As in most rural regions, fairs and festivals are a core part of Ozarks culture. What they recognize differs depending on the place, but regardless of whether it’s about apples or apple butter or pumpkins or old-time music, they share a common factor: People who make them possible in support of community good. That’s true in rural southwest Missouri, where Pat and Peggy Napper were recently chosen as grand marshals of the 2026 Billings Community Fair. 

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox. There is a place called Sugar Tit in the county where I grew up. On the west side of Spartanburg County in the South Carolina upcountry is an unincorporated community colloquially (and proudly) referred to as Sugar Tit, although its official government name is Pelham.

The Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) was supposed to help rural hospitals deal with cuts to federal funding as a result of H.R. 1, or the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but so far, those in rural health care say they’re not seeing any results. While some said it’s too early to see results, others said the program isn’t helping what really needs to be helped — rural hospitals.

Protests against data centers have exploded across the US, with communities revolting against a multitude of proven damaging effects on energy prices, clean air and water – and the devastation of tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land. Recent headlines in national publications report that farmers and rural communities are rejecting multimillion-dollar bids from institutional investors and tech companies to buy their farmland to build data centers.

This story was originally published by KFF Health News. About half of rural American voters believe the economy is worse off now than when President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a new survey that points to economic frustration among a key group that has backed Trump and other Republicans in recent elections. The poll of more than 2,000 rural registered voters by The Associated Press in partnership with KFF found broadly negative views on the national and local economies, including from many Republicans.

Tune in to Yonder Radio to hear conversations about the state of rural journalism, access to abortion in Appalachia, and a Tarantula Festival in Colorado.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. For Norma Mercado, community work starts with listening to the people who call Bastrop County, Texas home.

How closely have you been following the latest stories from rural communities across the country? From tarantulas and square dancing to data centers and midterms, this month’s news highlights the challenges, celebrations, and resistance shaping rural life. Take this short quiz to see what you know.

Like many millennial daughters of second-wave feminists, I grew up with an explicit understanding of Roe v. Wade’s almost sacred importance to women born

A farm show is not the same as a state fair. No midway rides. No demolition derby. No grandstand entertainment. So what's the draw? My husband and I don't farm. We don't even raise backyard chickens. Still, in July we drove 160 miles round trip to attend Wisconsin’s 2026 Farm Technology Days. Here's why. The water test. Farm Tech wasn't even on my radar until I saw a social media post from Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources.

It’d been years — decades, perhaps — since Jim Stuart had been to a square dance at the Taney Center. The small community hub in rural Missouri was built for neighbors to gather, and, at its start, square dancing was one of those draws. “There were a lot of the old-time square dancers that played here,” he told me recently. …

As health care systems move toward more and more electronic record keeping, the labor it takes to manage that data threatens to cripple rural hospitals, according to industry insiders. The data transfer between hospitals and other entities can negatively affect rural hospitals. The problem centers around the digital divide where rural healthcare facilities struggle to securely share or receive electronic health records, …

The day before Hurricane Helene blew into Western North Carolina, Jeneal Hensley, a licensed family child care provider, was taking care of five children in her Swannanoa home. She’d been in business as The Little People’s Place in her house by the river for more than a decade and had cared for dozens of the town’s preschool-age children, along with some of her own grandchildren.

Jeremiah Ariaz is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow whose photography explores the decline of small-town U.S. newsrooms, and celebrates the rural reporters who are fighting long odds to keep local media coverage alive in their communities. Born and raised in small Kansas towns, Ariaz has focused his photographic efforts on his home state. Between 2022 and 2026, he criss-crossed Kansas to document the state’s 151 operating newsrooms.

This week on Yonder Radio, we're taking a deep dive into the rapid expansion of data centers across rural America.

Verlyn Rosenberger, 88, got involved with the progressive grassroots community organization Illinois People’s Action (IPA) 20 years ago. Over the decades, the retired schoolteacher’s causes have ranged from protesting predatory payday lending to regional oil pipelines. Recently, however, the focus of Rosenberger’s activism has been close to home: opposing expansion at the nation’s first commercial carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) plant in Decatur, Illinois.

In the landscape of rural development, structural longevity is often tied to the unpredictable cycles of federal appropriations. But a quiet economic acceleration across America’s working lands is challenging the idea that rural conservation requires a constant federal administrative safety net. A decentralized network of regional nonprofits, born out of the legacy Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) program, is experiencing an unprecedented period of growth.

Matthew McConaughey stars as an eccentric beekeeper in a jubilant film that brings rural Oklahoma to the big screen.

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a

The Georgia General Assembly just allocated millions of dollars to establish a new need-based scholarship. But experts warn that it won’t cover the cost of attendance for low-income and rural students. The state’s DREAMS (Dedicating Resources to Educationally Advance More Students) scholarship ends Georgia's designation as one of two states without state-funded need-based aid for higher education. “It takes us off the naughty list of not having a program like that,” said Sonny Perdue, chancellor of the University System of Georgia (USG), which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities.

The Trump Administration plans to rescind the Roadless Rule, a 2001 rule that protects public land from development. Many rural communities are worried that the rescinding could hurt their economies.

This article was copublished with Canary Media, a newsroom covering clean energy. Jeff Hough did not pull any punches. What his fellow Republican county commissioners were about to do, he said to the packed courthouse, would violate America’s founding ideals. He quoted the Declaration of Independence to make his case. The three-person commission was about to vote on an ordinance that would ban utility-scale solar and wind development in Bannock County, Idaho.

Rural voters turned out in force across the 2026 primaries, shaping key races, and emerging as an electorate candidates cannot afford to overlook. In Texas, rural voters turned out at the highest rate of any geographic voter group. In North Carolina, more rural voters participated in the Democratic primary than they did four years ago. In Wisconsin, rural turnout approached 36% in a primary race that drew the state's highest midterm primary turnout in decades.

A funny thing happened on the way to changing the clocks: Farmers got blamed for Daylight Saving Time (DST). “Not only is that not true, but it is 100% not true. It is as far from true as one could get,” David Prerau, author of Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time, told Nebraska Public Media…

Tune in to Yonder Radio to hear conversations about the real-world effects of AI slop, indigenous buffalo harvesting, and the fate of small-town movie theaters.

Researchers with Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), affiliated with Parkland Health, looked at areas in Texas with higher vulnerabilities for chronic illnesses and saw whether access to food played a role in those higher rates of vulnerability. The study found that food insecurity is a major factor fueling the chronic illness problem in rural Texas. The data showed that food insecurity is a baseline problem in 149 rural Texas census tracts.

Building data centers is broadly unpopular across the political spectrum, but so far, banning new development is a mostly metropolitan area phenomenon. While more data centers are located in metropolitan areas than nonmetropolitan ones, two-thirds of all new facilities are planned for rural communities. The rural data center boom comes amidst rising backlash to the facilities. Earlier this year, my colleague Sarah Melotte and I…

“Let’s go to La Junta, Colorado, for their Tarantula Fest!” is what no sane person should exclaim. But I did because I’m terrified of spiders. I don’t want to be, but I am. I’d hoped that the inspiring journey of a beast continuing its species would help build a more rational reaction to the eight-legged scourges of scurry. Spoiler: it didn’t.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice-monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox. This week, I found myself in the basement of a hospital learning about the sterilization of surgical equipment, gazing up at a towering combine in a shop at a John Deere dealership, and listening to a kid roaring like a lion while they worked on speech therapy at a pediatric clinic.

On August 25, the Trump administration Commerce Department finally approved Illinois's spending plan under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Illinois was the last straggler of the 56 states and territories to receive clearance under the $42.5 billion internet funding program. "With all 56 Final Proposals now approved, we are achieving Congress's vision of closing the digital divide once and for all," said Arielle Roth, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which administers the program.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. I sat down with Marsh Naidoo, a physical therapist, parent advocate, and founder of…

Tune in to Yonder Radio to hear about the American cowboys that compete at the World Nomad Games in Central Asia, and the women who have helped develop recreation economies in the West.

A version of this article first appeared on Allen Stanton’s Substack, Reclaiming Rural. My most famous piece of writing is a controversial essay entitled, “Why I Hate Wendell Berry.” It’s obvious why it was controversial. I do not love the title, and I did not select it. It was effective clickbait, though, which meant far more people read it than I thought.

The Grammy winner’s fourth record, "The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales," spins a juicy revenge fable out of country, hip-hop, and Americana influences.

Across the country, local governments are facing budget season with an impossible math problem. As federal funding shrinks and safety-net programs face sweeping cuts from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1) passed by Republicans in Congress last summer, local officials are being forced to make painful choices about schools, healthcare, and other essential services. For many rural communities already operating on tight margins, these cuts will mean scaling back services people rely on, from after-school programs to emergency response services.

In June, Mike and Gillian Goodrich gifted $10 million to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine toward a program to train primary care physicians in rural communities. Dr. Irfan Asif, chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine and associate dean of Primary Care and Rural Health at UAB, said the program will address shortages in primary care across the state.

This story was originally published by Public Health Watch. Respiratory therapist Marcy Freeman doesn’t need a research study to confirm for her a return to the dark days of coal mining. She finds evidence in a stack of more than 150 funeral programs, all for former patients at her pulmonary rehabilitation clinic in Norton, Virginia. “Each one of these represents a life that’s gone because of black lung,” Freeman explained as she flipped through the programs, recognizing names and images.

When Leeshia Lee got the idea to challenge artists to write a lyrical love letter to West Virginia, she had no idea it would create so much buzz. This spring and summer, the Dear West V. challenge went viral on social media. Submissions came in from all across the state. “Clarksburg, Huntington, Charleston, hollers and hills that I've never heard of,” Lee said.

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox. In this edition of the Rural Index, I wanted to explore a hypothesis that my colleague Julia Tilton and I have been throwing around over the last few weeks: Are data center developers targeting vulnerable and marginalized communities, where they know residents are not as likely to have the power to fight back?

As private equity firms expand across the healthcare system, rural communities need protections against investment and ownership models that can extract resources, weaken care, and leave entire regions with fewer options in an emergency. Investment is welcome in communities where capital can be scarce. But healthcare is different: when a hospital closes, lives are put at risk. Private equity firms have rapidly increased their presence throughout healthcare, and rural communities are especially vulnerable because often they cannot afford to lose even one hospital, clinic, or emergency service.

An estimated $19.7 billion in Texas health care funding is at stake under proposed changes to Medicaid payments. The proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would limit and reduce State Directed Payments (SDPs), a funding stream that hospitals and other providers rely on to help care for Medicaid patients. The proposed changes have drawn concern from advocates, providers, and clinics who warned that the cuts could put additional strain on rural hospitals, children’s health services, and families across the state by reducing access to essential care.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. Kiran Singh Sirah wears many hats: as a public folklorist, storytelling artist, peacebuilder, and cultural narrative practitioner.

Tune in to Yonder Radio for a pop culture roundup with the summers biggest rural hits and stories about salmon migration and climate friendly wine in the PNW.

This story was originally published by Free Press Indiana. It’s been a year since the only grocery remaining in Shoals, Indiana, closed. These days, local food shopping is done at the Dollar General just east of town. “We miss the JayC,” Shoals resident Hannah Miller said as she and her three kids left the dollar store July 14 with a dozen eggs and a gallon of water.

As I pulled into my driveway, nursing the wounds of a recent heartache, her high lonesome vocals came to a tender conclusion. Squinting through the sunshine piercing the clouds of that big Montana sky, a butterfly flew by. “Everything’s gonna be alright,” Dolly sang. “It’s gonna be okay.” Dolly. That one name tells you everything – who I’m writing about, what song I heard, why the butterfly mattered.

How closely have you been following the latest stories from rural communities across the country? From data centers and primary elections to public art and cattle grazing, this month’s news highlights the challenges, celebrations, and resistance shaping rural life. Take this short quiz to see what you know.

I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know about Dolly Parton. Being from East Tennessee and growing up in the hills of Appalachia, she was ubiquitous. When I was little, I dozed in the cool air of the theater at Dollywood’s HeartSong and white-knuckled my way through my first big roller coaster ride on the Tennessee Tornado.

This summer, Oklahoma launched a statewide community access portal initiative, bringing private, internet-connected spaces to public libraries across the state. The program will place as many as 175 portals in libraries, giving rural residents a private space to access telehealth, workforce development, education, and other essential online services. The initiative comes as libraries have taken on an expanding role as community access points for technology and telehealth.

This story was originally published by KFF Health News. A century-old hospital near Michigan’s southern border was one of the nation’s first to convert into a new emergency-focused model Congress created to save rural care. Afterward, though, use of Sturgis Hospital’s emergency department fell, according to data collected at the state level. In June, three years after taking the federal lifeline, the hospital closed, leaving residents of Sturgis, a town of about 11,000 people, without critical healthcare.

Editor’s note: Some interviews for this article were originally conducted in Spanish and translated to English by Clara Haizlett. Hispanic Heritage Month is observed nationwide every September and October, celebrating the cultures and contributions of the Hispanic community in the United States. Last fall, the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia celebrated their second annual Fiesta Hispana in recognition of the month.