6 ms·

America's poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs

139 points by dthal 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
BanMeWithRage 11y ago
Statistical outliers of no importance. Their whiteness will eventually solve all of their problems.
lionhearted 11y ago
Last year, I had a half-day in a place that went through a similar transition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raton,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raton,_New_Mexico Made an impression on me. Wrote a poem about it on the train -- Raton Station It’s flat Flatness rolls for miles around Mountains in the distance Flatness approaching the peaks Scenic clouds dot the sky Looking perhaps painted on The place is rather idyllic Except for, well, you know Every store is having a sale Of the stores still open If you want to lease a building The local Radio Shack is also town landlord The people are friendly enough 7,000 of them are scraping by The waitress loves it here Despite saving money to move to Omaha We hitched a ride in the bed of the pickup To the stretch with restaurants and hotels still open I asked what had happened here? The coal mines shut down
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  Good stuff. For others interested in the subject, Frontline has a great documentary about growing up in Floyd Country, Kentucky, Country Boys: "Filmed over three years (1999-2002), "Country Boys" tracks the dramatic stories of Chris and Cody from ages 15 to 18. With the same intimate cinematic technique and sound design that distinguished "The Farmer's Wife," Sutherland's new film bears witness to the two boys' struggles to overcome the poverty and family dysfunction of their childhood in a quest for a brighter future. This film also offers unexpected insights into a forgotten corner of rural America that is at once isolated and connected, a landscape dotted with roughshod trailer homes and wired with DSL." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/view/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/view/
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  Ha, a good friend of mine moved his business to Raton about 15 years ago. The town we're both from is much smaller and as evidenced by his success there, less economically vibrant than even Raton.
- sanderjd 11y ago
  Nice poem, but I thought the part about it being flat was strange, since there's a mountain pass into Colorado just north of town, called Raton Pass. Maybe that was symbolism?
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    If you're not familiar with Raton, go check it out on Google Street View. There's mountains in the distance, but not otherwise a whole lot of geography.
    - arethuza 11y ago
      I did have a look at Raton and surrounding roads on Street View earlier and actually thought it looked rather pleasant.
chris_wot 11y ago
Australia needs to learn this lesson. Eventually coal will be phased out significantly enough that mass mining don't be economical. In the meantime we ruin our ecology in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
- barney54 11y ago
  Mining coal in Australia in the 21st century is not lawless. It does not "ruin the ecology." It has CO2 impacts to be sure, but does not ruin the ecology. On the plus side it provides indispensable, low-cost, electricity for poor people in Asia--people who wouldn't have electricity if not for coal.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Coal's only cheap when you don't bother to count all it's negative effects, which will predominately be borne by the poor people you're (slightly bizarrely) claiming to serve. Coal isn't something worth celebrating, it should be phased out as quickly as possible. Every unit of coal not burned will let us burn twice as much natural gas in terms of CO2, and with far less pollution. And we have more gas than we can burn without blowing our carbon budget anyway.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Repeat after me: No open cut coal mine has ever damaged the local ecology. No coal mine tailings spill has ever damaged the local ecology. Strip mining has ever damaged the local ecology. Coal mining has never damaged water supplies.
- NiftyFifty 11y ago
  Australia has no guns. How could they be a threat to anyone?
- gallamine 11y ago
  > pursuit of the almighty dollar Turns out, not having any of those almighty dollars ends up looking like this town - pretty bad.
Donzo 11y ago
For those interested in learning more about the erosion of the American heartland by the widespread use of prescription narcotics, particularly Oxycontin, I strongly recommend the book "Dreamland," a nonfiction text weaving together the narratives of the opiode boom in American medicine and the spread of Xalisco black tar herion cells throughout American cities that had seldom seen heroin: http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402505/ http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemi... Very readable and educational. I couldn't put it down, and it tied together a lot of disparate threads that I have noticed over the past two decades but which I was unable to connect myself.
- gadders 11y ago
  There is also the film Prescription Thugs, directed by Chris Bell: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4505666/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4505666/
- wil421 11y ago
  The erosion is not just isolated to the heartland. Grew up in a suburban area and the epidemic was just as bad. Highschoolers were getting hooked at a very young age and some elderly people were selling their Oxycontin as well. This has since changed as the laws/regulations regarding filling Oxycontin perceptions changed. Now Heroin is becoming an epidemic. Some friends in law enforcement have told me there is a big increase in high schoolers and young 20s using Heroin, which causes an increase in them becoming thieves or prostitutes (15 and 16 year olds from somewhat well off families running away from home).
- michaelchisari 11y ago
  I also recommend the 2013 documentary, Oxyana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrE1uxGd6OQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrE1uxGd6OQ
mauvehaus 11y ago
Beattyville is near/in the Red River Gorge area, depending on exactly where you draw the boundaries. I've spent a lot of time nearby on climbing trips, and yes, the area is astonishingly poor. Climbers rarely get that far south of Mountain Parkway, but the whole area is in pretty rough shape. I think one of the things that's interesting to consider about this is that there is a large stream of people coming into the area, and it isn't just climbers. The area is full of recreation opportunities. What isn't clear is how to ensure that the money works its way out into the communities. In all of the trips I've made, I've spent money in just a handful of businesses: 3 campgrounds, 1 pizza place (which also happens to be a campground), 1 other restaurant, the much loved beer trailer, and the Shell station in Slade. It's not clear that tourism is a viable replacement for resource extraction in an area where there are established communities. Tourism, and eco-tourism specifically, is something we see pitched as a way to save undeveloped land in the developing world, but based on what I see in the Red River Gorge area, it hasn't brought much prosperity to the region as a whole. Perhaps if there isn't an established economy and population based on resource extraction it can be made to work, but the hard reality seems to be that resource extraction employs a lot more people. I love getting outside, and the Red River Gorge area is a beautiful place to do it. I want to see the country (and the world) make a shift towards renewable energy. I work to reduce the amount of waste I generate. But when you get right down to it, there are a lot of places where the economy is based on resource extraction, and I have a hard time envisioning what the people living in those places are going to do if the brighter, greener future comes to pass. Beattyville may be struggling because the cost of coal mining locally can't compete with the cost of coal mining in Wyoming, but making a shift towards greener energy is going to put a lot more communities in a similar situation.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  >> But when you get right down to it, there are a lot of places where the economy is based on resource extraction, and I have a hard time envisioning what the people living in those places are going to do if the brighter, greener future comes to pass. There aren't going to be nearly as many people living in those places. Like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath people will move to greener pastures. We can make that transition easier or harder, but there's not much we can do to prevent it altogether and we probably shouldn't even if we could.
NiftyFifty 11y ago
Try any mining town in the south west - Trona comes to mind. That was a town ruled by meth, with mining as its main bread winner. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-meth/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-...
cjbenedikt 11y ago
On that note: http://www.twodollarsaday.com/ http://www.twodollarsaday.com/
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
I find this kind of "in depth" news series frustrating. The problem here is not lack of coal business; it's lack of ability or motivation for these people to pull up stakes and move to a better area. I would suggest North Dakota, or would have up until a year or two ago when the price of oil dropped drastically. The jobs up there were paying crazy wages, truck drivers pulling six figures, restaurant dish washers making $15-20/hour etc. It's a temporary boom but the fact is, that's where the jobs are, or were. Still better economy up there than in Kentucky, even now. Thus, what's really missing from these backward areas is education. With good education, even just K-8, people will have the ability and resources to understand that they can vote with their feet and move to where the economic opportunities are. Someone with mining experience might do OK as a roughneck in west Texas, Oklahoma, or North Dakota. If you're a hard worker and have been in the mines, or driven trucks, or done back breaking work outdoors, you're going to be able to find something. But as for people who just sit around their cabins, the classic backwoods hillbilly stereotype, addicted to opioids or other chemicals and unable to or unwilling to do something about their situation -- sorry if this sounds hard hearted but it's hard for me to dredge up a lot of sympathy. Someone who's not sitting around feeling sorry for himself and abusing drugs -- that's the one I have sympathy and respect for.
- lumberjack 11y ago
  >With good education, even just K-8, people will have the ability and resources to understand that they can vote with their feet and move to where the economic opportunities are. With good education you might understand that there is a non-insignificant relocation cost that not everyone can afford.
  - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
    Well, no one's saying it's easy to pick up and move. But sometimes it's just necessary.
    - bittercynic 11y ago
      Even if it's necessary, how do you manage to move if you have zero dollars, empty tank (or no car), constant calls from collectors (if your phone is hooked up)... Sometimes it's not hard, but impossible.

139 points by dthal 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

BanMeWithRage 11y ago

Statistical outliers of no importance. Their whiteness will eventually solve all of their problems.

lionhearted 11y ago

Last year, I had a half-day in a place that went through a similar transition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raton,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raton,_New_Mexico Made an impression on me. Wrote a poem about it on the train -- Raton Station It’s flat Flatness rolls for miles around Mountains in the distance Flatness approaching the peaks Scenic clouds dot the sky Looking perhaps painted on The place is rather idyllic Except for, well, you know Every store is having a sale Of the stores still open If you want to lease a building The local Radio Shack is also town landlord The people are friendly enough 7,000 of them are scraping by The waitress loves it here Despite saving money to move to Omaha We hitched a ride in the bed of the pickup To the stretch with restaurants and hotels still open I asked what had happened here? The coal mines shut down

forgetsusername 11y ago
Good stuff. For others interested in the subject, Frontline has a great documentary about growing up in Floyd Country, Kentucky, Country Boys: "Filmed over three years (1999-2002), "Country Boys" tracks the dramatic stories of Chris and Cody from ages 15 to 18. With the same intimate cinematic technique and sound design that distinguished "The Farmer's Wife," Sutherland's new film bears witness to the two boys' struggles to overcome the poverty and family dysfunction of their childhood in a quest for a brighter future. This film also offers unexpected insights into a forgotten corner of rural America that is at once isolated and connected, a landscape dotted with roughshod trailer homes and wired with DSL." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/view/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/view/
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
Ha, a good friend of mine moved his business to Raton about 15 years ago. The town we're both from is much smaller and as evidenced by his success there, less economically vibrant than even Raton.
sanderjd 11y ago
Nice poem, but I thought the part about it being flat was strange, since there's a mountain pass into Colorado just north of town, called Raton Pass. Maybe that was symbolism?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  If you're not familiar with Raton, go check it out on Google Street View. There's mountains in the distance, but not otherwise a whole lot of geography.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    I did have a look at Raton and surrounding roads on Street View earlier and actually thought it looked rather pleasant.

chris_wot 11y ago

Australia needs to learn this lesson. Eventually coal will be phased out significantly enough that mass mining don't be economical. In the meantime we ruin our ecology in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

barney54 11y ago
Mining coal in Australia in the 21st century is not lawless. It does not "ruin the ecology." It has CO2 impacts to be sure, but does not ruin the ecology. On the plus side it provides indispensable, low-cost, electricity for poor people in Asia--people who wouldn't have electricity if not for coal.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Coal's only cheap when you don't bother to count all it's negative effects, which will predominately be borne by the poor people you're (slightly bizarrely) claiming to serve. Coal isn't something worth celebrating, it should be phased out as quickly as possible. Every unit of coal not burned will let us burn twice as much natural gas in terms of CO2, and with far less pollution. And we have more gas than we can burn without blowing our carbon budget anyway.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Repeat after me: No open cut coal mine has ever damaged the local ecology. No coal mine tailings spill has ever damaged the local ecology. Strip mining has ever damaged the local ecology. Coal mining has never damaged water supplies.
NiftyFifty 11y ago
Australia has no guns. How could they be a threat to anyone?
gallamine 11y ago
> pursuit of the almighty dollar Turns out, not having any of those almighty dollars ends up looking like this town - pretty bad.

Donzo 11y ago

For those interested in learning more about the erosion of the American heartland by the widespread use of prescription narcotics, particularly Oxycontin, I strongly recommend the book "Dreamland," a nonfiction text weaving together the narratives of the opiode boom in American medicine and the spread of Xalisco black tar herion cells throughout American cities that had seldom seen heroin: http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402505/ http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemi... Very readable and educational. I couldn't put it down, and it tied together a lot of disparate threads that I have noticed over the past two decades but which I was unable to connect myself.

gadders 11y ago
There is also the film Prescription Thugs, directed by Chris Bell: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4505666/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4505666/
wil421 11y ago
The erosion is not just isolated to the heartland. Grew up in a suburban area and the epidemic was just as bad. Highschoolers were getting hooked at a very young age and some elderly people were selling their Oxycontin as well. This has since changed as the laws/regulations regarding filling Oxycontin perceptions changed. Now Heroin is becoming an epidemic. Some friends in law enforcement have told me there is a big increase in high schoolers and young 20s using Heroin, which causes an increase in them becoming thieves or prostitutes (15 and 16 year olds from somewhat well off families running away from home).
michaelchisari 11y ago
I also recommend the 2013 documentary, Oxyana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrE1uxGd6OQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrE1uxGd6OQ

mauvehaus 11y ago

Beattyville is near/in the Red River Gorge area, depending on exactly where you draw the boundaries. I've spent a lot of time nearby on climbing trips, and yes, the area is astonishingly poor. Climbers rarely get that far south of Mountain Parkway, but the whole area is in pretty rough shape. I think one of the things that's interesting to consider about this is that there is a large stream of people coming into the area, and it isn't just climbers. The area is full of recreation opportunities. What isn't clear is how to ensure that the money works its way out into the communities. In all of the trips I've made, I've spent money in just a handful of businesses: 3 campgrounds, 1 pizza place (which also happens to be a campground), 1 other restaurant, the much loved beer trailer, and the Shell station in Slade. It's not clear that tourism is a viable replacement for resource extraction in an area where there are established communities. Tourism, and eco-tourism specifically, is something we see pitched as a way to save undeveloped land in the developing world, but based on what I see in the Red River Gorge area, it hasn't brought much prosperity to the region as a whole. Perhaps if there isn't an established economy and population based on resource extraction it can be made to work, but the hard reality seems to be that resource extraction employs a lot more people. I love getting outside, and the Red River Gorge area is a beautiful place to do it. I want to see the country (and the world) make a shift towards renewable energy. I work to reduce the amount of waste I generate. But when you get right down to it, there are a lot of places where the economy is based on resource extraction, and I have a hard time envisioning what the people living in those places are going to do if the brighter, greener future comes to pass. Beattyville may be struggling because the cost of coal mining locally can't compete with the cost of coal mining in Wyoming, but making a shift towards greener energy is going to put a lot more communities in a similar situation.

bradleyjg 11y ago
>> But when you get right down to it, there are a lot of places where the economy is based on resource extraction, and I have a hard time envisioning what the people living in those places are going to do if the brighter, greener future comes to pass. There aren't going to be nearly as many people living in those places. Like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath people will move to greener pastures. We can make that transition easier or harder, but there's not much we can do to prevent it altogether and we probably shouldn't even if we could.

NiftyFifty 11y ago

Try any mining town in the south west - Trona comes to mind. That was a town ruled by meth, with mining as its main bread winner. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-meth/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-...

cjbenedikt 11y ago

On that note: http://www.twodollarsaday.com/ http://www.twodollarsaday.com/

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

I find this kind of "in depth" news series frustrating. The problem here is not lack of coal business; it's lack of ability or motivation for these people to pull up stakes and move to a better area. I would suggest North Dakota, or would have up until a year or two ago when the price of oil dropped drastically. The jobs up there were paying crazy wages, truck drivers pulling six figures, restaurant dish washers making $15-20/hour etc. It's a temporary boom but the fact is, that's where the jobs are, or were. Still better economy up there than in Kentucky, even now. Thus, what's really missing from these backward areas is education. With good education, even just K-8, people will have the ability and resources to understand that they can vote with their feet and move to where the economic opportunities are. Someone with mining experience might do OK as a roughneck in west Texas, Oklahoma, or North Dakota. If you're a hard worker and have been in the mines, or driven trucks, or done back breaking work outdoors, you're going to be able to find something. But as for people who just sit around their cabins, the classic backwoods hillbilly stereotype, addicted to opioids or other chemicals and unable to or unwilling to do something about their situation -- sorry if this sounds hard hearted but it's hard for me to dredge up a lot of sympathy. Someone who's not sitting around feeling sorry for himself and abusing drugs -- that's the one I have sympathy and respect for.

lumberjack 11y ago
>With good education, even just K-8, people will have the ability and resources to understand that they can vote with their feet and move to where the economic opportunities are. With good education you might understand that there is a non-insignificant relocation cost that not everyone can afford.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Well, no one's saying it's easy to pick up and move. But sometimes it's just necessary.
  - bittercynic 11y ago
    Even if it's necessary, how do you manage to move if you have zero dollars, empty tank (or no car), constant calls from collectors (if your phone is hooked up)... Sometimes it's not hard, but impossible.