Gap Mills is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 2,682 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. 39.15% 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 professionals, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Gap Mills who work in farm management occupations (8.68%), teaching (8.47%), and office and administrative support (7.85%).
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, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 40.90 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Gap Mills does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
The rate of college-level education in Gap Mills is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.36% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in Gap Mills in 2022 was $26,108, 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 $104,432 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, Polish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Gap Mills is English. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Italian.
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 98.8% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
Regardless of the means by which residents commute, this neighborhood has a length of commute that is notable. 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. 12.3% 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 97.6% of all neighborhoods in America.
Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 37.6% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 97.5% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
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 95.1% of all neighborhoods in America, with 29.6% 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.
Do you like to be surrounded by people from all over the country or world, with different perspectives and life experiences? Or do you instead prefer to be in a neighborhood where most residents have lived there for a long time, creating a sense of cohesiveness? NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood stands out among American neighborhoods for the uniqueness of the mobility of its residents. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 97.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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 82.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 56.4% 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, 30.5% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 28.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (23.1%), and 8.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households.
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 Gap Mills, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (11.1%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (5.7%), and residents who report German roots (4.3%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (2.1%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (1.2%), among others.
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (32.8% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (77.1%) 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 (18.0%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.