Gap Mills is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 2,665 people and just one neighborhood, Gap Mills is the 85th largest community in West Virginia.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Gap Mills is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 46.13% of the Gap Mills workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Gap Mills is a town of farmers, fishers, or foresters, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Gap Mills who work in farm management occupations (23.69%), office and administrative support (10.15%), and sales jobs (7.03%).
Another important characteristic of Gap Mills is that a lot of people work in agricultural jobs, especially compared to most other communities in America, and there are quite a number of farms in town.
The overall crime rate in Gap Mills is one of the lowest in the US. This makes it one of the safer places to live in the country in terms of crime.
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Gap Mills has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Gap Mills has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Gap Mills than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Gap Mills may be for you.
One downside of living in Gap Mills is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Gap Mills, the average commute to work is 36.25 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, Gap Mills doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The population of Gap Mills has a very low overall level of education: only 8.45% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in Gap Mills in 2022 was $23,659, which is lower middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $94,636 for a family of four. However, Gap Mills contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Gap Mills home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Gap Mills residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Gap Mills include English, Irish, German, Italian, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Gap Mills is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and German/Yiddish.
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Gap Mills, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 23.7% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 99.8% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 14.9% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.5% of all neighborhoods in America.
Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 41.6%, which is higher than 97.7% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
In addition, 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 13 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 96.5% of America.
Furthermore, the real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 95.4% of all neighborhoods in America, with 30.9% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (26.3%) than in 97.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
Also, in the neighborhood, walking to work is a real option for many. In fact, NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research reveals walking to and from work is the chosen way to commute for 13.9% of residents here. This is a higher proportion of walking commuters than we found in 96.7% of American neighborhoods. Get ready to put on your walking shoes if you move here!
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lebanese ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Lebanese ancestry.
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Gap Mills are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 76.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 6.3% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 60.7% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 26.0% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is farming, forestry, or commercial fishing, with 23.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (22.4%), and 17.1% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.5% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (5.2%).
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Gap Mills, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (5.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (4.6%), and residents who report German roots (4.1%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (2.7%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (1.9%), among others.
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 (22.8% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America. However, there is also a significant group of residents (14.9%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (56.7%) 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 (26.3%) and 13.9% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.