American Dream Finds New Home

In a remarkable but largely unpublicized shift, America's long-struggling heartland is experiencing a renaissance. Driven chiefly by soaring housing costs on the East and West coasts and the growing appeal of traditional values, the region from the Mississippi River to the Rockies has stopped hemorrhaging people and, in some places, even begun to outperform economically some of the much-hyped "cool" cities of the late 1990s boom. Once regarded as backwaters of traditional manufacturing and farming, some states are evolving into prosperous centers of high-end services and information technology.

The region's renewal also has political implications because its states rank among the critical battlegrounds in the presidential primary and general election campaigns.

Reports on Iowa frequently portray the state as filled with grizzled farmers and hard-boiled industrial workers. In reality, Des Moines and Iowa City boast growing populations of workers in such new-economy industries as information, financial and business services. These industries employ many of the young "knowledge workers" who are making former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. John F. Kerry serious contenders in the Iowa caucuses. In old Iowa, Dean and Kerry would have been an almost impossible sell.

In November, however, President Bush may be the one who benefits most from the region's economic growth and rising prosperity, felt most heartily in Sioux Falls, S.D.; North Dakota's Fargo and Bismarck; Omaha; and Kansas City. More and more conservative, family-oriented people, including many migrants from the largely Democratic coastal states, are moving to the suburbs of these cities.

Yet more important than the ephemeral political story is the one of a region that was all but lost but now is being refound. In the 19th century, the heartland epitomized American optimism, hope and egalitarian values; it was the cradle of the national character. "[I]n the North Dakotan," observed Bishop Cameron Mann of the Episcopal Church in 1902, "one finds a man prompt, generous, speculative, ready to learn each new thing, hard to tie to anything, but, when tried, staunch, sturdy and loyal."

Shortly afterward, things began to go wrong. Farm prices collapsed in the 1920s, drought set in, factory jobs disappeared. Millions fled the Dust Bowl for better job opportunities elsewhere. By the 1930s, the heartland had become increasingly dependent on government handouts and subsidies. "Relief," wrote historian Elwyn Robinson, "became the biggest business" in some states.