Moving to the Country.....

Sat June 14, 2008

With offer, Hobart hopes to land modern-day settlers

By Richard Mize
Staff Writer

HOBART — Not since allotment of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation lands in 1901 has settlement come to this in Kiowa County:

Land!

FREE LAND in Hobart!

Strings are attached, though. The city is offering free residential lots, and free hookups to utilities, to anyone who will build houses on them and make Hobart their home.

City Manager Wilt Brown said officials were inspired by similar successful appeals to modern-day land grabbers in small towns in Kansas and Alaska.

Not that Hobart is desperate, although the Kiowa County seat, about 115 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, has been losing population — it stood at about 4,300 in 1990, about 4,200 in 1997, about 4,000 in 2000, about 3,900 in 2005, and projected at 3,870 in 2010.

In fact, Hobart has some things going for it that other Great Plains towns are, well, dying for:

Take the General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute and Museum. Brown said fundraising goes on.

The retired general's wife, Cathy, is from Hobart. Planned is a $15-million, 45,000-square-foot complex on a two-city block area on S Main Street.

Gaining momentum

Last year, Hobard Mayor Tom Talley received the Oklahoma Mayor of the Year Award for small towns from the Oklahoma Conference of Mayors, and Hobart received a Municipal Innovations Award for its “Big Bang” beautification effort led by the Junior Main Street program.

The Hobart area has a civilian labor force of 4,810, with an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent, according to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.

A recent job fair listed more than 500 jobs open in the area, in aircraft construction, corrections and health care, Brown said.

But, times have been better.

Somber centennial

Brown said Hobart natives who returned for the town's centennial celebration in 2001 helped residents decide something needed to be done before the town started seriously suffering the fate of other Plains communities.

“They said, ‘Hey, our town's dying. We're not going to let that happen,'” Brown said.

The appeal is reminiscent of the flyers and broadsheets that town builders used to lure homesteaders in the 19th century — except for the airport, of course.

“Our community, framed to the south by the Wichita and Quartz mountains, offers a quiet rural life with an excellent hospital, airport, library, schools, parks, nursing home, senior day care center and churches,” Brown wrote in a modern-day flyer, an e-mail headlined just like the ones from the old days:

“FREE LAND: WE HAVE A HOMETOWN FOR YOU! Welcome to Hobart, Oklahoma ... the little town with a big heart.”

Lots of lots

Unlike land ads from more than a century ago, most of which were printed up by hucksters high on hype, Brown said there is no bait-and-switch deal in the works in Hobart.

The city owns 35 lots, most with dilapidated houses on them, 30 deeded over from Kiowa County. As the shacks come down, the land will be available to modern-day homesteaders who, just as their homesteading forebears did, can “prove up” their intentions: They're going to build houses and they're going to live in them.

First things first, though. Getting the word out about the city council's decision to go forward with the idea, last Monday, was job No. 1.

Next is drawing up applications and guidelines. They'll be available Sept. 1, which, if Hobart officials realize their dreams, could go down in history, alongside Oklahoma's other historic land runs, rushes and lotteries.

They're even calling it Hobart Land Rush of 2008.

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This article led me to dreams of creating my community in the desolate wastes of southwest Oklahoma. Imagine you and 34 of your friends being 10% of a town and then helping to mold that town from the brink of oblivion to a modern oasis. Then my wife reminded me where Hobart is.