Answer:
some towns to the east started to lose population as more people took the railroads out west to create new towns. These new towns tended to stay all the way to the modern era, because they could be supplied directly from the tracks.
The word that would best describe the effect on each of these four groups would be regression.
They stopped farming and growing crops on one location and started growing and farming crops at another location. This enabled the soil to recuperate and gain the required minerals which makes good soil also fertile
