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LAMAR — A year ago, Rodd Wiest wasted no time sharing his quick sales pitch with anyone who would listen: land for sale in Lamar.
The then-chairman of the village board was eager to sell his vacant lots and hopeful he’d find a buyer. Today, he has largely given up.
Nobody wants to purchase land in a community of less than 30 people, he guesses.
Situated in the southwest end of the state five minutes from the Colorado border, Lamar once had the hustle-and-bustle of a typical small Nebraska village connected to a railroad stop and a highway that brought traffic.
Now, its once-paved roads are covered in gravel and the local school sits abandoned.
“It’s pretty bleak,” Wiest said by phone in January.
Lamar’s remaining residents voted almost unanimously to unincorporate via ballot measure last fall after several years of consideration by the village board. The decision means Lamar is no longer a legal entity. Its village board no longer exists. The duty to manage the community now falls to Chase County.
Lamar is an extreme example of a decadeslong trend facing many rural Nebraska communities, according to experts and data. It’s a reality that Lamar’s remaining residents are OK with. But other communities are intent on turning the tide.
Population decline isn’t a new concern in Nebraska. It’s also not as rapidly dramatic as some might think, according to Josie Gatti Schafer, director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
“It’s been a slow shift. It’s not a run away from rural, there are still people living in rural areas, I want to be clear about that,” Gatti Schafer said. “But there has been sort of this steady movement out where we are seeing some growth.”
Lamar’s descent Today Lamar consists of 28 residents, 20 homes, two commercial businesses and the abandoned school. Wiest, who moved to the Lamar area in 1976, remembers when it was different.
In 1940, the village had a population of 120 people, according to census data compiled by the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Wiest bought a house inside village limits in 1983. He attended board meetings before he became a board member, then board chairman.
He and others spearheaded a fund drive that led to the construction of Lamar’s fire hall.
“We all know each other,” Wiest said. “Whether you’re 5 miles down the road or 10 miles down the road, you’re a neighbor.”
U.S. Highway 6, moved 2 miles south of Lamar in the 1960s, was the largest instigator of Lamar’s decline, according to Wiest. The hardware store, grocery store, barber shop and lumberyard disappeared after that, he said.
“Lamar used to be a pretty thriving little town,” Wiest said. “When we lost the railroads and then when the highway moved out, it kind of sealed our fate.”
Other factors contributed too, said Kurt Bernhardt, a Chase County commissioner who has lived outside of Lamar since 1998.
As farms have grown larger and used more technology and center-pivot irrigation, the need for labor has shrunk, he said. With fewer employment opportunities, some families moved elsewhere.
That problem grew worse in the early 2000s when the community’s public school closed. At the time, the school only went up to eighth grade.
Chase County, where Lamar sits, has followed a similar, albeit less severe, trajectory. The county’s population fell from 5,310 in 1940 to 3,893 in 2020. That’s despite population growth in Imperial, the county’s largest community, during that time, according to census data.
The shift from rural areas to more populated communities is a continual trend in Nebraska, Gatti Schafer said.
“That has led to a lot of the movement to big cities like Omaha and Lincoln, but it has also led to these other smaller population centers around the state,” Gatti Schafer said. “So we have absolutely seen a trend.”
Fighting for growth Following Lamar’s unincorporation, there are now 376 villages in Nebraska, said Lynn Rex, executive director of the League of Nebraska Municipalities.
A community deciding to unincorporate is rare, said Rex, who doesn’t foresee it becoming a trend. Many historically declining communities have become some of the fastest-growing cities in the state, she said, pointing to Hickman and Gretna.
In each success story: “...it took a person to step up, and then others that came with them to say, ‘We want to save our town. We want to save our community. Here’s how we’re going to do it,’” Rex said. “And so it really comes down to leadership.”
Exeter, a village in Fillmore County, is one place aiming to grow after years of decline.
Exeter’s population in 2000 was over 700. Ten years later, it had dropped nearly 17%. Then, in 2014, the area nursing home closed. It spurred the village to take action. The village board created and began implementing a strategic plan focused on downtown revitalization, road improvements and residential development in 2016.
The village also has benefited from a Nebraska Community Foundation-affiliated fund, in which it has raised tens of thousands for community improvements.
Despite losing the nursing home, Exeter managed to slow its population decline compared to the previous decade.
Now, it wants to grow. It’s using sales tax dollars to upgrade its public pool and planning to upgrade roads. Long-time locals are pushing for improvements, said Alan Michl, longtime village board chairperson and lifelong Exeter resident.
“We were kind of a retirement community,” Michl said. Now: “Some families are building new homes and moving into town from bigger communities.”
Other communities like Utica and Tamora, both in Seward County, are also making strides.
The leaders in these communities are working with qualities that Lamar doesn’t have at its disposal: infrastructure and institutions.
Exeter, Utica and Tamora are all connected to highways leading to larger cities like York and Seward. Exeter has a medical center, and Exeter and Utica have public schools. Their planning helps them receive federal grant money.
Even Champion, an unincorporated community 20 miles southeast of Lamar, has a post office. It’s the same one that serves Lamar’s remaining residents.
“If the question is, ‘can an unincorporated municipality ever revive itself?’ I’ve not seen that happen,” Rex said. “By the time a community decides to unincorporate that really is kind of a line in the sand.”
Moving forward Things in Lamar aren’t all bad, Wiest said. The community is quiet. There’s little crime. A local volunteer fire department operates the fire hall. Farmers converse every morning over coffee and cards at the former village office.
Much of Lamar’s population now includes Spanish-speaking residents who have come to do agricultural work, Wiest said.
There were no last-minute efforts to change Lamar’s fortunes. The decision to unincorporate was relatively painless, especially compared to others. In the Sandhills village of Seneca, a citizen-led effort to unincorporate split the community in 2014. Claims of government overreach led to a bitter campaign, complete with allegations of voter intimidation and fraud. A lawsuit and criminal cases followed, and the conflict became the subject of an episode of the public radio program RadioLab. Members of Lamar’s board started seriously considering unincorporating in the spring of 2024. They knew it was only a matter of time before the board wouldn’t have anyone to fill future vacancies.
The communities’ residents – by a total vote of 5-1 – chose to do so in the November election. Chase County commissioners then made it official in December: Lamar ceased being an official village.
Not much has changed since, said Wiest. He and the former board members don’t have to deal with paperwork and meetings. The county is now responsible for the few services in town, like trash collection.
Wiest still hasn’t found a buyer for his lots. He doubts he will.
“I keep thinking Walmart is gonna come along and buy some ground out here,” Wiest said, “but I don’t think they’re going to.”
