North Carolina Teaches Us About Small Towns

North Carolina is hardly alone in valuing its small towns, though the enduring image of Mayberry may create an extra tug on Tar Heel heartstrings. But the state's small towns are more than sources of nostalgia. They are home to 919,783 people and play vital cultural and economic roles, for their surrounding communities as well as for the townspeople themselves.

This is especially true in the state's 85 rural counties, where 92 percent of municipalities are small towns and two-thirds of all county residents live outside of incorporated areas.

Many of the most important attributes of small towns cannot be measured. Others only offer hints: $83 billion in assessed value of private property and 1,332 square miles of land area, for instance.

Clearly, though, many of the same forces that gave rise to towns make them vital today, as hubs of commerce and springboards of entrepreneurship, as distribution centers, as seats of government, law and finance. They provide outlets for recreation and give focus to civic and cultural life. Small towns pull people together and help define what it is to be a community.

For its examination of small-town North Carolina, the North Carolina Rural Development Center defines small towns as incorporated communities of fewer than 10,000 residents. As of 2004, this encompassed 478 towns, 87 percent of the state's municipalities. Among these small towns are 409 towns in the state's 85 rural counties, or 92 percent of all rural municipalities.

Download the NC Small Town Factbook here.