Decomposing King Coal

McDowell County was once a thriving place. Sure, there were many problems, a fact that would be foolish to ignore… but there was also life in this place. This county once produced more coal than any other place in the world… but that was when coal was king.

At that time a tiny little McDowell County town, Bramwell, West Virginia boasted the population with the largest percentage of millionaires in the world. The streets were lined with mansions and the city seemed to glisten with the opulence of money.

Welch, West Virginia was a thriving center for commerce. The population was significant and people came from all around the county to shop here. A typical Saturday would see McDowell Street clogged with cars and foot traffic as people took their day off to head into town to look at the latest fashions or dine at one of the local restaurants. Youth from other towns would come to Welch for the theater, and the town was absolutely hopping.

Now there are very few businesses on McDowell Street and the few buildings that are still open are housing government offices and not business. True, there is a new theater, which has brought a little life back into the town, but overall, the booming days of McDowell Street are long gone and the buildings that stand are ghostly reminders of the death of King Coal.

A few years ago, Welch was virtually wiped out by the Tug Fork River’s hundred-year flood. Some thought it was the deathblow to this sleepy little town, and in many ways it seems to have been.

Coal had already fallen from its mighty throne and the once congested city had been witnessing a dwindling population, watching its numbers shrink with every year. Welch was on the verge of death.

When the flood came, it tore through McDowell Street and laid waste building after building. A few lucky business owners would clean up and reopen; most just closed their doors and never looked back. The buildings stood empty and abandoned. The water damage combined with the dead economy meant they could not be sold. The cost of repairs was too great to justify even trying. The town quickly fell into a state of disrepair.

Now, the leadership of Welch is desperately trying to resurrect the beauty that was once Welch. Of course, this means realizing King Coal is not going to rise from his cold tomb to breath life back into Central Appalachia. So, the mayor has begun a dismantling program… slowly but steadily taking the town that took so long to build apart. Every day a new building comes down, memories fall into the dust, and someone laments about the way things used to be.

“This was one big, long building,” Rick tells me as he drives me along the Elkhorn River, “But the mayor had it torn down. The flood just did it in.”

Now a brick wall and cast-iron fence stand as a tribute to a “beautification” project designed to make Welch pleasant to the beholder and no longer an eyesore.

“They’re gonna put in a park where those buildings are now,” Betty tells me as she gestures toward McDowell streets where heavy equipment is bringing low yet another building, her voice both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. “That’s what they say, anyway.”

She is an elderly woman who has heard her share of government promises and seen what “improvements” do to Appalachia. But, she holds on to the hope that things will get better. If Welch, the ghost town disappears, maybe the four wheelers from the popular Hatfield-McCoy ATV Trail will come to the new-and-improved Welch and spend some of their money.

It’s hard to explain to the people here that there are places where growth is happening. There are cities where they just can’t build fast enough… but in McDowell County the coal companies have left behind a world of abandoned equipment, buildings, and houses. It is a place that has not known growth for a long time.

Every day that I have been in Welch has been a sad awakening to the death of King Coal. "This is the legacy," I think to myself, "of the coal barons." I drive through the towns named for the barons, their wives, and the companies they built and I think about the irony of it all. The death that once touched the lives of the men, women, and children who would crawl back under a mountain has finally become visible. What had once been concealed in the dark depths of the earth has been brought into broad daylight. Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, you come face to face with the decomposing body of King Coal.


Some Economic Facts About McDowell County
[US averages in brackets]

Population Trends:
1990—35,233
2000—27,329 (23% drop since 1990)
2007—22,991 (16% drop since 2000)

Average household size—2.42 [US=2.59]
Average family size—2.92 [US=3.14]
(To the woman who told me to push birth control in Appalachia to solve its problems.)

Vacant Housing—17.8% [US=9.0%]

High School graduate or higher—50.0% [US=80.4]
Bachelors degree or higher—5.6% [US=24.4]

Disabled—39.7% [19.3%]

In Labor Force—32.4% [63.9%]

Median Household Income—$16,931 [US= $41,994]
Median Family Income—$20,496 [US=$50,046]
Per Capita Income—$10,174 [US=$21,587]

Families Below Poverty Line—33.8% [US=9.2%]
Individuals Below Poverty Line—37.7% [12.4%]