"Best Places to Live in Rural America"

This is a first time list. Everyone has heard about the best places to live survey that ranks cities, but this one ranks rural counties.

Cecil County, Maryland ranks at # 83. Not too shabby! Guess what county Elkton, MD is in? Yeppir, Cecil County. We cracked the top 100. This is according to Progressive Farmer magazine which is a sister to Time Inc. publication, Money magazine.

They considered health care, education, climate, crime index, and tax burden. Then considered intangibles such as quality of life, leisure and cultural pursuits, and scenery.

Supposedly they also talked to residents in each county; "numbers can tell us a great deal about a place, but not as much as the people who live there".

It all sounds impressive doesn't it. Cecil county is in the Top 100.

But they must not have read our local paper or talked to one of our local judges. Here's why.

An Elkton man walked out of a detention center. The article said he eyed a pack of cigarettes on his way to the medical area of the jail when the door opened. The cigarettes were on the other side of the gate. The guy pushed a button to ask the gate to be opened, and to his surprise it was. He took the cigarettes and tried his luck one more time. Again, the next door opened and the inmate, who was being held on burglary charges, walked out of the detention center and headed home!

How's that for a fine place to live?

Comments

  • 14 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • ...but what does one do in Cecil County on a Saturday night? Watch the grass grow? x:-)
  • Sounds like a very fine place to live. I suspect that the inmate would agree.
  • Too strange! There's an article about that in today's local paper. Rankin County Mississippi is ranked number 10. It's the county adjoining this one. It's known for miles and miles of nothingness, woods, swamps, gravel roads and deer hunting camps. Riding through the county one will see empty freezers, turned on their side out by the road with the door torn off. They put their garbage there for pickup so the animals won't scatter it. Every woman's dream in that county is to have bleached blonde hair and a Camaro auto with glass packs. The county is whiskey dry but you can buy beer. But not a single beer. Has to be a six pack. Half the towns in the county are dry totally and some have beer, but only hot beer. The joke here is that it's the redneck capital of the world.

    The only redeeming thing I can think of is that there is indeed lots of rolling land with nothing on it but trees which I suppose could be bought for the right price. And you can move a double wide onto it and sink you a ceptic tank if you're amind to. If you thinkin' of doin' it and you're fixin' to check on land, go 'head on.
  • Yes, this all sounds great and wonderful, BUT, are there any ordinances banning barnyard animals inside chicken wire fences behind the doublewide?

    Gene
  • Cecil County?! Well, who in the heck did the calculations on education and tax burden? An educated person wouldn't have come up with that as a "plus!" Either that or they conducted the survey 5 years ago. Oh, yeah. They didn't include an assessment of soil or groundwater. Tsk, tsk. Details!
  • I just looked at the list and found that NH places #5 with Grafton County which borders Merrimack County (where I live and work) on the North.

    "Though geographically large (it's twice the size, for instance, of Callaway County, Mo.), Grafton County is dominated by the White Mountain National Forest. So development isn't an issue. Lebanon, in the southwest corner of the county, ranked No. 3 in Norman Crampton's "The 100 Best Small Towns in America." The National Trust for Historic Preservation named another town, Littleton, as one of its five Great American Main Street communities in 2003. The schools are topnotch; Grafton County is home to the Ivy League's Dartmouth College. Skiing is quite the tourist draw for Northeastern metro areas. In spite of this, the largest city still has fewer than 15,000 residents. The Old Man of the Mountain, a facelike rock formation on Cannon Mountain, was featured on New Hampshire's state quarter in 2000. The famous stone face collapsed in 2003."

    Cheryl C.
  • As noted on another thread, White Mountain is really a hill.
  • It's rigged. NC doesn't make it into the top 100 at all. It doesn't even make it in the top 20 in the Southeast. Something must be wrong. They must not like tobacco farmers.
  • The county I live in is ranked #7! I noticed quite a few Wisconsin counties. I'm a little prejudice cuz it's my home state but Wisconsin is a beautiful place to call home even in the dead of winter. x:-)


  • WHAT A LIST!!! Six of the top 20, 20 of the top 100, and both the county I live in and the one I work in are in the top 20! I've been trying to tell you that Wisconsin is the best place to live. Right on, Ruby!

    And, we've got cows and cheese! For you California residents; our cows are more contented than yours and produce more milk in the cool of Wisconsin. No cow in it's right mind would want to move to California.
  • Yeah, what a list! Let's see, I grew-up in Fauquier County (#1) and I would not move back if you paid me. Moving on down to #8, I would not want to live in Lebanon, TN and have to commute to Nashville. Only fools do that. Wilson County isn't all that great. It's vcery similar to the crap hole Don described in his post.

    Gene
  • Just what we need - more milk and cheese from cows in blizzards.
  • Speaking of #4 Callaway County, Missouri that is where I live. In fact if you click on the Photo Gallery for the county you will see my home. It is the top left picture next to the picture of the columns at Westminster College. The counties claim to fame is: "During the Civil War, the county declared itself a sovereign state ("The Kingdom of Callaway") after facing down and fooling Union troops with logs painted black to resemble cannons. In 1946, Winston Churchill gave his historic Iron Curtain Speech at Westminster College in Fulton. The Winston Churchill Memorial in a rebuilt 1677 church from England is a town treasure."
    Having lived here for only seven years I am not quite sure how this county was ranked #4 in the nation.
  • Having read through all of this, I'm not sure what to conclude, other than ain't none of these counties west of a Texas to North Dakota line. Sorry G3. But, I'll bet yours ranks as one of the top 20 counties people want to get the hell away from. x:-)
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