Greetings from e-Podunk

Thinking of moving to a small town any time soon?

Check out epodunk.com, a compendium of small town stats from across the country. 46,000 small towns are profiled in its enormous database. It’s an invaluable resource for any one contemplating pulling up stakes and heading for a simpler life (I’m all for it if I can get a fast Internet connection).

Housing prices, college grads by state, per capita income growth, homeowner costs by county, demographics, earning power, even the ten most popular cars to be stolen in Maine Ford (LTD owners, beware!)– it’s all here, residing in the world’s biggest portal on small town life.

Drill down to a particular town and you’ll get a statistical glimpse of small town life and its charms. Tired of big city crime? Check out Amherst, VA. The number of violent crimes recorded by the FBI in 2003 was 6 out of total population of 2,251. The number of murders and homicides was 0. You have to like those odds. If you are single and hoping to mingle, epodunk gathers stats on the marital status of adults in Amherst. 22.3 % of the women in Amherst have never been married, 10% are divorced, and 21% are widowed. On the other side of the dating game, a full 30% of the men have never been married. County wide, another list tells you, the proportion of single men to women is 73%.

Epodunk gathers its information from a number of sources, including federal, state, and local government agencies, databases, print reference works and news organizations. A few of the government databases that supply epodunk with information include the Army Corps of Engineers (watch for flooding), the Bureau of Economic Analysis (find out if your neighbors are employed), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (find out how many of your townspeople are in jail), the Census Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency (always good to know if you are next to a hot zone) NASA (in case you plan on blasting off into outer space), the National Center for Education Statistics (just how many people in your town graduated from high school) and the National Climatic Data Center (is it hot in this town or is it just me?)

--Sam McMillan