Breaking Down the Urban-Rural Divide

Pulling into Walsenburg, Colorado, I felt uneasy, aware of my status as an outsider: a Jewish urbanite from Washington, D.C. entering a town of 3,000 in quintessential Obama-Trump swing voter country. It would be my home for the next three months during my year serving as an AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) team leader.

Walsenburg has the rugged, postindustrial patina of a Rust Belt town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Many houses display scrap materials for do-it-yourself projects and power vehicles in their yards. People drive pickups and wear Carhartt for durability, not fashion. The town’s businesses are adorned with neon signs that haven’t been replaced since they were popular in the 1950s. A local motel advertises that its rooms have color TV.

Driving my team’s 15-passenger van through town for the first time, I fixated on a looming 25-foot cross perched on a hill above Walsenburg’s southern outskirts. Two thoughts popped into my mind: There doesn’t seem to be much going on here, and I wonder what they think of Jews?

Outside of AmeriCorps NCCC, my assessment of Walsenburg would have ended with this snap judgment. Walsenburg is flyover (or, more aptly, drive-through) country: For most, it’s a pit stop along I-25—part of a conduit, not a destination. I texted friends about that cross, incredulous at the town’s ostensible homogeneity. How am I going to live here for three months?

My perspective, of course, was driven by superficial observations. I needed to actually live in Walsenburg in order to gain an appreciation for it.

Walsenburg holds the seat of Huerfano County, Colorado. Huerfano, which translates to “orphan” in Spanish, encapsulates the county’s history. In 1914, the Colorado National Guard perpetrated the deadliest labor massacre in U.S. history to break up a mineworker strike just a few miles from town. After the mining companies pulled out during the post-WWII era, Walsenburg lost all major industry, shedding nearly half of its population.

In short, the county faced adverse economic odds—even before the 2018 Spring Creek Fire.

The third-largest wildfire in recorded state history, Spring Creek destroyed over 130 homes and came within three miles of devastating La Veta, the second-largest town in the county. Locals are still suffering from the fire’s aftermath, and for Walsenburg and La Veta—which are immediately downstream of the Spring Fire burn scar—long-term damage could be particularly acute. Charred vegetation and soil have diminished the mountainous ecosystem’s ability to absorb rainfall, resulting in predictions of unprecedented flooding.

Two thoughts popped into my mind: There doesn’t seem to be much going on here, and I wonder what they think of Jews?

My team and I were sent to mitigate this impending disaster. We were dumbfounded when county commissioner John Galusha first briefed us: Both Walsenburg and La Veta faced a severe flood risk during a 10-year rain event. As I settled into the community, I learned of the iterative, dual-pronged trauma that the citizens of Huerfano County are experiencing.

“We’re not burning up, so now we’re drowning?” one resident pondered.

My team attended flood-preparedness town hall meetings and watched residents break into tears over the prospect of losing their homes. Many were unable to afford flood insurance. I saw local government staff wake up before 5 A.M. each day—including on weekends—to complete their normal duties in addition to preparing the county for imminent flooding.

Living in Walsenburg is an act of defiance. That’s hard to realize for people accustomed to labeling places like it “the middle of nowhere.” Contrary to my initial conceptions, I didn’t find it hard to live in Huerfano County. I felt at home working alongside people of varying political backgrounds devoted to a common cause: saving their community through collective rebellion against an existential threat. Similarly, my team’s diversity and energy eroded common myths that many locals held about urban millennials. They appreciated that we were willing to work hard and get our hands dirty. Each interaction and workday helped renew hope in the future of the town—and in the United States itself.

Our country suffers from a geographically driven empathy deficit between people from rural and urban areas, and the divisiveness of the 2020 election only stands to exacerbate perceptions of this gap. This threat isn’t new—America’s rural-urban divide has been evident since Hamilton and Jefferson’s agrarian-industrial debate and the Free Silver Movement—but in a time of diminishing interstate migration rates, policymakers should aim to increase interchange and understanding between different cultural segments of our country.

National service programs are an opportunity to institutionalize and scale such exchanges. Evaluations of national service programs show that the social benefits of investments routinely outweigh programmatic costs. But no cost-benefit analysis can capture the mutual edification and respect that blooms when people from Chicago and Brooklyn learn to live and work with their counterparts from Wyoming and Kansas. These programs don’t just inject resources and vigor into underserved communities—they help foster the civic trust that forms the basis of our national identity and governmental institutions.

I was fortunate enough to experience the transformative power of cultural and community exchange firsthand. It’s my hope that other young Americans will continue to have similar opportunities to serve—and learn from—their neighbors. It may be key to ending our current zeitgeist of bitterness and division.