This. Every one of the 50 states has a flagship university, and some of them are doing very good research in a variety of fields. You won't get rich there, but you can have a lot of fun and do cutting-edge work.

College towns usually have a lot more culture, in many senses of the word, than non-college towns of the same size. The highly educated workforce makes a big difference.

We used to live 30 minutes outside Eugene, Oregon (University of Oregon) on 50 acres. In retrospect, it would have been better to have a smaller place (3-5 acres?) closer to town. But we were definitely secluded.

Our local 4H program has a robotics team, for example. Right alongside the kids raising extremely fancy chickens (sometimes they're the same kids).

And yeah, colleagues of mine live on anything ranging from an old orchard to a working farm, in addition to those of us who live in town.

...also we're hiring two people if anyone is interested in global health data analysis or health informatics >.>