Rural America Gets Rediscovered, Again

Though I seriously doubt anyone is paying $750 for “rubber” waders, there’s little question that as baby boomers move to the countryside — enabled by the Internet and a changing job culture — they are transforming rural areas. In The Wall Street Journal, Conor Daugherty describes how the demands of affluent retirees and wired businesspeople are bringing rapid change to quiet backwaters. “‘What we’re seeing is a class colonization,’ says Peter Nelson, an associate professor of geography at Middlebury College and an expert on rural migration. ‘It really represents a shift in the nature of the economy from a resource-extraction economy to an aesthetic-based economy.'” Be sure to check out the map of locales that have become rural money magnets.