How to keep young people from fleeing small towns for big cities

August always reminds me of Idaho: the smell of just-harvested mint on the breeze, the corn rows I counted on the way to my grandparents' house, petting baby goats at the county fair, and watching my cousin during the rodeo barrel race competition. Like many young Americans, I am a rural transplant. I've been living in the Washington, D.C., metro area for the past nine years, but I grew up in a town of about 3,000 people, where most folks knew my dad and granddad. The tendency of...