A western Nebraska village voted itself out of existence. Its remaining residents are OK with their fate.

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, Wiest has largely given up.

Nobody wants to purchase land in a community of just under 30 people in the middle of nowhere, he guesses.

Situated in the southwest end of the state five minutes from the Colorado border, Lamar had the hustle-and-bustle of a typical small Nebraska village in the 1930s, its streets lined with several businesses frequented by the 120 people who called Lamar home. 

Once a prospective railroad stop connected to a highway that brought in traffic, the community has since been left to dwindle. Its once-paved roads are covered in gravel and the local school has been abandoned.

“It’s pretty bleak,” Wiest said over the 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 decades-long 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 is not 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 just outside of Lamar in 1976 from Colorado, remembers when it was different. 

In 1940, the village had a population of 120 people, according to Census Bureau data compiled by the University of Nebraska at Omaha. That number largely dropped with the arrival of each decade, falling to 19 in 2000.

Wiest moved again and bought a house in the village in 1983. He and other locals would attend board meetings before Wiest himself became a board member. He had been chairman for the last 10 years prior to the unincorporation vote.

Wiest and other community members funded the construction of Lamar’s fire hall around 11 years ago solely from their donations.

“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, which was 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, lumberyard and “all kinds of stuff” 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 about 2 miles outside of Lamar since 1998.

Farms used to be smaller, and flood irrigation was the main way farmers watered their crops, Bernhardt said. Farms have grown larger, they use center-pivot irrigation, and the need for labor has shrunk. With fewer employment opportunities, some families moved elsewhere.

That problem grew worse in the early 2000s when the community’s public school closed, Bernhardt said. At the time, the school only went up to eighth grade. 

“They probably had 40, 50 kids in that school at one time, and then by the time the school closed they were probably down to maybe 20 or 15,” Bernhardt said.

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, despite overall population growth in Imperial, the county’s largest community, during that time, according to Census Bureau data.

The shift from rural areas to more populated communities is a continual trend in Nebraska, Gatti Schafer said, especially in agricultural communities. Fewer farm jobs mean fewer employment opportunities in those areas.

“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.”

The majority of the people in the reshuffling of these communities across Nebraska are people who are already here, Gatti Schafer said, rather than people coming into the state.

Fighting for growth

Following Lamar’s unincorporation, there are now 376 villages in Nebraska, said Lynn Rex, the executive director of the League of Nebraska Municipalities, which represents the interests of member municipalities.

A community deciding to unincorporate is rare, Rex said. She doesn’t foresee it becoming a trend anytime soon. Many historically declining communities have become some of the fastest-growing cities in the state, she added, pointing to places like Hickman and Gretna.

The ability to build a community back up, Rex said, lies in its people.

“Each and every case of which I’m aware, 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 Nebraska community aiming to grow after years of decline.

Exeter’s population in 2000 was over 700. Ten years later, it had dropped nearly 17%. The community hit a low in 2014 when the area’s nursing home closed, which spurred the village to take action. The village board then 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 is hoping to grow.

Exeter just upgraded its water tower, and two new homes will be built in the village this spring. It’s using sales tax dollars to upgrade its public pool and planning to upgrade roads. 

“We were kind of a retirement community,” said Alan Michl, chairperson of the village’s board for the past 20 years. Now: “Some families are building new homes and moving into town from bigger communities.”

In the long run, Michl said he’d like to create senior living apartments in the village, but Exeter currently doesn’t have the money. The village is instead encouraging the construction of newer homes for younger residents.

Long-time locals are the ones pushing for the improvements, said Michl, a lifelong Exeter resident.

“One of the reasons that I’m on the board is because I feel strongly about the community and what we can accomplish and what we have accomplished,” Michl said.

Other communities like Utica and Tamora, both in Seward County, are also making strides to increase growth.

The public officials of these communities, however, 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 both have public schools. Their respective strategic plans help them receive federal grant money.

Even Champion, a small unincorporated community 20 miles southeast of Lamar, has a post office. It’s the same office 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, with low 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 remaining residents agreed: They couldn’t see any way to grow the community. In the end, the decision to unincorporate – on a vote of five to one – 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. 

The decision to unincorporate passed by a single vote. A lawsuit and criminal cases followed. One member of the Thomas County Board told the newspaper at the time, “People are going to be mad at each other until they die.” 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 felt overwhelmed by paperwork and knew it was only a matter of time before the board wouldn’t have anyone to fill future vacancies.

The communities’ residents voted almost unanimously to unincorporate via a ballot measure in the November election. Chase County commissioners then made it official in December: Lamar ceased being an official village.

Not much has changed since then, 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’s not sure if he ever 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.”