This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
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.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Gap Mills, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 46.13% of Gap Mills’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. 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.
Setting & Lifestyle
Gap Mills’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
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.
Being a small town, Gap Mills does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
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.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
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.
Occupations
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.
Length of Commute
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. 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.
Real Estate
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, unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 96.5% of the neighborhoods in 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.
Modes of Transportation
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!
Diversity
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.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this 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.
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, 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.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.5% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (5.2%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
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 (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.
Getting to Work
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.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
