The Calvinists of Sioux County, Iowa

Des Moines Register:

Dutch people first settled Sioux County in 1870, when a group from Pella led by Henry Hospers staked out land around what is now Orange City. Pella’s Dutch community was outgrowing Marion County, and Hospers had traveled to Cherokee a few months earlier. He was stunned by the deep, rich soil, the shimmering waters of the Little Sioux River, and the “green plateaus of limitless prairies, as yet untouched by the hand of civilization,” the Sioux County Herald recounted in 1879.
Hospers’ report back in Pella was glowing — perhaps a bit too much so. Local newspapers printed the details, and by the time he returned to the land office in Sioux City, speculators had bought up most of the property around Cherokee.
Unfazed, he and his group drove wagons to the southeast corner of Sioux County. They laid their claim, and ever entrepreneurial, tried to barter with some American Indians for their ponies. Back at the land office, Hospers signed for homesteads on behalf of 182 residents of Pella. Now, 142 years later, Orange City is home to 6,000 people and holds a tulip festival that attracts 100,000 visitors each year.
Pella had been settled by religious dissidents who left the Netherlands over a theological rift, and that thoroughgoing concern with doctrine was true of Hospers and the families who settled Sioux County in 1870. The emphasis survives to this day. The county is home to a thriving system of Christian schools, including Western Christian in Hull and Unity Christian in Orange City. Two Reformed Christian liberal arts colleges are here as well, Dordt in Sioux Center and Northwestern in Orange City.
“We are probably the most Reformed county in the nation, just in terms of church membership,” said Carl Zylstra, a former pastor in Orange City and president of Dordt College for the past 16 years.

Ethnic homogeneity has its pluses and minuses.  God's Country in west central Ohio sounds very similar to Sious County, except for being German Catholic and not Dutch Reformed.  I would guess it is being happy to live there, and not the religion that makes folks want to reinvest in their communities.  They figure that if they provide economic opportunities for their children, the children will remain nearby.  Livestock production was one of those ways to allow their children to make a living on the farm.