MANKATO — Five years ago, San Diego’s clogged highways and sky-high home prices drove the Barker family to the Midwest.

Matthew Barker still needed to finish his degree in sports management. “But we were done with California,” said his wife, Cherise Barker. The family decided to move to Minnesota, and had a choice: Mankato or Minneapolis.

Universities in both cities had a sports management program, but the couple didn’t simply want to trade one city for another, so they brought their two boys to Mankato in August 2012.

Since then, the family has been taken with the sense of community here, along with amenities that aren’t tainted with the hassles of big-city life.

The Barker family’s experience — the phenomenon of adults moving from large cities to more rural places — is an example of what one University of Minnesota researcher calls “brain gain.”

Ben Winchester, senior research fellow with the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Community Vitality, says it’s hard to live in a rural area without hearing about his term’s idiomatic forefather, brain drain. Young people, the story goes, leave their communities after high school to pursue a job, college or other opportunities.

This story is not wrong, Winchester said; between 40 percent and 60 percent of high school grads explore the wider world to find their place in it. But it’s incomplete.

The same sleepy pace of life that can be kryptonite for 18-year-olds can be a draw for 30- and 40-somethings, especially those with children.

“We are finding hundreds of thousands of people choosing to move to rural America,” Winchester told the Mankato, Minnesota Free Press.

In fact, rural America is growing: There were 11 percent more rural residents in 2010 than there were in 1970. That trend has been masked by a 50 percent spike in the urban population over that span.

Winchester said research has found people move to rural areas for three main reasons: a slower pace of life, the lower cost of housing and lower crime.

“It wasn’t necessarily a job that brings them here,” he said. “Of course, they needed a job, but a job was not the primary reason they started to look to a rural community.”

Winchester said he is “a cheerleader for small towns” in part because there are so few of them. Indeed, even rural America appears to be down on itself.

“(Brain gain) counters the narrative that only the lucky few escape our small towns,” he said.

‘That’s not a traffic jam’

Cherise Barker said her family was impressed with “Minnesota nice” even before they arrived. She had an aunt living in Austin, and her aunt’s friends helped the Barker family move.

“We had people helping us unload the truck and we didn’t even know them,” she said.

She chuckles sometimes, in a knowing way but not a mean-spirited one, when Mankatoans complain about traffic or about the price of housing.

A decade ago in California, they were paying about $1,200 for a two-bedroom apartment, while in Mankato they can buy a larger place while spending less. Traffic jams in Minneapolis, much less Mankato, really don’t compare with California, either.

“You can get on a freeway in California at midnight and be in bumper-to-bumper traffic,” she said. And, when she hears Mankatoans complain about traffic …

“I laugh all the time,” she said. The only time she’s experienced real traffic is during the Kiwanis Holiday Lights, and that doesn’t really count.

Speaking of the holiday lights, Barker said she loves them. She said the family enjoys taking advantage of amenities like the Mankato Marathon and the Children’s Museum.

“I love getting involved in the (parent-teacher organization) and knowing all my kids’ teachers,” she said.

“I feel that there’s ample opportunity for people to be involved in the community,” she said. “They just need to plug themselves in where their interests are.”

The experience of newcomers finding social connections in their communities is not universal, Winchester said.

“The folks moving in tend not to be seen that much,” he said. They don’t usually join the long-standing social organizations that have long been the social glue in rural areas.

“While they may not be in the Lions Club, they may be in a regional bicycling association,” Winchester said. In other words, the newly rural want to be connected to their new communities, but perhaps not in ways those towns may be accustomed to.

About 12 cities in Minnesota — the nearest is Fairmont — have organized clubs to welcome new residents, Winchester said. It often becomes a potent marketing tactic, he said, as newcomers are some of the most effective promoters of rural area.

Finding new residents, if only to welcome them, can be a task of its own.

“You have to work through employers and school districts and beat the sidewalks,” Winchester said. But it’s rewarding.

“The number one outcome is newcomers saying, ‘I can’t believe how many newcomers there are,’” he said.

Mankato: Brain gain or drain?

From the Census Bureau’s perspective, Mankato has been an urban area since 2008, when it and neighboring cities added together surpassed the 50,000 population threshold.

But terms like “urban” and “rural” are pretty relative.

“You have folks from the Twin Cities who think St. Cloud is rural, and people from New York who think everything between the coasts is rural except Chicago,” Winchester said.

As for the question of whether Mankato will lose its semi-rural lustre, he said it’s likely already happening to a degree.

“We’re starting to see rise of urban centers that take on traits of core urban areas,” Winchester said. “Even in Mankato, home values have risen quite a bit.”

If the two other main attractions of rural areas — low crime and a slower pace of life — similarly change, Mankato could see reductions in midlife migration.

MSU’s Filter just doesn’t see that happening anytime soon.

“I drive up to the Twin Cities plenty, and as soon as I hit the metro area, I feel like I’m being crowded. There’s traffic congestion and buildings everywhere you look,” he said.

“Here, you’re not more than five minutes away from a wide-open space.”

The Mankato, Minnesota Free Press contributed details for this story.