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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Last year, I had a half-day in a place that went through a similar transition:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raton,_New_Mexico" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raton,_New_Mexico</a><p>Made an impression on me. Wrote a poem about it on the train --<p><pre><code> 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</code></pre>
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: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402505/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemi...</a><p>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.
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. <a href="http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-meth/" rel="nofollow">http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-...</a>
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>not</i> sitting around feeling sorry for himself and abusing drugs -- that's the one I have sympathy and respect for.