HAMILTON, Mont. – As small towns elsewhere saw prosperity pass them by in favor of the big cities, something unusual happened to this rural hamlet tucked in the Bitterroot Valley: It flourished.

Two local boys came home from college and launched a microbrewery that takes in more than $1 million in annual sales. Retirees arrived in droves, drawn by affordable land and recreational opportunities in the area’s snow-frosted mountains and trout-filled streams. And the federal government’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories opened a state-of-the-art biosafety facility to investigate the deadliest viral diseases, including Ebola.

As U.S. economic growth in the past decade assumed an increasingly urban character, that diverse set of strengths enabled this town to defy a pervasive narrative of rural decline. Hamilton’s population of 4,728 is up more than 10 percent since 2010, reflecting a Western renaissance that contrasts with the experience of small towns in other regions.

“It’s a pretty sweet spot to be in,” said economist Ray Rasker of Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, Mont. “You can have the same job you’d have in Seattle and go fly fishing in the afternoon. … It’s the quality of life. It attracts talent. Pretty soon, talent builds on itself, and word gets out.”

Hamilton has parlayed distinctive attributes into population growth, including proximity to the state’s second-largest city, majestic surroundings, a good supply of college graduates and a dependable base of federal government employment.

That makes Hamilton representative of a little-noticed trend. Western towns with fewer than 5,000 residents grew by an average of nearly 8 percent from 2010 to 2017, according to the Census Bureau, while similar-sized communities in the Northeast and Midwest shrank. Those in the South grew barely 1 percent.

“It is striking,” said Mark Muro, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Rural towns are doing better in the West. Smaller towns are doing better in the West.”

Yet Hamilton offers no obvious formula for success that could be transplanted to half-empty rural communities that have yet to fully recover from the Great Recession. Other communities could emphasize educating their workforce. But some advantages, including a largely recession-proof federal facility and stunning natural surroundings, aren’t available everywhere. Hamilton’s endurance instead only highlights challenges confronting the nation’s endangered small towns.

“Most places are on the wrong side of huge global and technological trends,” said Muro, who is policy director for Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program.

Hamilton got its start in the late 19th century, thanks to Marcus Daly, an Irish copper baron who sought a summer home for his family and a reliable supply of lumber for his business.

Today, the big sawmills are mostly gone. The picturesque Main Street, bracketed by mountain views, is lined by two-story brick retail outlets. Nearly all the residents are white and conservative. In surrounding Ravalli County in 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton 66 percent to 28 percent.

Although some affluent retirees have arrived in recent years, this is not a wealthy rural enclave like Aspen, Colo. Hamilton’s median household income is $30,000 annually, well below the state’s $50,000 figure, though the gap is significantly narrower for married couples.

Among those joining the Hamilton influx were childhood friends Fenn Nelson and Jasper Miller, both 31, who returned here to open a brewery-and-restaurant after graduating from the University of Montana. With a business degree, Nelson took charge of the books, while Miller put his microbiology diploma to use keeping the brewery in working order.

Employing used equipment – including some scavenged from an aircraft carrier – they leased a former natural foods emporium and converted it into Higherground Brewing.

Inside the building, the decor is spare: a checkerboard tile floor, stools and a few tables. On a recent night, a dozen customers watched a college basketball game on a television above the bar.

The beers on offer – including “At Ease Golden Ale” and “Flash Flood Milk Stout” – were listed on a chalkboard.

Higherground posted $1 million in sales in its sixth year of operations and has been profitable for the past two to three years, Nelson said. About 40 percent of its output is sold elsewhere in the state.

They had considered locations in Idaho and California, but the men said the advantages of coming home were clear. A local banker who had known them for years approved a $162,000 loan that got them started. Miller’s recently retired father pitched in on several projects, providing free labor that would not have been available if they had launched elsewhere. The young men also saved money by living with their parents.

Located an hour south of Missoula, a city of roughly 75,000 with an international airport, a major state university and a Walmart, Hamilton “is in a great Goldilocks zone,” Miller said. “It’s really accessible.”

Hamilton’s relative outperformance – and that of Western towns, in general – comes amid the urbanization of economic growth. Globalization and technology have deeply eroded small towns’ traditional manufacturing role.

The West has navigated these shifting economic tides better than other parts of the country. Since 2010, it has been by far the fastest-growing region in the country, according to the Census Bureau, expanding output two-thirds faster than the Midwest and more than twice as fast as the Northeast.

Based on measures of new-business formation, migration and job churn, Western states are significantly more dynamic than those in the East, said John Lettieri, president and CEO of the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington consulting firm.

“These are newer economies. They have fewer concrete cinder blocks to drag around behind them as they’re trying to grow,” he said. “There’s an unmistakable East-West divide.”

In much of the country, small towns were poorly equipped to capitalize on the new economy of globalized supply chains and high-technology services jobs. But Western towns such as Hamilton were never heavily dependent upon manufacturing. Lacking big factories that could be hollowed out by competition from China or automation, they escaped the big job losses that went with them.

Hamilton is home to a GlaxoSmithKline plant that produces a vaccine ingredient, but the town’s manufacturing workforce as a share of total employment is one-third smaller than the national average, according to the Census Bureau.

In manufacturing-dependent communities, many workers abandoned school before getting a college degree, since good-paying jobs were available without one on the factory floor. Hamilton’s federal lab, which employs about 450 workers and attracts skilled personnel from as far away as India, is a continuing reminder of the value of education.

The lab’s 36-acre site has its roots in the late 19th century, when lumberjacks returned from the nearby woods with an unusual illness known as “the black measles.” State officials established a modest outpost, which the federal government purchased in 1932, to investigate what was later identified as Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Inside today’s facility, some of the world’s top scientists investigate nature’s toughest challenges. Research conducted here led to the first vaccine for Ebola, which was deployed in the West African outbreak several years ago.

Cathryn Haigh, 39, a specialist in rare neurodegenerative diseases, accepted a position at the lab in 2017, moving here from Melbourne, Australia. She grows “mini-brains” from stem cells, which allows her to study maladies such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal brain disorder.

“I felt Melbourne was just a very anonymous city,” said Haigh, who was raised in southwest England. “You were very much lost as just another random person in a crowd. One of the things I love here is the sense of community, the human connection.”

People have remarked on the Bitterroot’s natural beauty since 1805, when explorers Lewis and Clark passed through on their way to the Pacific Ocean. Hamilton abuts one of the largest wilderness areas in the country, home to hiking, skiing and fly fishing, and enjoys a mild climate that has earned the valley the sobriquet “Montana’s banana belt.”

The outdoors is more than a scenic backdrop. It’s a pillar of the local economy.

Marshall Bloom, associate director of the federal lab, said Hamilton’s surroundings make recruiting top talent easy. Nationwide, since the recession’s end, people have been more likely to move to counties with opportunities for outdoor activities than those without them, according to a January study by Headwaters Economics.