Within two years of its founding in 1886, Greensburg, Kansas was billed as “the liveliest town in the state today, for money, marbles or watermelons.”  Named for the legendary coach driver Donald R. “Cannonball” Green, who helped found it, Greensburg later flourished thanks to a famous hand-dug “Big Well” that supplied water for steam locomotives when rails began to parallel the stage line—now U.S. Route 54—that ran by town.

Following the dust bowl of the “Dirty Thirties,” Greensburg reinvented its Big Well as a sightseeing destination, with 50,000 tourists coming to visit the Big Well annually by 1941. The city then experienced a boom in agricultural production after World War II, complemented by hundreds of oil and gas wells starting in the 1970s. By 2007, the Greensburg boasted some 80 square blocks of housing, business, and community spaces, where residents worshiped in nine congregations, and picked up their prescriptions and gossip at Hunter Drug, a local pharmacy with a 1950s-era soda fountain.

Built by generations of Kansans over 121 years, Greensburg would be destroyed by a tornado in less than 9 minutes.

For a city skilled at reinvention, the Greensburg tornado proved the biggest challenge yet: a blank slate. Green Town USA recounts Greensburgers’ bold efforts to not just rebuild their home, but to make it the greenest small town in America. By most accounts, they succeeded. Today’s Greensburg is a walkable, energy- and water-efficient town powered by 100 percent renewable electricity, with at least one LEED-certified building for every 100 residents—far higher than anywhere else in the United States, if not the world. From the recovery planning following the tornado to the city’s current role as a proving ground for green technologies, Green Town USA showcases Greensburg’s experience as a valuable model for any community faced with recovering from a natural disaster—or just planning to become more resilient and sustainable. Any town can be a “green town.”