Highway 75 to I-29
Small cities, whole lives.
Every community here sits within a two to three hour drive of Highway 75 in Manitoba or I-29 in the United States, and every one of them is home to between about 4,000 and 100,000 people. That is deliberate: in a town this size a new millwright, welder or herd manager is known by name inside a month.
- 22
- Profiles published
- 4k–100k
- Population range
- MB → SD
- Manitoba to South Dakota
The map
Pick a town and see who hires there.
Winkler
Manitoba · 13,745 people
Manitoba's most newcomer-dense small city: potatoes, manufacturing, thirteen schools and a free harvest festival at the fairgrounds.
- Kroeker Farms — Agriculture / food
- Gardenland Co-op — Agribusiness retail
- Access Credit Union — Financial services
Manitoba — Highway 75
Altona
Manitoba · 4,400 people
The Sunflower Capital of Canada: a book printer, an oilseed crusher and a credit union head office, all inside twenty minutes of the US border.
Community profile
Brandon
Manitoba · 51,313 people
The Wheat City: a university, a college, a major protein plant and two of the biggest agricultural fairs in Canada.
Community profile
Dauphin
Manitoba · 8,368 people
Canada's National Ukrainian Festival, a Cargill crush plant and Riding Mountain National Park out the back door.
Community profile
Morden
Manitoba · 9,929 people
A lake inside the city limits, a festival that doubles the population every August, and a growth rate that keeps outrunning the province.
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Neepawa
Manitoba · 5,685 people
Manitoba's Lily Capital, and home to a pork processing plant that employs more people than most towns this size have jobs.
Community profile
Niverville
Manitoba · 5,947 people
A young, fast-building town half an hour from Winnipeg and twenty minutes from Steinbach — new schools, new subdivisions, short commutes.
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Portage la Prairie
Manitoba · 13,270 people
Three of the biggest food processors in Canada run plants here, and the city still wraps around a lake in the middle of downtown.
Community profile
Selkirk
Manitoba · 10,504 people
A steel mill town on the Red River: heavy industry, a riverfront park, and Winnipeg thirty minutes south.
Community profile
Steinbach
Manitoba · 17,806 people
Manitoba's third-largest city and its most industrial small city: windows, concrete, trucking and a credit union with province-wide reach.
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Stonewall
Manitoba · 5,046 people
A limestone quarry town turned commuter community — twenty-five minutes from Winnipeg, with a swimming quarry in the middle of it.
Community profileWinkler
Manitoba · 13,745 people
Manitoba's most newcomer-dense small city: potatoes, manufacturing, thirteen schools and a free harvest festival at the fairgrounds.
Community profileUnited States — I-29
Detroit Lakes
Minnesota · ~9,900 people
Metal fabrication and die casting in a town with more than four hundred lakes within twenty-five miles.
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East Grand Forks
Minnesota · ~9,000 people
Sugar-beet country's twin city: agribusiness work, a rebuilt riverfront, and a five-minute commute to a metro of seventy thousand.
Community profile
Fergus Falls
Minnesota · 14,246 people
County seat of Minnesota's lake country, with a utility headquarters, a regional hospital and a summer festival that shuts down Main Street.
Community profile
Moorhead
Minnesota · 46,533 people
Minnesota schools and services on one bank, a full metro job market on the other, and a Viking ship in the middle of it.
Community profile
Grand Forks
North Dakota · 60,365 people
A university city with a sugar plant, a pasta plant, an aircraft manufacturer and the loudest college hockey arena in the country.
Community profile
Jamestown
North Dakota · 15,688 people
Aerospace and potato processing in a river-valley city that keeps the World's Largest Buffalo on the hill above town.
Community profile
Wahpeton
North Dakota · ~8,000 people
More manufacturing jobs per resident than almost anywhere in the Upper Midwest, plus the state's largest technical college.
Community profile
West Fargo
North Dakota · ~40,100 people
North Dakota's fastest-growing city: new housing and small-town streets next door to the region's biggest job market.
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Aberdeen
South Dakota · ~28,000 people
Northeast South Dakota's hub city: a 3M plant, an agribusiness economy and a four-year university.
Community profile
Brookings
South Dakota · 25,355 people
A university town with a manufacturing backbone: Daktronics is headquartered here, and SDSU keeps the place young.
Community profile
Watertown
South Dakota · 23,736 people
Glacial lakes on the doorstep, a technical college with a national reputation, and no state income tax.
Community profileLooking at one of these towns for your next hire — or your next home?