You see them everywhere as you drive through the back country of the Great Plains and MidWest Amercia: Abandoned churches standing alone on the vast prairie; mute, decaying witnesses of once vibrant rural communities. Often they are the sole sign of civilization in a world of grass. They had names like "Lone Oak Fellowship" or "Three Corners Wesleyan." They could be Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, or any of the larger, better known denominations. Often, they were a "one-church" denomination affiliated only with the Christian god they worshipped. They were never big buildings; their congregations were usually small. They harken back to a time when there werw one to three farms within a mile of each other, a time when the State populations were mostly rural folk. Not like today, when most of the farmers and ranchers now live in town instead of on their land. The size of a congregation was determined by how many people lived within several hours buggy ride from the church. Many actually had full-time preachers, although sometimes that preacher might also be a local farmer and neighbor. The automobile destroyed most of those rural communities, along with the Great Depression of the Thirties and World War II. Millions of people moved away from their farm communities. Sometimes, it was because they were looking for a job. For others, it was because their military orders directed them to other locales. As the old song says; "How can you keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen gay Parree..." After the war, lots of the farmboys stayed in Chicago, or Topeka, or San Francisco. But it was the automobile that finished those rural communities off. After WWII, farmers began moving into town. In the late Forties and the early Fifties, it was just a trickle. But with each succeeding decade, more and more farm families moved into the nearby towns and cities. By the turn of the century, most who still farmed commuted from town out to their holdings. The economics of the last quarter of the 20th Century also made family farming less and less viable. Many who farmed and lived in town, began working at part-time town jobs so they could get by. However, many still could not make it. There were bank foreclosures and farm sales. Those that could went to full-time jobs in the small farming communities and county seats, but opportunities for work was severely limited in such places. Often, the families moved on to larger population centers to find a livelihood. ******* Credits: Church Ruin: Paden. Grass: Chris Oldershaw and Judith Ward. Sumac: modeled by Modualz and textured by Judith Ward. Tombstones: TheVelvetFoxx. Cattle: Debra Ross at Vista Internet. Barbed Wire: Mark Feemster. Outhouse: Jeremy Miller. Terrain grass texture: Johnathan Allen. Thanks for looking. Comments appreciated. Jeremy