to have Jim take
their pictures and visit with him.
We wanted him to get to know the people in the county, to
see their projects, the trail, the lake, the farms and
communities.
The Progressive Farmer also chose a TOP 60 list of the
Best Places in the Midwest Region.
Eighteen of these were located in Iowa, with eight of the
counties located in Western Iowa.
The rankings are listed on the website as well, but here
is the list of Iowa Counties:
#3—Sac County
#6—OBrien County
#7—Sioux County
# 12—Wright County
# 13—Poweshiek County
#15—Mitchell County
#16—Shelby County
# 17—Cherokee County
#23—Carroll County
#24—Kossuth County
#27—Guthrie County
# 29—Fayette County
#32– Grundy County
#35 — Washington County
# 36—Clinton County
#47—Winneshiek County
#49—Bremer County
#50—Clayton County
Congratulations to all the counties selected in Iowa for
showcasing their quality of life.
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