This tiny Kansas town of 2,100 — located 100 miles from Wichita, Topeka and Tulsa — has a gutsy plan to reverse its slow fade from the map.
Once a proud oil boomtown — home to the first commercial well west of the Mississippi, marked by a towering 65-foot derrick — Neodesha has been hemorrhaging residents since its Standard Oil refinery shut down in 1971.
“The population was cut in half overnight,” Mayor Devin Johnson told CNBC, painting a grim picture of the town’s decades-long slump.
“We have seen that decline as every small community has over the last 50 years. The thing with small communities is, if you are not growing, you are dying.”
Now, Neodesha’s fighting back with a flashy relocation scheme cooked up with MakeMyMove, a digital platform linking workers to towns hungry for new life.
The deal is to move here and get no state income tax through 2026, property tax rebates, daycare cash for working moms and dads, plus up to $15,000 in student loan relief and free college via the Neodesha Promise program.
“We’ve awarded over $1 million in scholarships, and I feel like we are helping the community and making some real progress,” said Ben Cutler, a hometown hero bankrolling the scholarship fund since 2020, which covers tuition for any Neodesha High grad at colleges and trade schools nationwide.
“One of my key focuses was helping build the community, to help in any way I could to make Neodesha a more attractive community for young families, and I think we’re making some real progress in that regard — I certainly hope so anyway,” Cutler told the outlet.
The gambit’s paying off fast — since launching in 2024, more than 30 newcomers are already in the pipeline, says Evan Hock, MakeMyMove’s co-founder and COO. The town’s also breaking ground on new homes, duplexes and retail joints while giving Main Street’s historic hulks a facelift.
“We’ve got to cherish what we’ve got but make sure we make Neodesha an attractive place for people to come,” Johnson told CNBC.
It’s part of a nationwide scramble. Topeka’s shelling out up to $15,000 for homebuyers, West Virginia is tossing $12,000 plus perks at two-year transplants and Alabama’s Shoals region is waving $10,000 at remote workers.
“This is a cost-effective way of doing economic development,” Hock said, noting towns often recoup the cash in a year.
Still, he insisted, “incentives are not the reason people actually move.”
It’s the low cost of living and tight-knit feel that hook ‘em.
“They are looking for quality of place, they want a community connection, that’s what is motivating the move,” Hock said.
Data backs the buzz. United Van Lines’ 2024 study shows a stampede from pricey urban jungles like New York, LA and Chicago to affordable Midwest and Southern hideouts.
Case in point: Kaitlyn Sundberg, 27, who ditched Southern California with her husband Jack after getting priced out.
“We were living with my in-laws, and we were not able to afford anything,” she said. Jack landed a job in Neodesha, and a quick visit sold them. “It just seemed like a family-friendly place to live,” Sundberg recalled to the outlet.
“We spent a Saturday looking for a house — there were kids riding bikes. I just cried.”
Now 18 months in with their two dogs, she’s running the town’s new early learning center.
“Being away from family is the hardest part,” she admitted, “but I would never want to move back.”