Don’t Give Up on Your Small Town
“A lot of times, for folks who are rurally located, you might be by a little town in your vicinity, but then there's always a bigger town within driving distance that is also accessible, so we tend to bypass that smaller town,” said Wyoming homesteader and content creator Jill Winger. “And sometimes that's warranted, but I think sometimes we have to kind of tell ourselves: Nope, we're gonna figure out how to invest in this small town and dig in deep. Even if the path isn't clear yet.”
For anyone who’s lived in a small town or rural community, it’s not uncommon to rely on bigger towns for necessities or community engagement—even if it takes an hour or longer to drive there. But Winger decided to switch her mindset and start looking at how to engage in the small town closest to her rural cattle ranch: Chugwater, Wyoming, a ranching town of 178 people.
“At first I wasn't engaged in the town very much at all,” said Winger, who, when first moving to the area over a decade ago, was focused on building a sustainable homestead with her family. “I told myself that this town didn't have anything to offer me. And then I thought, well, you know what, when I apply a lot of intention and creativity into my homestead, amazing things happen. So I was like, what if we applied some of that intention into this little community?”
Within the tiny town of Chugwater sits Wyoming's oldest historic soda fountain shop, which has been a constant community space since the early 1900s. Originally, the space was used as a drugstore and general store, with a soda fountain later installed on the side. Over the years, the aging building has become a full-service restaurant.
In 2020, just as restaurants were beginning to close due to COVID lockdowns, Winger and her husband had a conversation with the soda fountain shop owners. To their surprise, the current owners were looking to retire and willing to sell the old business. By 2021, Winger and her husband had full ownership of the shop and began the long journey of fixing up the old building—such as pulling out rotting floors and adding fresh paint. Winger said it was not an easy journey; managing a homestead and cattle ranch, building a podcast and blog, homeschooling children, renovating and operating the soda machine shop—all in the midst of a global pandemic.
“Everyone was like, ‘What are you doing buying a small restaurant in a tiny town?’ And it was a pandemic so many were just like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ But it just felt like for whatever reason, it was the right time, so we did it,” said Winger.
Despite many struggles and roadblocks, Winger and her husband didn’t give up on their dream of making this community element shine. There were a mix of emotions throughout the community as the Winger family went to work on renovating the historic site: while some supported them fixing the old floor, the cupboards, and the bar, others were afraid of a precious historic space becoming “ruined.”
“Humans, we don't like to change,” said Winger. “It's almost like it’s wired into us. So when someone does change—leaves the herd—it makes everyone else very, very uncomfortable at first, [and] I've learned to just kind of expect that, and that helps a little bit.”
In the end, the work was worth it, and the space has again become a vibrant place in the community, keeping the generational tradition of meeting up in the historic building alive.
“We have our coffee guys, as we call them,” Winger said. “Who come in every day and just catch up on all the gossip and all the happenings and it's just really fun to see them sitting there and knowing that some of them, they had grandparents who homesteaded in this area and they're still in that same building that their grandparents would have visited.”
Winger shared that they have a special local price for coffee, just 50 cents, “so locals can come in and hang out for as long as they want.”
Winger says, “It's a special place because it's been one of the few landmarks that have been able to remain throughout a century here … On Sundays, we have a large church group come in and there's just something about being able to greet everybody there on a first-name basis, ask how their cattle are doing, ask how the crops are doing. It's just really neat.”
Besides just being a great place for locals to hang out, Winger and the soda fountain shop are investing in the community in other ways: they (along with the the other restaurant in town) have hosted fundraisers and events to support a local charter school, which is currently signed up to have 66 students as of March.
“It's been a heck of a project,” said Winger. “But there is progress and the community support for that has been amazing.”
Currently, the community is in negotiations with the district for the building. Funding from the state has been granted, teacher applications are coming in, and it’s slowly moving forward, in spite of some obstacles.
“I noticed, as we renovated the soda fountain and especially with the charter school, we hit many, many points in the journey where we thought it was the end,” said Winger. “Like, there was this thing that was going to stop us and even people around us were kind of like, ‘Oh, well, maybe this wasn't meant to be.’”
But building a strong community is too important for Winger and her supporters to give up on the endeavor. “My husband and I talk all the time about how you have to be audacious enough to go, ‘No, we're going to climb over the mountain,’” said Winger. “We're going to go under it. We're gonna go around it. We're gonna build a bridge. Sometimes, you have to be determined to find alternate solutions and almost just be relentless.”
Small towns are a special place, and it’s not always easy to make them thrive. But, according to Winger, with a little digging and intention, you’re likely to find many treasures.
“We should be taking personal responsibility for our community instead of just wishing that someone else would come along and make it better,” said Winger. “For me, I think that was really the impetus that pushed this whole thing forward.”
To keep up with Winger’s story, check out her website: The Prairie Homestead.
Katy Clagett is a commercial real estate appraiser and activist. She joins the podcast today to talk about the ways that bottom-up projects can build community, as well as her experiences with spearheading this kind of project.