Rural Nevada

Charms and Challenges of Nevada’s Small Towns

The Nevada Small Business Development Center is a state-wide agency with presence in more than a dozen locations that provides programs and services to small businesses.  Nevada is one of those states whose total population is less than most major cities, yet has hundreds of miles between primary services such as gas stations and lodging.  Nevada is home to “the loneliest highway” in our nation.

But rural Nevada is breathtaking with its unpredictable skies, landscaping, mountain regions and open spaces as far as the eye can see.  People from our rural communities embrace a quality of life unknown to city-dwellers and every time I travel around this great State part of me always wants to stay rural.  The best feature of our smaller towns has got to be the people who live there.  I have traveled to many of our rural towns of both southern and northern Nevada and without exception I’ve had the warmest welcome, the greatest level of appreciation and what appears to be the happiest people I’ve met.

With charm comes challenges however, and certainly a bad economy can affect smaller towns in a deeper way.  Towns that count on tourism have had to close what used to be thriving businesses.  It’s a rippling effect more apparent when half a population is out of business.  I don’t claim to have the answers, but what I do have is a passion to see what can be done if only on a small level.  When the Nevada Commission on Economic Development and the Western Nevada Development District awarded our agency funding for business education and training to targeted counties in Nevada, I was happy to learn this because our jobs at the NSBDC are all about outreach, and by definition, we will be reaching out, and driving out to some beautiful places in Nevada.  I look forward to conversations with local business owners and town officials to see what challenges they face and if we can do something to make a difference.  I look forward to the Mom & Pop restaurants where the meals are homemade and the atmosphere belongs to the locals. I look forward to continued conversations with rural Nevadans who also may just become my new social media friends!