Rural & Small Communities

As natural disasters strike the Mountain West, rural communities face some barriers to recovery. But they can’t always get their hands on climate resilience funding.

Federal officials have announced another $759 million in funding for rural high-speed internet, including for states and tribes in our region. This is the third round of funding to build out internet access in rural areas. It finances projects in 24 states, three territories and tribal nations. In the Mountain West, that includes projects in Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Wyoming and the Navajo Nation.

Community development experts in Utah have published a step-by-step guide to help rural communities attract private investment.

Though the death rate in rural America has decreased since the end of September, it is still significantly higher than in urban areas.

In the Mountain West, more than a fifth of homeowners with a mortgage spend at least 35 percent of their monthly income on housing. Nearly 40 percent of renters region-wide spend more than a third of their income on rent.

A federal program is giving about $30,000 to individual rural communities to help them develop outdoor recreation economies.

Elevation Healthcare is a rebranding of Abba’s House, a faith-based pregnancy crisis center. Abba’s House has been located in Riverton for around 30 years.

A Nevada workforce training initiative focused on rural and Indigenous communities is among a handful of workforce programs in the Mountain West receiving millions of dollars in funding through the Biden administration’s Good Jobs Challenge.

All Aboard Northwest is advocating for the return of passenger rail service to states in the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, and Midwest that are under or unserved by Amtrak or other passenger rail operators. Many Wyoming communities have not had passenger service for over 50 years.

Wyoming has some of the highest juvenile incarceration rates in the country and some of the highest teen suicide rates as well. Such data has a lot of Wyomingites looking for outside-the-box solutions for helping kids before they face these hurdles. Jonathan Updike grew up in Wyoming and ended up at Stanford, working on an innovative program called Allcove, which gets kids designing their own intervention strategies. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards asked Updike about his own story of growing up in the state.