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Abstract
Excerpts from the Introduction: In contrast to the compact agricultural village community in Europe, the typical rural community in the New World includes village or town dwellers and scattered country families. The rural people of the Plains community are sometimes distributed over a wide area as a result of the early homestead laws or the requirements of an extensive agricultural economy. Communities usually include several country neighborhoods, with a common trading center, churches, schools or other institutional activities. Three out of five persons in the Plains live in a rural community, and three out of five of these rural residents live on a farm or a ranch. Rural families seldom live in solitude. The community groupings are not the result of formal rulings or decisions, but grow out of circumstances and free association. Examination of the actual pattern of association reveals that boundary lines of rural communities and neighborhoods seldom follow section lines and that they do not have regard for county boundaries.