This article will look to bring some light to local governments, policy makers, and economic development agencies on possible ways to retain youth and revitalize aging rural communities. Previous research by Siegel D (2009) has shown that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all rural communities, solutions that work in one community don’t always work in others. We will use R programming to examine and manipulate data using some of the various methodologies that look to explain why some rural communities thrive while others do not, with a special focus on youth retention. Such data includes Census data and labor statistics data. We will create clusters of rural communities that have similar characteristics to one another, such as natural endowments. Then identifying successful communities and using them as role models for developing economic strategies for less successful communities in their cluster. After this we will develop a web application for local governments, policy makers, and economic development agencies to use. Our cluster analysis will take a different approach from some of the past research done by Jason Abel, Todd Gabe, and Kevin Stolarick (2014) that emphasized policy focused on college attainment of lower skilled workers in rural areas.