When my wife PCSed from Long Island to Fort Knox we made several trips where we passed through West Virginia and I was always blown away at how gorgeous it is.
this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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I have a friend who lives in northeastern Kentucky and so I've been there a couple of times and completely agree it's absolutely beautiful country but that area is very economically poor because it was so big into coal mining. If I remember correctly, the county where she lives is one of the poorest in the United States.
You can find a heartbreaking amount of stories just like that across that entire stretch of the country. Towns that thrived off coal, but have since all but collapsed into poverty. People who struggle to find new lines of work, because they never knew anything different. People quietly dying, fighting to get help with the damage done to their lungs.
You should read Gray Mountain by John Grisham.
I'm not sure if it's fact or fiction, but it touches briefly on the great financial crisis and coal mining in that area.
I've gotten to see it happen first hand. As of 2008, the last mines in operation in a certain part of Virginia closed up shop. It was the towns lifeblood, and the place was already on the poor side.
I saw families who lost their livelihoods. Was almost one of them, lucked out that my dad knew how to do other things. Wasn't that way for the kids who went to college for electrical engineering, went into the mines, and suddenly had nowhere else.
In the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, lived some of the most ass backwards but intelligent people I've ever met. I can point out the graves of the ones who got hit the hardest, and decided there wasn't an up. I can remember exactly how old they were. We went to school together.
I don't agree with mining, it's destructive, the effects of mining and burning coal are terrible, but it kills me to remember how it all went down. We did the right thing, but in the worst way possible.
Very very, heartbreakingly poor. When we first got to Kentucky was blown away by the number of "coal it keeps the lights on" license plates.
My wife hits 30 years in six years. Kentucky is high on my list of places for us to retire to.
Most beautiful state I've ever been to.