But more than half of the number, some 46,600, represents a migration into the Missouri Ozarks by people who previously had lived elsewhere. The Arkansas Ozarks has increased even more dramatically. Of the 19 Arkansas counties which lie primarily within the Ozarks regional lines, every one increased in population, with the result that the Arkansas Ozarks in 1985 boasted some 33,500 more inhabitants than in 1980. It is a rural place, and no doubt many people are attracted by that quality. But even the very nature of rurality is changing in the Ozarks.
Fewer families make a living on the farm.
But to gain, or to retain, the advantages of a rural life, many people seem to be buying or building homes in rural areas and becoming commuters, travelling considerable distances from their homes to their jobs. Suburban homes, even subdivisions, are developing in remote rural communities, several miles from the metropolitan areas where paying jobs are plentiful. An increasingly common sight in the Ozarks is a rural landscape in which haybales, a quintessential symbol of rurality, make room for bulldozers and other construction equipment building homes and service structures for non-farming ruralists. The Ozarks commuter, an increasing breed, may be the symbol of a new rurality. The rural character of the region is, of course, not the only feature that distinguishes the Ozarks.