Small-towners: How small is your town?

I was thinking the other day about all the blah-blah about "Small-town America" during the campaign, and I'm just wondering what people think is a small town. Vote in this if you live in a "small town" included in this poll.

ETA: I voted 3,001-5,000, but it's 3,300.

the population is obviously much larger.

Or at least that's my motto

We're on a jagged penninsula, so we have a LOT of shoreline.

Redstone

My house was surrounded by woods and farms. The "town" was a post office, a liquor store/gas station and an antiques store that I'm assuming was open for business but never really cared to look. So I don't even consider that my hometown. There were probably about 2,000 or so total people living in the zip code but never any census figures on it.

The town I consider my hometown was about 5 miles away, and even that didn't have an incorporated city government. But it did have clustered houses and businesses, with shopping centers, chain stores and restaraunts, car dealers, a couple of hotels, a hospital and my high school, all the harbingers of an actual town. Census figures have that as being about 1,500 people or so, but given a) it has grown a lot since 2000 and b) the census didn't take into account neighboring communities under that town's zipcode, so I'd probably say there were about 5,000-8,000 in the greater area.

...that DSL is still limited to 768k uplink!

(applause)
(laughter)

Population: 1032

Deer: 564

Moose: 19

Bear: 12

Covered Bridges: 2

First job out of college was in a small rural county and I moved into a big old farm house in a town of 400. I asked the lady I was renting from how to get the electricity turned on. I swear, this is what she said: You go down to the Charm Outlet Store and ask for Dorcas. Tell her where you live and she'll tell her husband at dinner and he'll come out the next day and turn on your power. I went in and when I told her my name, she yelled to the other people in the store: "Hey everybody, this is xx and he's going to be living in the old xx house and his wife is a teacher and they were married in the Presbyterian Church and..." Scared the shit out of me. I was told later that she made her husband get up every Saturday morning around 5 AM so they could drive around the town and make sure everybody's car was in the right driveway. I later found out that the only two things to do in this town were fool around on your spouse or gossip about who is.
About two years later I moved to the only other incorporated town in the county, which was then about 3,500. It felt like New York City after the other place.

Total Population 3,334
Population Density 89 Persons/Sq. Mile
Female Population 1,654
Male Population 1,681
Median Age 33.68 Years

;)

LOL... I wondered how many people would look it up to see exactly where since I took the stats from a website.

:hi:

Because of the University, 2/3rds of the year, the city*'s population is around 50K.

However, from the beginning of May until the end of August, and then for the whole month of December (plus assorted breaks), the city* drops to around 25-30K.

The (*) is because when people around here say Morgantown, what they really mean is Morgantown/Westover (equal-sized cities separated by the Monongahela River, but MoTown proper has WVU) as well as their cluster of suburbs separated only by a 'welcome to' sign in either direction.

Yet even a lot of people here think we are a small town. This is perhaps because we do not have an interstate within 10 miles, no 4-year college of any importance, and we are the largest town within 30 miles of here by far. Columbia 40 miles to the west is the nearest city of some size, and even though that is the largest city in SC many people from large urban areas elsewhere would also consider them small as well.

"Small Town America" in reality is far from what it is romanticized as. I was surrounded by dysfunctional families and borderline poverty.

small town (the one the kids go to school in, etc.) has been nothing but good. I'm guessing, from my experience (and not just with this town), towns with less than a couple thousand are very different from ones that are 3-6K.

The latest info I can find was from the 2000 census, so I'm not sure how up to date it is.

Jesus... 97% white... somehow that doesn't surprise me.

When it turns cold, five thousand leave and five thousand come. When it turns hot, five thousand leave and five thousand come.

But we are losing about fifteen percent of our population to economic issues.

That's just "town" though. Most people live out in the county. County pop is 24,000ish.

My town is still on the unpopulated end of the county though.

:hi:

The town is just a post office, a small country church, two auto repair shops, a Mom and Pop store, an antique barber shop, and a handful of houses. The elementary school closed two years ago. The biker bar has been closed for a couple of years.

Most of the people live in the surrounding townships. We actually live in a different township from our post office. It's different out in the country! Even though everyone is your "neighbor", there isn't really much of a community.

About 300 square miles, and a population of 1,100.

so it is not like we are in the total boonies. But the boonies are close.

My home village of Cranleigh being such an example.

But then again status isn't determined by population. Wells, in Somerset is Englands' smallest city. Cranleigh's population is bigger than that of Wells. City status is deferred on it by royalty (HM Queen Elizabeth II, to be exact) and not because it has a cathedral.

Mark.