This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Wessington Springs - Alpena is a very small town located in the state of South Dakota. With a population of 1,660 people and just one neighborhood, Wessington Springs - Alpena is the 75th largest community in South Dakota. Wessington Springs - Alpena has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns.
Occupations and Workforce
Wessington Springs - Alpena is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Wessington Springs - Alpena is a town of managers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Wessington Springs - Alpena who work in management occupations (17.35%), office and administrative support (11.25%), and sales jobs (8.10%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 19.33% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Wessington Springs - Alpena is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Wessington Springs - Alpena a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Wessington Springs - Alpena has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Wessington Springs - Alpena’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Wessington Springs - Alpena spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 19.05 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the town are less than they would otherwise be.
As is often the case in a small town, Wessington Springs - Alpena doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of Wessington Springs - Alpena overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Wessington Springs - Alpena, 21.14% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Wessington Springs - Alpena in 2022 was $47,339, which is wealthy relative to South Dakota and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $189,356 for a family of four. However, Wessington Springs - Alpena contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Wessington Springs - Alpena is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Wessington Springs - Alpena home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Wessington Springs - Alpena residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Important ancestries of people in Wessington Springs - Alpena include German, Norwegian, Irish, English, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Wessington Springs - Alpena is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Real Estate
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 3 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 98.7% of America. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
People
The neighborhood is a great option for families, as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's research on this neighborhood. The combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes, make this neighborhood among the top 7.4% of family-friendly neighborhoods in the state of South Dakota. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a sense of community. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Norwegian and German ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 15.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Norwegian ancestry and 39.0% have German ancestry.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Wessington Springs - Alpena are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 50.1% of the neighborhoods in America. With 12.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 55.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 42.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 21.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.5%), and 16.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.8% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (2.4%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Wessington Springs - Alpena, SD, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (39.0%). There are also a number of people of Norwegian ancestry (15.5%), and residents who report Irish roots (11.3%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (7.9%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (2.4%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (53.7% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (72.2%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (6.0%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
