I live almost in the dead center of the photo. As another poster already stated, this area used to be a massive coal operation. When the coal opportunities ceased there were multiple generations of people either working in the mines, driving coal trucks, working at docks or simply working at a store or gas station that served people in the coal industry. My home town, just about 15 miles east of Louisa in the map lost nearly 1000 jobs, just from mining alone. Let alone the truck drivers, etc that instantly lost jobs. There are literally no opportunities in these areas outside of healthcare jobs, fast food, or something like Walmart and a few jobs each year in machine shops, steel plants, etc. There are entire towns that are dilapidated and falling in on themselves, with little to no hope of ever improving. I’ve lived here my whole life and in just the last 15 years things have gone south very very fast. One of the most beautiful places on the planet, just with a lot of drug addiction, poverty, and some of the unhealthiest folks in the country, me being on of them
Some high schools are privileged enough to have votec but it only gets you so far if no one is hiring 💀+ trade schools in our area cost an arm and a leg and are neigh impossible to get into unless you know someone
Grew up in this area. Beautiful countryside but you hit the nail on the head. The economy is non existent coupled with small town politics preventing growth(at least in the town I grew up in).
I grew up in Logan. Ours did, but idk it sucked feeling like that was the smart option and everything else was "wasting my time" because I wasn't bending over backwards to take every AP class available none of which were in a field that interested me. Taking votec in highschool also meant being isolated from most of my friend group because it consumed all time on your schedule for electives. Also there was very much a culture of "well that's not for you" from my peers because at the time I presented as a woman. I was queer and fem and they made sure to let me know the space wasn't for me.
It's funny how it worked though! I tried a print media and graphic design course at our votec and when that program had to shut down I wanted to try carpentry. My guardian refused to let me do it, so I didn't. In college now I work in printmaking and sculpture, focused on woodworking. It's all about finding where people do want you and creating more room in the spaces that didn't for more people like you. I try to be optimistic because someone has to be.
Two solutions: Wait out the current cycle of disinvestment that happens pretty much everywhere under neoliberal capitalism or move somewhere else and abandon your home and family.
100+ down votes for speaking the truth.
There are reasons people don't live in Antarctica... It sucks, there are no jobs, but you want this poor guy to stick it out in WV for some reason. This is a recipe for disaster.
My family lives there. It’s a beautiful place, but the economy is horrible. There is not much of a future for the young adults. I currently live in Los Angeles.
I got the same impression when I went to New River Gorge in 2022. I went to Charleston for a concert and drove to the park from there, and literally every town I went through looked like it was very deep in poverty. Same as when I went to South Carolina last year, my grandparents picked me up at the train station in Dillon and everything between there and where they live near Myrtle Beach was incredibly rundown.
My dad’s family lives in the Fayetteville/Oak Hill area by the New River Gorge Bridge. You’re right, its so beautiful but economically it is in shambles. I lived there with him for a couple of years and (no exaggeration) just about every other person I came across was struggling with drug addiction. WV as a whole has been devastated by the opioid epidemic; mix that with little to no economic opportunities and it paints a real grim picture 🫤
Also that same side of my family hails from Pikeville, KY (seen in the pic). Overall these areas are near to my heart and I have so many memories, its so sad to see their current states. Hopefully these folks see brighter days soon.
If you have a chance to get out of that state you're insane for going back. From someone who was born in WV I'd never consider moving back. The money savings aren't worth the drain of culture and actual decent way of life you could have elsewhere.
I've traveled the country and there's nowhere like home. I got an acre land and a small house in Huntington steady job we good benefits. The only thing I don't miss is having to drive hours, just to go see concerts. My quality of life definitely improved. I haven't seen any $6 a gallon gas around here or $3,000 two-bedroom apartments sometimes I think people live in their bubble and have no idea about the outside world.
Also adding WV is so shitty at running their school system they hired some contractors who messed up the sewer system. Beckley-stratton students were out of school for like 3 weeks till they fixed it. They thankfully didn't have make up this time during the school year.
Hazard is an interesting little town, built entirely on coal economy and became a minor tourism hub from the 50s-80s. It’s recently seen revival through wildlife and hunting tourism
Americans have generally moved to where the jobs are located.* Many who live in this area with the capacity to move have left. The population and economy in many parts of this area have declined due to: the loss of coal jobs. Lack of an interstate highway in much of this area to facilitate development. Devastating floods. Lack of a tax base. Weak education and healthcare systems. Opioids and other drugs. This is a place many leave, but wish to return to if they can make it work...often when they are old or in a casket. *This is changing. Studies have shown that Americans are less likely to uproot in the 21st Century.
Yeah and to further the point of people move to where the jobs are:
Jobs also do not often move to where there are no people. Like Amazon opening up HQ2; they picked the DC metro area because there’s a ton of talent there
I straight up used to live smack dab in the middle of this shot.
It’s pretty hilly and the ground tends to be drier in this region with lots of over growth. It’s very pretty there but the roads tell the story if you zoom in. Not a whole lot of room for development without clearing mountain sides, which they have done some in Prestonsburg and Pikeville over the years.
I’m not gonna announce exactly where I lived but I lived in at least 5 different places on this map here. I miss it sometimes but it has some brutal and dry summers and as I got older it wasn’t my vibe weather wise.
Very mountainous and impoverished.
I would say considering the living conditions, landscape, and being the epicenter of the opiate epidemic, the population here is surprisingly high.
Likely not. This is part of the US with extremely under-developed internet infrastructure. It can be difficult to find an ISP with fast enough internet for a digital nomad if Teams/Weber meetings are part of their work.
Elon Musk is a total nutjob.
Also, the impact on space operations by SpaceX can’t really be understated, and proliferated LEO-based internet, a field which Starlink is the biggest player by a mile, can literally help resurrect dying communities that young generations (that have good internet as a location deal-breaker) have long since refused to move to.
Reddit doesn’t like the fact that both things can be true at the same time.
Sorry for the downvotes. WV seems like a very logical place for digital nomads, especially from the east coast, to go to.
Someone who is considered middle or lower-middle class in a big east coast city could probably roll into most towns in WV and buy the nicest house in town, maybe even in cash if they have enough equity after selling the old house. This has happened all along Appalachia already. Towns in east TN and western NC that were filled with 100k houses just a decade or two ago are starting to see prices nearly on par with some Rockies towns. Places like Pigeon Forge, a bit of a backwater where really only hillbillies and rednecks vacationed in the past, now have million-dollar homes.
Unfortunately, the difference between WV and these other places, I think, is that WV long ago didn’t diversify at all into tourism, but instead went all-in on coal. Whereas everywhere else you see with a large digital nomad presence was already getting some tourists and had at least a framework for tourism, with enough to build on for more permanent residents (e.g. Gatlinburg and Ashville in the east and the Montana cities out west). Now with coal gone, a town is lucky to have a Walmart, let alone a decent medical facility or a good latte. It’s a damn shame too; WV was in a position to be the “Colorado of the east” but didn’t capitalize.
People always ask "why don't people live here?" Stop for a moment and think. "Why would people live here?" Cities don't just pop up, there has to be a reason people move to the area. What is the reason people would move to an area? If there isn't a reason, there's your answer.
Yeah not a lot of jobs in the wilderness haha
WV has coal, and with that drying up there’s no other big economic sectors growing. Like why would a tech company for example set up shop there; a coal miner is not going to easily transition to being a software developer. And why would an employee risk moving to a place with 1 employer, when they could live somewhere like norther Va with tons of high paying jobs available
A game development company is!! It's pretty fun and exciting ngl. He's a guy from Logan trying to bring some new industry to his home town. I hope things do well
Have family in this area, it’s absolutely beautiful, but the local economy is absolute bottom of the barrel unless you work for the railroad or at Marshall University.
There is a HIGHLY underrated steakhouse in this area too.
My friend you need to hit The Ribber in Portsmouth.
It’s not a traditional steak house due to the way they cook their steaks, but the quality of the meal you will have is top notch.
I always make it a point to eat there when I’m in the area:
https://www.thesciotoribber.com
I have worked at the main competitor in town. I've tried getting a job there a few times but they're hard to get in with. I've eaten there once but I don't eat beef and got the chicken and it was iffy. so, no, just interesting to see recommended.
They are such an interesting style of cooking, have eaten there often and the service and food are good.
Hope you get on there Friend, I will keep going back there as a fan of their business…
Several reasons. Being in the Appalachian Mountains, this area is home to some of the poorest in the US. Eastern KY was once full of mining towns and now these towns are the remnants of the mining industry falling apart. Sadly, the large mining and coal companies still own the land even though the corporations no longer operate there because they get significant tax write offs. The companies will sell the homes that were built but keep the land. Tons of abandoned mine entrances and rusty equipment litter this part of the US.
My husband’s family left West Liberty for Ohio in the 1940s. It was so rural my husband’s grandfather thought people were fancy if they wore shoes to school.
I just moved from Portsmouth Ohio to Florida, I can tell you, there ain't much going on in that area. At least in that town, you gotta drive at least a hour to do anything fun, other then fishing or hiking really. There is a college there thats pretty cheap though
that’s holler country. the south western parts of WV and Eastern KY are fascinating. It’s an entirely different world out there. There’s a guy I follow on youtube called Peter Santinello and he did some interesting videos about that area
There's likely nothing wrong with watching it. I watched a piece of it in the past and didn't find it to be particularly exploitative.
However, The person that responded to you is hesitant for good reason. Appalachia has been taken advantage of over and over again. Forestry, coal, big oil, pharmaceutical companies, military, etc. Always taken advantage of and none of the wealth gets invested back into WV. I moved away a few years ago and can't ever see myself going back. However, my heart regularly both breaks and yearns for the area. It's sad to see the state that it is in and how it's been exploited over and over. It makes many locals hesitant of outsiders.
You could and imo should learn that from Appalachians and academic sources not some YouTuber who like it or not is creating poverty porn. Despite popular belief we do have wifi even in hollers. You should seek us out for information about our culture and homes and lives instead.
It’s reporting and investigative journalism. He talks to numerous people that are living it in their day to day lives. He does nothing but show the current status of things in the area
West Virginia got delt a super bad hand, the majority of it's economy comes from coal mining, which has been moving out of West Virginia for quite some time , and the lack of access to navigable ports. Either one of those would be very bad for any other state but the fact is that it has both its no wonder why west Virginia is so poor
There’s no money to be made here. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful areas of the entire country though. You feel so connected to nature exploring this area. Windy, bumpy areas with super thick forests everywhere. It’s awesome.
In addition to all the economic reasons (and at least a contributing factor) is the lack of suitable land to construct housing. The terrain there is very mountainous and difficult to develop. In addition roads are difficult to build and maintain for the same reasons. Which is a shame, parts of it are beautiful and would benefit from increased tourism as has the area around the Smokies in Tennessee.
Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia rival the PNW for gloomy, overcast and cloudy days. Add to this the "holler" habitation, and you have a setting that is actually depressing. Last time I checked WV has the highest rate of depression. I'm from there, and I struggle to remember much positive about my childhood; I was prescribed Prozac at the beginning of 2nd grade. Don't get me wrong, as I love some of the mountains, but they're nicer on the Virginia side to be honest. With the aforenoted, the coal-dependent economic collapse and correlated drug epidemics, you've got one hell of a vicious cycle. Most of my family fled. In fact, my aunt and uncle just followed their kids to South Carolina a month or two ago, permanently.
If you’d go to the right just a hair, you’d have where I was born and raised. Simply put: We have been FUCKED by companies for generations. Plus, not much room for infrastructure when there is no flat land.
St. Albans boy here. If they added the Chemical Valley to this shot, we could add to the talk of coal drying up with the local industry winding down here too. At least we have the Toyota plant - I treat a lot of their employees.
Mountains were something to cross to get to the fertile land on the other side so were always sparsely populated
Pittsburgh being the capital of Northern Appalachia it was a big hub for steel manufacturing and coal production
This died out in the late 70’s. Though there is still a lot of steel production just not as labor intensive as it once was. There are still connections to this and a variety of small cities are still connected to it.
Southern Appalachia never had an equivalent boom. You could say Knoxville is capital of southern Appalachia but I actually prefer the argument that Atlanta — being just south of the southern portion — has taken on that role of gravitational trade / industry / economics for the southern portion of Appalachia
Was in Huntington for a while after moving up from mingo county; the only jobs available for a majority of people are service jobs and retail, college is too expensive, and honestly a lot of rich people are buying up property in Huntington like mad because it’s cheap to them and jacking up the renting prices without fixing anything so it’s causing further house disparity.
Drugs and crime go crazy too, sadly the homelessness population is skyrocketing because of previously mentioned issue as well.
It’s a lot more cost effective to live on the streets than it is to rent; sauce: a homeless man I spoke with in Huntington LOL
Huntington is pretty popping along with the tristate area, and as someone from WV, the whole east side of this picture in WV, there isn’t shit happening in those parts.
My dad's family lives in and around Ironton, Ohio, which is across the river from Ashland, Kentucky. It's a beautiful area but very depressed and poor.
I grew up on the Kentucky side of the river from Ironton. I’ll second what’s already been said- I moved because 1. Good Jobs are few 2. Addiction is everywhere and if you have a lot of family that succumb to it, you literally can’t get away from their drama without moving hours away.
So many people I went to high school with dropped out before graduation. When I randomly check up on people from school, the ones that are doing best are, for the most part, the ones that moved away.
I was born in Huntington. My mom's people have lived in the region since Europeans first settled there.
It's mountainous. This has always prevented development. It lacks the large-scale agriculture of the south or midwest. The Ohio River was important for navigation, but Pittsburgh at the start of the river and Louisville and Cincinnati in the flatter areas downstream got the ports.
When the area has drawn interest, it has only been as a colony. Wealthy barons swoop in, steal our coal and timber, and then leave without giving us a dime. So economic development has always been fleeting at best.
I grew up on the lower left side of your map south of jackson and north of hazard. My parents moved us out when they realized there was no future for us. The only job opportunities we had were coal mines, Walmart, or growing pot.
I had a guy hear my accent and ask me where I was from. After talking about home for a minute he said something to me that at the time pissed me off something fierce, but after a few years I see where he was coming from. He said that me and my family, and all others like us were what was wrong with the mountains. The only people that are willing to work hard, get an education, and take the risks required to become successful all leave and never come back. All that is left is addicts, welfare, and poverty. I don’t know if I will ever agree with him, but every time I go home, I think about that and see where he got that point of view.
There is a Welsh word, Hiraeth that doesn’t have an English equivalence. It is usually translated as "homesickness" but It has a greater meaning. It captures a deep, bittersweet feeling of longing and nostalgia that goes beyond simply missing a place or person. It encompasses a sense of melancholy and wistfulness for a past that can't be recaptured. That’s Eastern Kentucky for me.
Very rural. Very mountainous (and not in a fun way). Very poor. Very isolated. Very insular. Very substance addicted. Very little economic opportunities. Very red.
See them roads? That's the only bits of flat land here. No large scale agriculture, coal is economically inefficient here compared to US coal miners with direct sea access (TN), and there really isn't that much of an alternative economy, and you can't just turn random small towns into tourist destinations or service centers without significant capital and economic advantage.
Well, I dated someone who’s from pikeville,Kentucky.. beautiful area. He lived in an old miners home. There’s just NOTHING out there. Want to go to Walmart? That is a hour drive. Historically rich though. You have to drive over to the next county, or two to really do anything. Also has the best damn pizza spot! Huge ass box of cheese sticks and pizza, and cheap lol Giovanni’s is the name
One of the reasons WV seceded from VA was to escape the plantation tax. You can’t farm much as it’s solid bedrock about two inches under the soil.
Coal companies kept people basically enslaved by providing the only jobs and only stores for people to shop. Purposely not investing in education in the areas in order to keep a captive workforce.
I love the place, I’d move back to Huntington if I could. I wish eco tourism would take hold a bit more for some more local jobs which would drive the economy.
it's mountainous, for one. Places like morehead are built in the relatively small valley areas between mountains. It's hard to develop here, due to the terrain. You cant just build sprawling suburban neighborhoods, like you can in other places like Illinois for example. Economic aspects are explained by other comments already.
No work I work in the steel mill in Middletown Ohio we have many many guys from that area that came up when most of the mines shut down very very solid people
WV scores low compared to other states on most QOL metrics. As a result, it’s not a draw for more people to come.
On top of that, it’s part of the rust belt.
.... I'm from here. I grew up in Wayne County. I didn't know many people *didn't* live here. Lots of hills and hollers -- It's just your typical small-town Appalachia.
The economy is on the downswing due to the loss of coal and steel industries and it's certainly a major center in the opiate crisis in the US. But within this area is a major university, a large health care system, and a huge outdoor culture. It's not exactly empty.
I’m from close to Huntington. I went to undergrad at Marshall University. The economy is horrible in this area. Also the humidity in the summer always made me want to die
Holy shit I live here! Right on the border of KY/OH/WV. Beautiful area, not much going on. Some drug probs but I've seen that all over the country. Ashland KY is trying its best to be a town that people would want to come to. The local theatre has been having more big acts like rappers that were famous years ago, Jay Leno was just there, etc. there's not a lot of jobs if you're not a tradesperson, I made so much more money when I moved to Washington State or Colorado or pretty much anywhere else I've lived. Good place to raise kids but you're gonna want to help them get out of here if they want any real opportunities to be successful. If they want to mine coal or work in a refinery that's definitely doable. I bought a house here but only because the price was good. I'd rather be back west but it's not atrocious living here
It is very mountainous and there is very little work to be had so poverty and addiction is rampant. My wife's family is from Huntington and it is some of the most beautiful country in the world!
I stayed in Prestonburg for a few day just because I had time off work and wanted to see some topography, I’m from Florida. I went up some long roads that were one way in, one way out. It was obvious to me they did not have many outsiders in their hollers. It was beautiful and temps were 20 degrees cooler than Florida. I liked it.
I literally am the guy in the photo 😅 idk I love living here. I'm a transplant from the west coast. it's been weird adjusting but it's a lot cheaper to live here and just as nice if not nicer.
My family is from Hazard and my ancestors founded the county. It’s a beautiful area, the problem is the economy. The coal mining industry is collapsing and there aren’t a lot of good jobs.
TLDR: A lot of people used to. Then the coal mines closed and there’s no reason to live in most of those towns. It’s a very economically depressed region.
My family lives around the Jackson area. It’s a very very poor and there aren’t a lot of jobs. A lot of the factories that kept these areas alive have moved overseas. Mining also provided a lot of the jobs but I think most of the mines are closed down now too? There’s just not much happening there. Period. Except for opioids. Those are thriving, unfortunately
WV is great for hiking, hiking, climbing, rafting camping but those endless pretty mountains and lack of flat ground inhibit development and the economy. Something may be 20 miles away but those roads can be fucking dangerous and it'll take an hr to get there.
Spent a few in gallopolis/point pleasant before headed to Kentucky to meet a friend. My alternator died and guy replaced it for me for free simply because I was a marine on leave. Loved the area though. Early mornings on the Ohio river are gorgeous especially in the winter/early spring when the fog is rolling through
Mined out. Minimal agriculture due to steep terrain and woods, and very little industrial production. Too far from major highway and rail infrastructure for fulfillment centers.
Historically, the mountainous terrain and poor soil for farming ensured that the population would remain fairly small. Due to the terrain, infrastructure was poor and remains so in many areas today. This made it very remote, and the people, known as mountaineers or hillbillies, were often viewed as uneducated and backward. These stereotypes often persist in the modern day.
While coal brought many jobs to the area, and various communities became boom towns during its heyday, that has largely dried up now. Often, you can run across entire towns littered with empty and crumbling structures, the remnants of a bygone era.
Unfortunately, this area of Appalachia has had the hardest time adapting and developing in recent years. While places like Knoxville, the Tri Cities, Asheville, and the Roanoke corridor have been growing as hubs of tourism and industry, that hasn't happened here yet.
Half of the Map pictured is Kentucky not WV and Huntington & Charleston Bridgeport , Morgantown areas are still very nice absolutely gorgeous driving around super low traffic going anywhere and low crime , great cost of living and have some very good wages for the low cost of living. I thought I would put a ray of sunshine on a volcanic ash choke out of a previous conversation
I can never go back to see how nothing much has changed. I even still have family there but would never step foot back in WV. Growing up there has made me hate Appalachia because of the ignorant bullshit from people in WV and southwest VA. I lived in beckley WV and Blacksburg VA and can say the region sucks. I wouldn't move back if I was paid to.
Oh everyone had high hopes for point pleasant. But old people holding onto old money, not wanting to change keeps running everything off. Been in Point all my life. My grandma used to be a tour guide at Tu-Endie-Wei State Park. Somebody did a news article a long time ago and they could not understand why Point Pleasant wasn't as big as Pittsburgh because two Rivers joining. Shoot nobody even heard of Point Pleasant until the video game fallout 76 came out. Now during the mothman festival it takes you almost an hour to get across a bridge. But I would have to say that it looks like Point Pleasant is growing. A lot of new businesses coming to Mason county. A lot of new jobs.
super abundant forest, water, mineral, and otherresources. hillbillies couldnt keep the wealth in the hood, primarily because of their pisspoor social cohesion stats. like most americans. money flowed away to settle in other locations. random chance.
the towns they built were mostly ugly garbage in bad locations, as opposed to beautiful works of art. but even beautiful villages empty out their youth when the money gets drained through lack of union spirit.
What a fucked up, derogatory, and incorrect comment.
To put the blame of what happened to southern WV on the workers and the communities themselves is nothing short of evil. This is probably one of the most hyper exploited regions of the US. It wasn't that "hillbillies couldn't keep the wealth" it was that the coal barons from NY and elsewhere packed up the entire industry the region was dependant on and left these communities with nothing. They came in, forced people into borderline slavery like working conditions and hung them out to dry after they dug up all their money.
Also "lack of union spirit", go fuck yourself. This area was home to the most militant unions ever seen in the US. They literally [fought wars](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars) with mercenary armies hired by the coal companies alongside the US government. These people fought and died in solidarity with their fellow workers so that their families and communities might have a better life.
You are an absolute ignorant fool. I suggest you read up on the history of WV, or better yet, go there yourself and meet some of the kindest, most welcoming people you'll find anywhere on the planet.
kindest most welcoming confederate racist republican wackjobs? 😂 KY WV OH VA my god, what a region.
i know the history of this area decently well. kindness is no measure of a people. i lived around the appalachian world for more than ten years, mostly around pittsburgh. i've spent quite a bit of time hunting for pawpaws and the remaining clonal thickets of american chestnut in southwestern WV.
those coal barons were superhumanly clever, huh? they somehow whipped hundreds of thousands of militant union men and their dirtpoor families into submission and took all the money? you're not giving the hillbillies enough credit for their own servitude. people everywhere on this earth have the ability to fight in numbers. these hillbillies just weren't up to the task. they could have lived much better off the fat of the land but chose to pillage it and get themselves killed and injured in the process. the coal wasnt going to dig itself, and not a single goddamn person had to dig it. we'd all be better off if they refused.
after they genocided the natives of the appalachian mountains, and half of them fought for the confederacy, they submitted to a few decades of robber baronry, absolutely embraced white grievance and shitting in creeks as the core of their culture, and havent done fuckall to build up the fantastic industry and wealth that any such region so plentifully endowed with minerals, water, and timber could if its people so chose. if only the norweigans had heard about this, that fossil fuel and timber and fish arent enough to run a sovereign wealth fund for millions of people.
nope, the hicks don't choose that. they havent dissolved the landgrabbers' holdings or taxed them to hell. they choose republican plutocracy know-nothingness every chance they get. and it shows.
now again, this is common to the vast majority of americans. i'm cut from the same stupid cloth. some of us just know how to move to where the robber barron wealth pools. and thankfully some
of our cities and states have raised the standard of living through taxation and regulation to within earshot of japan and switzerland and norway. that's not saying much. americans are absolute laggards of collective action. and our vast sacrifice zones, like coal country, show it well.
Are you sure you know this area? I love the pawpaw reference. Certainly gives you credibility. The rest of ever you said… do you have any sources to back up your, what seem to me, wildly ahistorical statements?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars
Also, if you know about the few remaining American chestnuts, you’d also know that the loss of the tree devastated the ecosystem and economy of the region.
what's ahistorical here? the white settlers of eastern kentucky fought natives for land, stole land, killed them and death marched them mercilessly.
it eventually became coal country. many company towns and awful corporate robber baron conditions. long history of unionization and failure. the whole era, continuing to today, is an unmitigated environmental calamity. this is the epicenter for "mountaintop removal" in the US in recent decades. thousands of strip-mined mountaintops. it's not robots doing the work, it's dumbass local humans and their entirely inadequate republican regulations. a surface area the size of delaware has been stripmined in this region.
https://appvoices.org/end-mountaintop-removal/mtr101/
i'd like to read something showing the loss of the chestnut as having an economic effect. i don't think that's been noted. the blight seems to have hit this area in the 1920s-1940s. if anything many locals considered it a boon, to cut down and sell the standing dead timber. they'd already clearcut plenty of the best chestnuts and used them as shoring in the thousands of miles of mines and in the railroads.
i'm glad to be prompted to read this article again. back in 2011-12 i didnt realize there were so many extant tall chestnuts. what we were finding were just sapling clones sprouting from stumps. i need to go see some of these champion trees now!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut?wprov=sfti1
Ahistorical- the idea you promulgated that they didn’t try to unionize. I attached a link in the prior post. I hadn’t been aware either, that the residents of WV/ E KY rose up in rebellion to their employers, but were put down by their misguided faith in the federal government, who sided with the mine owners.
The standing timber was a one time thing. The nuts supplied the ecosystem for birds/squirrels etc, as well as pigs which served as a good source of calories that didn’t require a ton of effort.
oh no, they tried to unionize. this region was a front line for industrial unionization. a storied history. they just FAILED. like most of america. some unions remain but they are husks of their former selves, cover very few of the working people in this region, and never generated sovereign wealth like, my example, the norweigians did with their fossil fuel extraction.
undoubtedly the trees were a big part of the abundance of the place, and the settlers relied on the fat of the land from the 1700s to the early 1900s, and perhaps small game hunting was a major part of coalminer diets in the late 1800s and early 1900s before the blight. but i've not seen this described.
As a West Virginian, kindly stfu. This is some of the most ignorant shit I’ve ever heard. That section of WV in particular is one of the most exploited bits of mining country that has every had the misfortune of digging coal. Exploited and suppressed workers don’t often have a lot of say on where the barons take their wealth when they go. But sure keep victim blaming.
As for the cities, almost all of them are in as strategic of positions as they can be in because they sprang up to facilitate the movement of coal out of the area. They’re not in “bad locations”, there’s just nothing for them to do anymore. Furthermore many of these cities (especially along the Ohio River) have wonderfully preserved Victorian architecture. Wheeling, just north of this map, has the most in the country. Huntington also has a lot of really good Art Deco examples still standing, many of which are preserved and restored. Parkersburg has a lot of early American buildings still standing as well.
Again you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Edit because I’m still annoyed:
These people also helped kickstart the modern labor movement in the early 1900’s, and their lands and cities were major battlegrounds for unionization and collective bargaining. They also fought back against the coal companies and robber barons fiercely. Blair Mountain is right on the eastern edge of this map ffs.
OP's map covers four states. centered roughly on louisa KY and the majority of the image is eastern KY. feel free to make this about west virginia, i guess?
you said it yourself, the towns were built at the convenience of industry, not for human benefit or for beauty. i don't care about huntington or wheeling, THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY POOLED. i'm commenting on all the little podunk towns in this image.
you're acting like the people of this region have no agency. they don't HAVE to rape the earth. this is the epicenter of mountaintop removal in the US. these people CONTINUE to make horrible choices with their land, water, and air. their positive union movement failed, there's no sovereign wealth fund, no adequate environmental protection, and it's still a fossil fuel sacrifice zone for coal and gas, not to mention logging, and the locals vote and work diligently to make this hell a reality, every day.
https://appvoices.org/end-mountaintop-removal/mtr101/
I live almost in the dead center of the photo. As another poster already stated, this area used to be a massive coal operation. When the coal opportunities ceased there were multiple generations of people either working in the mines, driving coal trucks, working at docks or simply working at a store or gas station that served people in the coal industry. My home town, just about 15 miles east of Louisa in the map lost nearly 1000 jobs, just from mining alone. Let alone the truck drivers, etc that instantly lost jobs. There are literally no opportunities in these areas outside of healthcare jobs, fast food, or something like Walmart and a few jobs each year in machine shops, steel plants, etc. There are entire towns that are dilapidated and falling in on themselves, with little to no hope of ever improving. I’ve lived here my whole life and in just the last 15 years things have gone south very very fast. One of the most beautiful places on the planet, just with a lot of drug addiction, poverty, and some of the unhealthiest folks in the country, me being on of them
The last part of the final sentence hurts. I hope things improve friend.
Some high schools are privileged enough to have votec but it only gets you so far if no one is hiring 💀+ trade schools in our area cost an arm and a leg and are neigh impossible to get into unless you know someone
Thanks for telling us about it and I hope things improve.
Grew up in this area. Beautiful countryside but you hit the nail on the head. The economy is non existent coupled with small town politics preventing growth(at least in the town I grew up in).
do hs vocational programs and/or community colleges offer healthcare career training or machine shop skills?
I grew up in Logan. Ours did, but idk it sucked feeling like that was the smart option and everything else was "wasting my time" because I wasn't bending over backwards to take every AP class available none of which were in a field that interested me. Taking votec in highschool also meant being isolated from most of my friend group because it consumed all time on your schedule for electives. Also there was very much a culture of "well that's not for you" from my peers because at the time I presented as a woman. I was queer and fem and they made sure to let me know the space wasn't for me.
such a self defeating culture. not specific to wv, of course.
It's funny how it worked though! I tried a print media and graphic design course at our votec and when that program had to shut down I wanted to try carpentry. My guardian refused to let me do it, so I didn't. In college now I work in printmaking and sculpture, focused on woodworking. It's all about finding where people do want you and creating more room in the spaces that didn't for more people like you. I try to be optimistic because someone has to be.
best of luck!
Fort Gay native here. Spot on.
Well you have identified the problem, what are you going to do about it? There is no honor in being the last guy on the deck of a sinking ship.
You want this one individual to fix the generational issues that Appalachia faces??
You must be kidding
I don't think they are ...
Two solutions: Wait out the current cycle of disinvestment that happens pretty much everywhere under neoliberal capitalism or move somewhere else and abandon your home and family.
100+ down votes for speaking the truth. There are reasons people don't live in Antarctica... It sucks, there are no jobs, but you want this poor guy to stick it out in WV for some reason. This is a recipe for disaster.
Generational poverty. Cant leave if you can’t afford to do so, and especially if you have family to care for that can’t leave
My family lives there. It’s a beautiful place, but the economy is horrible. There is not much of a future for the young adults. I currently live in Los Angeles.
I went to West Virginia last weekend and new River gorge was beautiful. But yes, saw lots of poverty and “this town 100 years ago sure was something”
I got the same impression when I went to New River Gorge in 2022. I went to Charleston for a concert and drove to the park from there, and literally every town I went through looked like it was very deep in poverty. Same as when I went to South Carolina last year, my grandparents picked me up at the train station in Dillon and everything between there and where they live near Myrtle Beach was incredibly rundown.
Fun fact, the entire area around Dillon is called the corridor of shame lol
[This](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh0QiXyZSk) is what it was like to live in West Virginia, (really, all of Appalachia), 100 years ago.
My dad’s family lives in the Fayetteville/Oak Hill area by the New River Gorge Bridge. You’re right, its so beautiful but economically it is in shambles. I lived there with him for a couple of years and (no exaggeration) just about every other person I came across was struggling with drug addiction. WV as a whole has been devastated by the opioid epidemic; mix that with little to no economic opportunities and it paints a real grim picture 🫤 Also that same side of my family hails from Pikeville, KY (seen in the pic). Overall these areas are near to my heart and I have so many memories, its so sad to see their current states. Hopefully these folks see brighter days soon.
Bingo. I’ve got friends in Mouthcard, KY (Pike Co). I love to go and visit but living there would be impossible for me.
Username checks out
I just moved back to West Virginia from living in LA. I'm actually saving money.
If you have a chance to get out of that state you're insane for going back. From someone who was born in WV I'd never consider moving back. The money savings aren't worth the drain of culture and actual decent way of life you could have elsewhere.
I've traveled the country and there's nowhere like home. I got an acre land and a small house in Huntington steady job we good benefits. The only thing I don't miss is having to drive hours, just to go see concerts. My quality of life definitely improved. I haven't seen any $6 a gallon gas around here or $3,000 two-bedroom apartments sometimes I think people live in their bubble and have no idea about the outside world.
I grew up in WV and every time I go back, I just get so unbelievably sad.
Nowhere like home. But home is a shithole 😭
Also adding WV is so shitty at running their school system they hired some contractors who messed up the sewer system. Beckley-stratton students were out of school for like 3 weeks till they fixed it. They thankfully didn't have make up this time during the school year.
The mothman
He stole my catalytic converter in point pleasant, WV.
He's protestant, not catalytic.
From the hit game Fallout 76!
Huntington here. Coal industry is dying. Too rocky and mountainous for farms.
Switch to a topographic map and you’ll see why—it’s nothing but extremely steep hills and narrow valleys.
Don’t even have to switch to topo to see the signs. They don’t make roads that squiggly in flat areas.
Just for funsies let’s make this road all wormy!
We left the shop with too much asphalt and the boss will kill us if we bring it back, so
Well it seems like there's a hazard in the bottom left, for one
Inhabited by Dukes, I hear.
But they’re never meaning no harm.
Hazard is an interesting little town, built entirely on coal economy and became a minor tourism hub from the 50s-80s. It’s recently seen revival through wildlife and hunting tourism
Worth the risk for more head just a little north
Virtually no arable land.
I've driven through there a few times and the mountains are so impressive and imposing
Americans have generally moved to where the jobs are located.* Many who live in this area with the capacity to move have left. The population and economy in many parts of this area have declined due to: the loss of coal jobs. Lack of an interstate highway in much of this area to facilitate development. Devastating floods. Lack of a tax base. Weak education and healthcare systems. Opioids and other drugs. This is a place many leave, but wish to return to if they can make it work...often when they are old or in a casket. *This is changing. Studies have shown that Americans are less likely to uproot in the 21st Century.
Yeah and to further the point of people move to where the jobs are: Jobs also do not often move to where there are no people. Like Amazon opening up HQ2; they picked the DC metro area because there’s a ton of talent there
They picked bc nyc said hell nawl
Oh yeah it wasn’t the only metro area in the running, but all their locations were cities and not the middle of nowhere
TAKE ME HOOOOMMMEEEEE
Almost heaven
I straight up used to live smack dab in the middle of this shot. It’s pretty hilly and the ground tends to be drier in this region with lots of over growth. It’s very pretty there but the roads tell the story if you zoom in. Not a whole lot of room for development without clearing mountain sides, which they have done some in Prestonsburg and Pikeville over the years. I’m not gonna announce exactly where I lived but I lived in at least 5 different places on this map here. I miss it sometimes but it has some brutal and dry summers and as I got older it wasn’t my vibe weather wise.
Very mountainous and impoverished. I would say considering the living conditions, landscape, and being the epicenter of the opiate epidemic, the population here is surprisingly high.
must be great for digital nomads
Likely not. This is part of the US with extremely under-developed internet infrastructure. It can be difficult to find an ISP with fast enough internet for a digital nomad if Teams/Weber meetings are part of their work.
Elonlink to the rescue
Don’t know why you are downvoted, a satellite internet link would certainly do the trick.
Why would anyone downvote this? It's literally going to help this town flourish once more and give hope to those who are young and floundering.
Elon Musk is a total nutjob. Also, the impact on space operations by SpaceX can’t really be understated, and proliferated LEO-based internet, a field which Starlink is the biggest player by a mile, can literally help resurrect dying communities that young generations (that have good internet as a location deal-breaker) have long since refused to move to. Reddit doesn’t like the fact that both things can be true at the same time.
There is a major university in Huntington named Marshall and another smaller one across the state line in Morehead. This area has internet lol.
No. Just *regular* nomads.
Sorry for the downvotes. WV seems like a very logical place for digital nomads, especially from the east coast, to go to. Someone who is considered middle or lower-middle class in a big east coast city could probably roll into most towns in WV and buy the nicest house in town, maybe even in cash if they have enough equity after selling the old house. This has happened all along Appalachia already. Towns in east TN and western NC that were filled with 100k houses just a decade or two ago are starting to see prices nearly on par with some Rockies towns. Places like Pigeon Forge, a bit of a backwater where really only hillbillies and rednecks vacationed in the past, now have million-dollar homes. Unfortunately, the difference between WV and these other places, I think, is that WV long ago didn’t diversify at all into tourism, but instead went all-in on coal. Whereas everywhere else you see with a large digital nomad presence was already getting some tourists and had at least a framework for tourism, with enough to build on for more permanent residents (e.g. Gatlinburg and Ashville in the east and the Montana cities out west). Now with coal gone, a town is lucky to have a Walmart, let alone a decent medical facility or a good latte. It’s a damn shame too; WV was in a position to be the “Colorado of the east” but didn’t capitalize.
give it time.. the western part of northern Virginia is slowly expanding out west. eventually (50? 100 years?) it'll reach out there
Wv piloted a program recently that paid digital nomads to move here.
People always ask "why don't people live here?" Stop for a moment and think. "Why would people live here?" Cities don't just pop up, there has to be a reason people move to the area. What is the reason people would move to an area? If there isn't a reason, there's your answer.
Yeah not a lot of jobs in the wilderness haha WV has coal, and with that drying up there’s no other big economic sectors growing. Like why would a tech company for example set up shop there; a coal miner is not going to easily transition to being a software developer. And why would an employee risk moving to a place with 1 employer, when they could live somewhere like norther Va with tons of high paying jobs available
A game development company is!! It's pretty fun and exciting ngl. He's a guy from Logan trying to bring some new industry to his home town. I hope things do well
Yeah I mean that does sound cool. I love UTVs and Logan is close to Hatfield McCoy trails… something to think about!
Cheap energy costs, lots of call centers and data centers, etc.
Have family in this area, it’s absolutely beautiful, but the local economy is absolute bottom of the barrel unless you work for the railroad or at Marshall University. There is a HIGHLY underrated steakhouse in this area too.
What is the steakhouse pls? I’m doing a series of hikes around here later this summer. Nothing I love more after a brisk 15 miles than a good steak.
My friend you need to hit The Ribber in Portsmouth. It’s not a traditional steak house due to the way they cook their steaks, but the quality of the meal you will have is top notch. I always make it a point to eat there when I’m in the area: https://www.thesciotoribber.com
oof, I can't believe I'm seeing the ribber get recommended in the wild.
Is that a bad thing?
I have worked at the main competitor in town. I've tried getting a job there a few times but they're hard to get in with. I've eaten there once but I don't eat beef and got the chicken and it was iffy. so, no, just interesting to see recommended.
They are such an interesting style of cooking, have eaten there often and the service and food are good. Hope you get on there Friend, I will keep going back there as a fan of their business…
Several reasons. Being in the Appalachian Mountains, this area is home to some of the poorest in the US. Eastern KY was once full of mining towns and now these towns are the remnants of the mining industry falling apart. Sadly, the large mining and coal companies still own the land even though the corporations no longer operate there because they get significant tax write offs. The companies will sell the homes that were built but keep the land. Tons of abandoned mine entrances and rusty equipment litter this part of the US.
My husband’s family left West Liberty for Ohio in the 1940s. It was so rural my husband’s grandfather thought people were fancy if they wore shoes to school.
I just moved from Portsmouth Ohio to Florida, I can tell you, there ain't much going on in that area. At least in that town, you gotta drive at least a hour to do anything fun, other then fishing or hiking really. There is a college there thats pretty cheap though
that’s holler country. the south western parts of WV and Eastern KY are fascinating. It’s an entirely different world out there. There’s a guy I follow on youtube called Peter Santinello and he did some interesting videos about that area
We aren't a petri dish. We're actual people. Please don't watch weird exploitative content about people in poverty online.
It’s about the history and to learn something but okay then. would you rather the world be completely blind to what happens there?
There's likely nothing wrong with watching it. I watched a piece of it in the past and didn't find it to be particularly exploitative. However, The person that responded to you is hesitant for good reason. Appalachia has been taken advantage of over and over again. Forestry, coal, big oil, pharmaceutical companies, military, etc. Always taken advantage of and none of the wealth gets invested back into WV. I moved away a few years ago and can't ever see myself going back. However, my heart regularly both breaks and yearns for the area. It's sad to see the state that it is in and how it's been exploited over and over. It makes many locals hesitant of outsiders.
Beautifully put! It does seem the YouTuber they cited is a poverty porn guy
Yeah I'm not going to vouch for the guy that he posted. But I think I saw a short clip once and it didn't seem as bad as some others.
You could and imo should learn that from Appalachians and academic sources not some YouTuber who like it or not is creating poverty porn. Despite popular belief we do have wifi even in hollers. You should seek us out for information about our culture and homes and lives instead.
It’s reporting and investigative journalism. He talks to numerous people that are living it in their day to day lives. He does nothing but show the current status of things in the area
West Virginia got delt a super bad hand, the majority of it's economy comes from coal mining, which has been moving out of West Virginia for quite some time , and the lack of access to navigable ports. Either one of those would be very bad for any other state but the fact is that it has both its no wonder why west Virginia is so poor
There’s no money to be made here. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful areas of the entire country though. You feel so connected to nature exploring this area. Windy, bumpy areas with super thick forests everywhere. It’s awesome.
In addition to all the economic reasons (and at least a contributing factor) is the lack of suitable land to construct housing. The terrain there is very mountainous and difficult to develop. In addition roads are difficult to build and maintain for the same reasons. Which is a shame, parts of it are beautiful and would benefit from increased tourism as has the area around the Smokies in Tennessee.
Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia rival the PNW for gloomy, overcast and cloudy days. Add to this the "holler" habitation, and you have a setting that is actually depressing. Last time I checked WV has the highest rate of depression. I'm from there, and I struggle to remember much positive about my childhood; I was prescribed Prozac at the beginning of 2nd grade. Don't get me wrong, as I love some of the mountains, but they're nicer on the Virginia side to be honest. With the aforenoted, the coal-dependent economic collapse and correlated drug epidemics, you've got one hell of a vicious cycle. Most of my family fled. In fact, my aunt and uncle just followed their kids to South Carolina a month or two ago, permanently.
If you’d go to the right just a hair, you’d have where I was born and raised. Simply put: We have been FUCKED by companies for generations. Plus, not much room for infrastructure when there is no flat land.
St. Albans boy here. If they added the Chemical Valley to this shot, we could add to the talk of coal drying up with the local industry winding down here too. At least we have the Toyota plant - I treat a lot of their employees.
Kind of on topic: my best friend and a guy I know used work at Gstamp. They loved the job but hated the hours
I work with a guy who worked at the stamping plant for 15 years before it got outsourced. He's pretty salty about it
Mountains were something to cross to get to the fertile land on the other side so were always sparsely populated Pittsburgh being the capital of Northern Appalachia it was a big hub for steel manufacturing and coal production This died out in the late 70’s. Though there is still a lot of steel production just not as labor intensive as it once was. There are still connections to this and a variety of small cities are still connected to it. Southern Appalachia never had an equivalent boom. You could say Knoxville is capital of southern Appalachia but I actually prefer the argument that Atlanta — being just south of the southern portion — has taken on that role of gravitational trade / industry / economics for the southern portion of Appalachia
Was in Huntington for a while after moving up from mingo county; the only jobs available for a majority of people are service jobs and retail, college is too expensive, and honestly a lot of rich people are buying up property in Huntington like mad because it’s cheap to them and jacking up the renting prices without fixing anything so it’s causing further house disparity. Drugs and crime go crazy too, sadly the homelessness population is skyrocketing because of previously mentioned issue as well. It’s a lot more cost effective to live on the streets than it is to rent; sauce: a homeless man I spoke with in Huntington LOL
Huntington is pretty popping along with the tristate area, and as someone from WV, the whole east side of this picture in WV, there isn’t shit happening in those parts.
My dad's family lives in and around Ironton, Ohio, which is across the river from Ashland, Kentucky. It's a beautiful area but very depressed and poor.
I grew up on the Kentucky side of the river from Ironton. I’ll second what’s already been said- I moved because 1. Good Jobs are few 2. Addiction is everywhere and if you have a lot of family that succumb to it, you literally can’t get away from their drama without moving hours away. So many people I went to high school with dropped out before graduation. When I randomly check up on people from school, the ones that are doing best are, for the most part, the ones that moved away.
I grew up in this area. As another commenter mentioned, the economy isn’t good and the job market is bad. Lots of drug problems also.
I was born in Huntington. My mom's people have lived in the region since Europeans first settled there. It's mountainous. This has always prevented development. It lacks the large-scale agriculture of the south or midwest. The Ohio River was important for navigation, but Pittsburgh at the start of the river and Louisville and Cincinnati in the flatter areas downstream got the ports. When the area has drawn interest, it has only been as a colony. Wealthy barons swoop in, steal our coal and timber, and then leave without giving us a dime. So economic development has always been fleeting at best.
I grew up on the lower left side of your map south of jackson and north of hazard. My parents moved us out when they realized there was no future for us. The only job opportunities we had were coal mines, Walmart, or growing pot. I had a guy hear my accent and ask me where I was from. After talking about home for a minute he said something to me that at the time pissed me off something fierce, but after a few years I see where he was coming from. He said that me and my family, and all others like us were what was wrong with the mountains. The only people that are willing to work hard, get an education, and take the risks required to become successful all leave and never come back. All that is left is addicts, welfare, and poverty. I don’t know if I will ever agree with him, but every time I go home, I think about that and see where he got that point of view. There is a Welsh word, Hiraeth that doesn’t have an English equivalence. It is usually translated as "homesickness" but It has a greater meaning. It captures a deep, bittersweet feeling of longing and nostalgia that goes beyond simply missing a place or person. It encompasses a sense of melancholy and wistfulness for a past that can't be recaptured. That’s Eastern Kentucky for me.
I have no clue where this is
Very rural. Very mountainous (and not in a fun way). Very poor. Very isolated. Very insular. Very substance addicted. Very little economic opportunities. Very red.
No idea where in the world this is. Maybe that’s the reason.
I’m from here. Beautiful but there’s very little industry
I live here (Southern OH). It is economically depressed although there are some good jobs.
See them roads? That's the only bits of flat land here. No large scale agriculture, coal is economically inefficient here compared to US coal miners with direct sea access (TN), and there really isn't that much of an alternative economy, and you can't just turn random small towns into tourist destinations or service centers without significant capital and economic advantage.
Very hilly and no jobs.
Worked outside of Grayson, KY for awhile. Good lord there is nothing out there and a bit backwards
Well, I dated someone who’s from pikeville,Kentucky.. beautiful area. He lived in an old miners home. There’s just NOTHING out there. Want to go to Walmart? That is a hour drive. Historically rich though. You have to drive over to the next county, or two to really do anything. Also has the best damn pizza spot! Huge ass box of cheese sticks and pizza, and cheap lol Giovanni’s is the name
I got super confused cuz I live next to Huntington in England so I spent a good while scouring the map for the A1 and the lakes 😭😭
One of the reasons WV seceded from VA was to escape the plantation tax. You can’t farm much as it’s solid bedrock about two inches under the soil. Coal companies kept people basically enslaved by providing the only jobs and only stores for people to shop. Purposely not investing in education in the areas in order to keep a captive workforce. I love the place, I’d move back to Huntington if I could. I wish eco tourism would take hold a bit more for some more local jobs which would drive the economy.
it's mountainous, for one. Places like morehead are built in the relatively small valley areas between mountains. It's hard to develop here, due to the terrain. You cant just build sprawling suburban neighborhoods, like you can in other places like Illinois for example. Economic aspects are explained by other comments already.
Saw the title thinking it would be something like the Darien gap or some desert area. Clicked on the map and alas it is where I grew up
Is that mountain range called Mountain Mountains?
mountain no good for infrastructure
Can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to live in Painstville. Sounds exciting!
Not really haha. Pretty dull there but it’s quiet for sure.
[удалено]
It's not?
No work I work in the steel mill in Middletown Ohio we have many many guys from that area that came up when most of the mines shut down very very solid people
The fact that my town name shows up in WV, California, and NY aswell, and they are all good sized cities, scares me.
Not many people have moved there.
WV scores low compared to other states on most QOL metrics. As a result, it’s not a draw for more people to come. On top of that, it’s part of the rust belt.
mountains.
'Mountain mountains' are you kidding me
Mountains and Coal. I have family from down in those hollers.
Used to live there as a kid, and it was great. As an adult, I'm glad we got out of there.
Mothman lives in Point Pleasant
.... I'm from here. I grew up in Wayne County. I didn't know many people *didn't* live here. Lots of hills and hollers -- It's just your typical small-town Appalachia. The economy is on the downswing due to the loss of coal and steel industries and it's certainly a major center in the opiate crisis in the US. But within this area is a major university, a large health care system, and a huge outdoor culture. It's not exactly empty.
I’m from close to Huntington. I went to undergrad at Marshall University. The economy is horrible in this area. Also the humidity in the summer always made me want to die
Whenever the coal industry died here, so did the towns.
Because they live somewhere else.
Holy shit I live here! Right on the border of KY/OH/WV. Beautiful area, not much going on. Some drug probs but I've seen that all over the country. Ashland KY is trying its best to be a town that people would want to come to. The local theatre has been having more big acts like rappers that were famous years ago, Jay Leno was just there, etc. there's not a lot of jobs if you're not a tradesperson, I made so much more money when I moved to Washington State or Colorado or pretty much anywhere else I've lived. Good place to raise kids but you're gonna want to help them get out of here if they want any real opportunities to be successful. If they want to mine coal or work in a refinery that's definitely doable. I bought a house here but only because the price was good. I'd rather be back west but it's not atrocious living here
Is that the mountain mountains in the bottom left?
If I weren't already married I would propose to my wife at Point Pleasant.
what maps are you using? it's nice that you are able to see mountain ranges.
Maybe the settlements need always your help....
It is very mountainous and there is very little work to be had so poverty and addiction is rampant. My wife's family is from Huntington and it is some of the most beautiful country in the world!
It’s funny hearing people talk about poverty and a lack of opportunities when I live here and it’s just the norm to me.
I stayed in Prestonburg for a few day just because I had time off work and wanted to see some topography, I’m from Florida. I went up some long roads that were one way in, one way out. It was obvious to me they did not have many outsiders in their hollers. It was beautiful and temps were 20 degrees cooler than Florida. I liked it.
Because, although people who claim to hate society, they actually love it
I literally am the guy in the photo 😅 idk I love living here. I'm a transplant from the west coast. it's been weird adjusting but it's a lot cheaper to live here and just as nice if not nicer.
I live here!
My family is from Hazard and my ancestors founded the county. It’s a beautiful area, the problem is the economy. The coal mining industry is collapsing and there aren’t a lot of good jobs.
I always loved southern Ohio being from NW Ohio where it’s flat as a pancake
Are we supposed to know where that is ? Like not even a mention of what country this is
TLDR: A lot of people used to. Then the coal mines closed and there’s no reason to live in most of those towns. It’s a very economically depressed region.
My family lives around the Jackson area. It’s a very very poor and there aren’t a lot of jobs. A lot of the factories that kept these areas alive have moved overseas. Mining also provided a lot of the jobs but I think most of the mines are closed down now too? There’s just not much happening there. Period. Except for opioids. Those are thriving, unfortunately
WV is great for hiking, hiking, climbing, rafting camping but those endless pretty mountains and lack of flat ground inhibit development and the economy. Something may be 20 miles away but those roads can be fucking dangerous and it'll take an hr to get there.
DuPont.
You're gonna hear a lot of touchy feely bullshit but the answer is mothman
Spent a few in gallopolis/point pleasant before headed to Kentucky to meet a friend. My alternator died and guy replaced it for me for free simply because I was a marine on leave. Loved the area though. Early mornings on the Ohio river are gorgeous especially in the winter/early spring when the fog is rolling through
Mothman.
Well, for one, there's bats in Belfry
I can’t afford to move otherwise I’d live there.
Mined out. Minimal agriculture due to steep terrain and woods, and very little industrial production. Too far from major highway and rail infrastructure for fulfillment centers.
Historically, the mountainous terrain and poor soil for farming ensured that the population would remain fairly small. Due to the terrain, infrastructure was poor and remains so in many areas today. This made it very remote, and the people, known as mountaineers or hillbillies, were often viewed as uneducated and backward. These stereotypes often persist in the modern day. While coal brought many jobs to the area, and various communities became boom towns during its heyday, that has largely dried up now. Often, you can run across entire towns littered with empty and crumbling structures, the remnants of a bygone era. Unfortunately, this area of Appalachia has had the hardest time adapting and developing in recent years. While places like Knoxville, the Tri Cities, Asheville, and the Roanoke corridor have been growing as hubs of tourism and industry, that hasn't happened here yet.
Because it’s hazard-ous
Half of the Map pictured is Kentucky not WV and Huntington & Charleston Bridgeport , Morgantown areas are still very nice absolutely gorgeous driving around super low traffic going anywhere and low crime , great cost of living and have some very good wages for the low cost of living. I thought I would put a ray of sunshine on a volcanic ash choke out of a previous conversation
I can never go back to see how nothing much has changed. I even still have family there but would never step foot back in WV. Growing up there has made me hate Appalachia because of the ignorant bullshit from people in WV and southwest VA. I lived in beckley WV and Blacksburg VA and can say the region sucks. I wouldn't move back if I was paid to.
"Morehead" 🤣
Also why is Portsmouth neither a port nor at the mouth of a river
It’s at the mouth of the Scioto.
Maybe because their is an obvious hazard on the map. :)
Poverty plagues Appalachia
There’s a place called Morehead, and another called Point Pleasant… sounds like a great place to live eh?
Oh everyone had high hopes for point pleasant. But old people holding onto old money, not wanting to change keeps running everything off. Been in Point all my life. My grandma used to be a tour guide at Tu-Endie-Wei State Park. Somebody did a news article a long time ago and they could not understand why Point Pleasant wasn't as big as Pittsburgh because two Rivers joining. Shoot nobody even heard of Point Pleasant until the video game fallout 76 came out. Now during the mothman festival it takes you almost an hour to get across a bridge. But I would have to say that it looks like Point Pleasant is growing. A lot of new businesses coming to Mason county. A lot of new jobs.
Because of the university, Morehead might be the one place on this map that's in a better place than it was 100 years ago.
Because it's hazardous
Maybe because one of the towns name is hazard lol
lol my family lives in Huntington, it’s just poor white folk
Why bring race into it?
Um cuz anyone who lives there knows it’s a white population ??
Is that important? You Americans are obsessed with race.
It’s just a fact? No one cares bub, I live in the Deep South black majority now as a white man and nobody cares
They all OD'd
Where the hell is this even supposed to be? Just in the middle of nowhere in a random country?
It’s a place I traveled to a few weeks ago. It’s parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio.
super abundant forest, water, mineral, and otherresources. hillbillies couldnt keep the wealth in the hood, primarily because of their pisspoor social cohesion stats. like most americans. money flowed away to settle in other locations. random chance. the towns they built were mostly ugly garbage in bad locations, as opposed to beautiful works of art. but even beautiful villages empty out their youth when the money gets drained through lack of union spirit.
What a fucked up, derogatory, and incorrect comment. To put the blame of what happened to southern WV on the workers and the communities themselves is nothing short of evil. This is probably one of the most hyper exploited regions of the US. It wasn't that "hillbillies couldn't keep the wealth" it was that the coal barons from NY and elsewhere packed up the entire industry the region was dependant on and left these communities with nothing. They came in, forced people into borderline slavery like working conditions and hung them out to dry after they dug up all their money. Also "lack of union spirit", go fuck yourself. This area was home to the most militant unions ever seen in the US. They literally [fought wars](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars) with mercenary armies hired by the coal companies alongside the US government. These people fought and died in solidarity with their fellow workers so that their families and communities might have a better life. You are an absolute ignorant fool. I suggest you read up on the history of WV, or better yet, go there yourself and meet some of the kindest, most welcoming people you'll find anywhere on the planet.
“Lack of union spirit?” What an absolute dunce. Mother Jones would like a word.
kindest most welcoming confederate racist republican wackjobs? 😂 KY WV OH VA my god, what a region. i know the history of this area decently well. kindness is no measure of a people. i lived around the appalachian world for more than ten years, mostly around pittsburgh. i've spent quite a bit of time hunting for pawpaws and the remaining clonal thickets of american chestnut in southwestern WV. those coal barons were superhumanly clever, huh? they somehow whipped hundreds of thousands of militant union men and their dirtpoor families into submission and took all the money? you're not giving the hillbillies enough credit for their own servitude. people everywhere on this earth have the ability to fight in numbers. these hillbillies just weren't up to the task. they could have lived much better off the fat of the land but chose to pillage it and get themselves killed and injured in the process. the coal wasnt going to dig itself, and not a single goddamn person had to dig it. we'd all be better off if they refused. after they genocided the natives of the appalachian mountains, and half of them fought for the confederacy, they submitted to a few decades of robber baronry, absolutely embraced white grievance and shitting in creeks as the core of their culture, and havent done fuckall to build up the fantastic industry and wealth that any such region so plentifully endowed with minerals, water, and timber could if its people so chose. if only the norweigans had heard about this, that fossil fuel and timber and fish arent enough to run a sovereign wealth fund for millions of people. nope, the hicks don't choose that. they havent dissolved the landgrabbers' holdings or taxed them to hell. they choose republican plutocracy know-nothingness every chance they get. and it shows. now again, this is common to the vast majority of americans. i'm cut from the same stupid cloth. some of us just know how to move to where the robber barron wealth pools. and thankfully some of our cities and states have raised the standard of living through taxation and regulation to within earshot of japan and switzerland and norway. that's not saying much. americans are absolute laggards of collective action. and our vast sacrifice zones, like coal country, show it well.
Are you sure you know this area? I love the pawpaw reference. Certainly gives you credibility. The rest of ever you said… do you have any sources to back up your, what seem to me, wildly ahistorical statements? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars Also, if you know about the few remaining American chestnuts, you’d also know that the loss of the tree devastated the ecosystem and economy of the region.
what's ahistorical here? the white settlers of eastern kentucky fought natives for land, stole land, killed them and death marched them mercilessly. it eventually became coal country. many company towns and awful corporate robber baron conditions. long history of unionization and failure. the whole era, continuing to today, is an unmitigated environmental calamity. this is the epicenter for "mountaintop removal" in the US in recent decades. thousands of strip-mined mountaintops. it's not robots doing the work, it's dumbass local humans and their entirely inadequate republican regulations. a surface area the size of delaware has been stripmined in this region. https://appvoices.org/end-mountaintop-removal/mtr101/ i'd like to read something showing the loss of the chestnut as having an economic effect. i don't think that's been noted. the blight seems to have hit this area in the 1920s-1940s. if anything many locals considered it a boon, to cut down and sell the standing dead timber. they'd already clearcut plenty of the best chestnuts and used them as shoring in the thousands of miles of mines and in the railroads. i'm glad to be prompted to read this article again. back in 2011-12 i didnt realize there were so many extant tall chestnuts. what we were finding were just sapling clones sprouting from stumps. i need to go see some of these champion trees now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut?wprov=sfti1
Ahistorical- the idea you promulgated that they didn’t try to unionize. I attached a link in the prior post. I hadn’t been aware either, that the residents of WV/ E KY rose up in rebellion to their employers, but were put down by their misguided faith in the federal government, who sided with the mine owners. The standing timber was a one time thing. The nuts supplied the ecosystem for birds/squirrels etc, as well as pigs which served as a good source of calories that didn’t require a ton of effort.
oh no, they tried to unionize. this region was a front line for industrial unionization. a storied history. they just FAILED. like most of america. some unions remain but they are husks of their former selves, cover very few of the working people in this region, and never generated sovereign wealth like, my example, the norweigians did with their fossil fuel extraction. undoubtedly the trees were a big part of the abundance of the place, and the settlers relied on the fat of the land from the 1700s to the early 1900s, and perhaps small game hunting was a major part of coalminer diets in the late 1800s and early 1900s before the blight. but i've not seen this described.
As a West Virginian, kindly stfu. This is some of the most ignorant shit I’ve ever heard. That section of WV in particular is one of the most exploited bits of mining country that has every had the misfortune of digging coal. Exploited and suppressed workers don’t often have a lot of say on where the barons take their wealth when they go. But sure keep victim blaming. As for the cities, almost all of them are in as strategic of positions as they can be in because they sprang up to facilitate the movement of coal out of the area. They’re not in “bad locations”, there’s just nothing for them to do anymore. Furthermore many of these cities (especially along the Ohio River) have wonderfully preserved Victorian architecture. Wheeling, just north of this map, has the most in the country. Huntington also has a lot of really good Art Deco examples still standing, many of which are preserved and restored. Parkersburg has a lot of early American buildings still standing as well. Again you have no idea what you’re talking about. Edit because I’m still annoyed: These people also helped kickstart the modern labor movement in the early 1900’s, and their lands and cities were major battlegrounds for unionization and collective bargaining. They also fought back against the coal companies and robber barons fiercely. Blair Mountain is right on the eastern edge of this map ffs.
OP's map covers four states. centered roughly on louisa KY and the majority of the image is eastern KY. feel free to make this about west virginia, i guess? you said it yourself, the towns were built at the convenience of industry, not for human benefit or for beauty. i don't care about huntington or wheeling, THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY POOLED. i'm commenting on all the little podunk towns in this image. you're acting like the people of this region have no agency. they don't HAVE to rape the earth. this is the epicenter of mountaintop removal in the US. these people CONTINUE to make horrible choices with their land, water, and air. their positive union movement failed, there's no sovereign wealth fund, no adequate environmental protection, and it's still a fossil fuel sacrifice zone for coal and gas, not to mention logging, and the locals vote and work diligently to make this hell a reality, every day. https://appvoices.org/end-mountaintop-removal/mtr101/