Places in a rural town?

[dmasterxd]

Just wanna know some places that are usally in a rural town and places that you'll never find in one. Please and thank you.

[Holland]

I hope you're talking about a rural town in America because that's all I know about.

I live in a pretty rural area and have seen many others. These are some of the things you might find:

A convenience store. These are usually NOT big names (i.e. - you won't find a 7/11 there), but you might find something like a Krausers or a 'mom and pop' type place. These are often dual front (sometimes with an ice cream shop, a deli, or a small hardware section inside) and usually have a fax/copy machine you can use. These often have a lot of outdated magazines (and sometimes a dirty mag section).

A hardware store. These are usually very small, and you often have to order larger items ahead of time there. These stores are sometimes tacked on to an automobile repair shop. Again, these are often small businesses you'd be unfamiliar with.

A small veterinary clinic. A small doctors office. These are usually too small to take care of anything more than a check up, but in the case of the doctors' office, they usually have one ambulance to transport emergency cases to the nearest hospital.

A pharmacy. This is sometimes tacked on to the convenience store. You obviously get your prescriptions filled here, but unlike your local CVS, you may have to wait a while (sometimes up to 10 days) before they can fill it.

A post office. This is a big deal! In most rural areas, rather than having mail boxes, the local residences all have their own post box and have to go to the post office to get their mail.

A small diner. These often can't seat more than a few families. They'll sometimes have a bakery or deli tacked on to them. They're often the busiest at breakfast and holidays.

A hiking trail. If your rural area is particularly pretty, there'll usually be a hiking trail coming through. If this is the case, it's not unusual for there to be a small motel where the trail comes out. These motels are rarely well kept but are cheap and useful.

A police station. These usually only have 1-5 patrol cars and aren't equipped to handle a large case. The policemen are usually bored and arrive in hordes if anything happens. ("Oh, some guy got rear ended? Let's get all six of our patrol cars over there!" / my town's logic)

A town hall. The smaller the area is, the more likely it has a somewhat democratic community. A town hall is not only a place to gather for events (like bingo nights, karaoke, that-one-kid-down-the-street's birthday party, etc.) but is also where a lot of meetings on serious topics take place (like "should we serve vanilla or chocolate pudding at bingo tonight?") and can sometimes even be the reception hall for marriages. The town hall usually has a small gaming room (either with pool/poker tables or a miniature arcade) and sometimes a small library (no real rules- just bring and take books as you like). The town hall also has a public kitchen where the food for large events is prepared, sometimes acting as a soup kitchen.

A cigar/tobacco shop. These are usually small and sometimes have a small bar or sitting area in them with blacked out windows. The old men convene here (and do the do, I presume).

Liquor store & bar. This is another really big thing. Rural areas usually have a sports bar for the youngsters and slightly-less-old old men. These bars often have a liquor store up front to shoot two birds with one stone. (Since buying a liquor license is *really* expensive, it'd make no sense to have two different places selling liquor in such a place with a small population.)

Antique or thrift shops. These range from small to large, and there are sometimes several close by one another. They're often managed by the local churches.

Gas stations. These also range in size. A rural area that's on a trucking route may have the convenience store just off the gas station to get more business. The motel is usually nearby if this is the case.

You might also find a small school for the kids (rare - they're usually shipped off to more populated towns) and a soccer field here or there. The houses are usually either really far away from one another or tucked into small communities. It's rare to find a farm *in* the town unless it's specifically a farming town, but they're often surrounded by larger farms if it's a fertile area.


Some things you usually won't find in a rural town:
+ Big name stores.
+ Large shopping malls.
+ Quality clothing stores.
+ Hotels.
+ Multiple convenience stores.
+ Large libraries.
Etc.

[kitsubasa]

I'm from New Zealand, and I grew up partly in a small rural town (approx 1000 people in it)-- it had all the things Barabisama listed, so I think those are pretty universal traits for small rural towns in western countries.

It also had...

Mechanics-- if your town is on a highway, it'll probably have at least one car repair place, possibly more. Sometimes these'll be adjoined to a gas station, or if it's particularly rural, it'll be a mechanic that happens to have gas as well. They'll often be able to fix vehicles aside from cars (tractors, quadbikes/motorbikes) and most of the ones in my area were pretty informal family-owned places.

A small library-- as Barabisama said, never a large library, but most small towns (in New Zealand, at least) have a little library that's about the size of a small room. They'll have really eclectic book collections, from bestsellers to obscure titles many decades old.

A larger veterinary clinic-- this really depends what your town is there for: if it's a town with a lot of people who rely on dogs or horses for work, they'll probably have a bigger vet clinic to help important working animals in emergencies, and help farmers avoid long trips to the city when their animals are injured. If your town is less agricultural it might not have one of these.

Cafes/restaurants-- another thing that'll mostly happen if you're near a major road. We had a lot of cafes with big carparks designed for truckers to stop in, as well as some restaurants that specialised in takeaways for locals passing through to more remote areas. Stuff like fish and chip shops, mostly-- but obviously, those wouldn't be as prevalent in the US or countries where fish and chips aren't a thing, haha.

Agricultural supply stores-- a variety of these, we had one that sold fence posts, and another that sold quadbikes. If your town specialises in something (like breweries or sheep farming) look up what supplies are needed for that activity, and they'll probably have a store selling those specifically, as well as the more general gardening/hardware stores.

A trailer/holiday park-- another thing that'll pop up if it's a pretty town with a bit of tourism. There'll be somewhere for tourists to plonk their campervans and set up for a few nights.

A weekly market-- smaller farms will often sell things at these. We had a neighbour who sold olive oil and made a nice profit! Usually on weekend mornings for a few hours, then they pack down.

Pub/tavern-- a big thing here, you always get an old-fashioned pub or tavern which smells of smoke all the time and has a pool table. Filled with stoic farmer types, even a town with only 100 people will tend to have one of these. Very popular on Saturday nights.

I'm also agreeing with Barabisama's list of things you won't find. An addition to it:

If your town is less than a few thousand people it won't have a high-school; it might have kindergartens and primary/elementary/little kid schools but the older kids get the further they have to go for their education. There was a town in my vicinity which did have a high-school, but they needed a population of 20,000 to make it worthwhile and even then it had less than a hundred students-- because everyone else just sent there kids to town anyway! Rural towns that manage to sustain schools generally have less subjects and services on offer than city schools do, so they're not very appealing to locals unless getting your kids to a city is hard for some reason (huge distances, remote/mountainous town location, etc)

[meiri]

Some things you might find:

-Religious building. Churches, mosques, shrines, whatever they may be, a small rural town will usually have one small religious building for whatever the common religion is in that area.
-Wells, possibly. This really depends on HOW rural your place is.
-Empty, abandoned houses. If it's set in our current society, a lot of people may have moved away from this town unless they're elderly/incapable/too comfortable etc.

[Aviala]

I grew up in a very small town in Finland.

We had an elementary school, a doctor's clinic, a gas station, a church, couple of small stores that sold food, a flower store that also sold granny clothes, crafting supplies, and fabrics; a small library, a motel, and a small cafe. There was a bar but somehow they didn't make enough money and had to shut down. There was a nature reserve nearby so we also had an information center/museum for tourists.

[fleet]

Small towns sometimes have a town square with an open air pavilion or monument to soldiers killed in war.

[trooper6]

BarabiSama says you wouldn't find big name stores in the rural town.

That depends. Walmart likes to target rural towns in the US. So there may be a Walmart...and then most of those local owned mom and pop stores will probably have been run out of business.

[meiri]

BarabiSama says you wouldn't find big name stores in the rural town.

That depends. Walmart likes to target rural towns in the US. So there may be a Walmart...and then most of those local owned mom and pop stores will probably have been run out of business.

In relation to this, there was a study which reported that 90% of Americans lived within 15 miles of a Walmart. So, if this setting is an America, it may be logical to state that there is only one big supermarket near the town (if you want to avoid using real company names.)

[Kiki]

If you're talking about rural America, it can depend on what part of the nation you're talking about. I live in the Bible Belt area and we have far more churches than stores/businesses. There's around 15 churches in my town compared to about half a dozen stores/resturants/etc. No matter what area you're looking at in the US, there may be a lot of empty former businesses (old mom-and-pop joints) around the place that were abandoned due to the economy. And most rural towns around here, all have that one old abandoned house that everyone makes up ghost stories about and dare people to visit on Halloween.