Over 12 million people live in banking deserts – communities without a physical bank within a 10-mile radius. In rural areas, this leaves people without a place to get loans, deposit checks, and get cash. Many rural areas still prefer cash over other forms of payment like credit cards. Without banks, rural residents’ credit scores can drop, or they can be taken advantage of by predatory lending like payday loans.

With only three walls and no roof, some might mistake the Pecos Mission Church for a ruin. But the three hundred year old adobe structure is alive with cultural and spiritual significance, according to those who are working to preserve it. “The church is a monument, a testament to the people that once lived there,” said Christopher Toya, an archeologist and tribal historic preservation officer of the Jemez Pueblo.

Rural Georgia’s current demographic implosion didn’t happen overnight, or in a vacuum. Look behind headlines about the stunning number of counties reporting more deaths than births, and you’ll find an earlier economic signal that something was amiss: a breathtaking drop in per capita income (PCI) performance that began roughly a decade before rural Georgia hit its demographic tipping point. The downturn in the state’s PCI performance was all the more startling because it followed at least 20 years of remarkable improvement.

Since January, the Trump administration has threatened funding for tribal colleges, erased Navajo history, and proposed cuts to tribal housing programs. But amid these attacks, the Navajo Nation is charting a different path, one that prioritizes cultural preservation, education sovereignty, and long-term investment in its community. From the development of a new textbook to record-breaking enrollments in Diné Studies programs, the Navajo Nation has prioritized education at every level with a sharp focus on history, language, identity, and generational knowledge.

This story was originally published by OpenCampus in collaboration with Flatwater Free Press. Growing up on a reservation in Montana, the career path for Tyse Rogers seemed obvious. Kids would turn 16, get their GEDs and go straight to work at the local lumberyard, joining their parents and neighbors at the biggest employer in town. Rogers took a different path.

A new program touted to give $50 billion in federal funding to rural hospitals won’t necessarily keep rural hospitals from closing, according to several experts in rural health. The funding is part of a compromise made in Congress to help rural communities after H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” now being rebranded as the “Working Families Tax Cuts Law,” eliminated more than $911 billion from Medicaid.

This story was originally published by MinnPost. Thick-cut ham, pickle wraps, fresh fruit mixes. To loyal customer Susan Lieberg, these food items show how responsive her rural grocery store is to its patrons. KC’s Country Market in Greenbush, a northwestern Minnesota city of about 680 residents, has what she calls “Marty-style” ham, which the store started offering after learning of her husband’s preference for it.

On the evening of August 21, 2025, Chris Giokaris hopped on the interstate heading southeast from his hometown of Tucson, Arizona. His destination was Benson, a town of about 5,500 people located 50 miles away. The small town is known as the gateway to the San Pedro Valley, in large part for the San Pedro River that winds its way north from Mexico as one of the last undammed rivers in the Sonoran Desert.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. Cedar Monroe grew up in rural Grays Harbor County, Washington.

It’s one of the most distinctive sounds in country and bluegrass music. You can hear it in the singing of Patty Loveless, Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs. The way these Appalachian-born singers bend and glide and flip over their melodies—it can stir your soul and break your heart at the same time. You can trace this style of singing back to bluegrass legends like Ralph Stanley.

Our latest TV roundup features more small-town dramas, murder mysteries, and even a reality show about rural game wardens.

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox. Experts often use housing vacancy rates as one of several measures to examine the state of an area’s housing market. In rural America, a high vacancy rate can point to low housing demand and therefore lower housing costs, but that’s not always the case.

Leo’s Community Development Center in Superior, Arizona, serves people before they even enter the building. The free clothing rack and food stand outside are always open, and people take what they need and leave what they can. Free community meals every Wednesday night bring in a mix of people from all walks of life. Once a month, workshops on emergency preparedness or resiliency practices follow the meal.

This story was originally published by KFF Health News. Olivia Owlett chose to do her primary care residency in the Northern California college town of Chico largely because it faces many of the same health care challenges she grew up with. Owlett is one of four residents in the inaugural class of a three-year family medicine residency program run by the local nonprofit…

There was no shortage of buffalo check flannel and cowboy boots among attendees of Farm Aid’s 40th anniversary concert in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on September 20, 2025, but alongside them were just as many folks clad in t-shirts with “Stop Factory Farms” printed on the front. This message summed up the main takeaway of the event: farmers need just as much support now as they did 40 years ago, when the 1980s farm crisis spurred Farm Aid’s first benefit concert.

This story was originally published by Stateline. The residents of Roane County, West Virginia, enjoy living among the rolling mountains and winding, two-lane roads. Situated between Charleston and Parkersburg, two of the state’s largest cities, the rural county is known for its small towns and historic buildings. That’s how Sherry Husted, the director of the Roane County Public Libraries, described her native community as she worked last week at Geary Public Library in Left Hand, West Virginia.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. Mary Ardery is a writer and poet from Indiana.

“A pharmacist and a minister” may sound like the start of a bad joke, not necessarily an intuitive vocational pairing. But to Reverend Dr. Leonard Edloe, long-time community pharmacist and pastor of New Hope Fellowship in rural Hartfield, Virginia, the two go hand-in-hand. For Dr. Edloe, both vocations are about fostering the spiritual and physical health of his communities–predominantely Black communities historically underserved by the American healthcare system.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox. Blackburn College in southern Illinois has its particular charms. One of just 10 federally recognized “work colleges” — institutions that operate a mandatory student work program as a central part of their educational philosophy — about half its buildings were built by the students themselves over the years.

A deepening demographic crisis now haunts rural Georgia and offers one of the starkest pictures of the widening divide between the greater Atlanta area and the rest of the state. In less than 20 years, based on data maintained by the state’s Department of Public Health (DPH), the number of Georgia counties reporting more deaths than births exploded from less than 20 to nearly 100 of the state’s 159 counties.

This story was originally published by Community Networks. NTIA, the federal office administering the largest single investment to expand Internet access across the nation, appears to once again be changing the BEAD program in ways that would only force states to further reduce investment in rural areas. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees the NTIA office, has already introduced delays…

In the early hours of the morning, Amy Klingler, a primary care physician assistant in Stanley, Idaho, answered a call from a panicked patient. The woman was experiencing severe lower abdominal pain and had been vomiting for hours. She said she feared she might be suffering from an ectopic pregnancy—a serious, potentially fatal condition. But even in that moment of crisis, the patient hesitated to seek emergency care.

This article was co-published with EdSurge, a nonprofit newsroom covering education through original journalism and research. Sign up for their newsletters. Elijah, a rising sixth grader, was unsure. His mother and grandmother approached him to talk about trying a new school. But Elijah needed convincing. When Elijah found out it included hands-on work running an Airbnb, he became excited, says his mother, Terrie Wilson.

For many rural families, including mine, this does not feel like a year to be cavalier about what we have put by for winter. Grocery prices have not gone down. Availability feels uncertain. I can feed my household better for less than the cost of the “cheap” processed and prepared foods that have become the norm for many families over the past 40 years.

Jeremy Jones is a non-fiction writer and professor of English at Western Carolina University. His new book, Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries, is out September 16, 2025. It follows Jones’s journey to decode the notebooks of his ancestor William Thomas Prestwood, a 19th-century southern farmer who journaled incessantly about his relationships with women, the enslaved, and everyday life in the Carolinas.