There's no doubt about it, South Dakota is a rural state. And might I add, proudly so!

Yep, it can certainly be a long way from here to there with not a whole lot of folks in between. To get from this great community to that great community will take a little time, and maybe more than a little time. So again, repeating for you folks that have never been to the Rushmore State, South Dakota is rural.

But wait a minute..what is 'rural'? I mean, what exactly is 'rural'? Well, it depends on who you ask, where you look.

According to the dictionary, it's 'in relating to, or characteristic of the countryside rather than the town.' Okay, I can relate to that considering the greatest state in the nation has 75,885 square miles with short of 900,000 people living across them.

Another definition of rural that I found said 'A rural area is an open swath of land that has few homes or other buildings, and not very many people. A rural area's population density is very low.'

Yessir, hard to argue with that,

Another site I looked at said if you don't like the word 'rural', you can use words like 'country', 'pastoral'. 'agricultural', and 'farming'. And there's no question that I can cozy up to all of those.

Under the Census Bureau's designation, 97% of the country's landmass is considered rural and just 23% of the country's population lives there. And as for me, I can only say 'Thank Goodness'!

The East Coast may be fine and the West Coast may be great, but as for this upper Midwest lad, give me what is sometimes condescendingly called 'flyover country'. Give me the rural area, which by my definition is 'best'.

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