livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
With Trump in office, coal mining town begins making comeback
Hazard, Kentucky is one of those small coal-mining towns with one main road snaking through the hollow. Both sides of the road are lined with a handful of retail stores and restaurants. The windows on about half of those stores are now covered with newspaper. The signs out front say, “closed.”
That’s what happens in a one-industry town when the president turns against that industry. Carla Hall at tiny Feltner’s Barbershop, right on the main road, knows that too well.
"My business went down tremendously,” she said.
Like Carla, everyone in town, from the insurance salesman to the waitress at the coffee shop, is ultimately connected to money that comes out of the mine.
“When they start getting laid off, they stretch out the haircuts,” she said.
However, there is a new sense of optimism in coal country and that is linked to a new president who, from the campaign trail, frequently bellowed: “We are going to put our miners back to work.”
“I love mining coal,” Carlos Sturdill said 250 feet underground in the E4-1 mine in Hazard. That mine shut down in the Obama years. There are many factors that allowed the mine to re-open and people like Sturdill to get back to work.
For starters, the entire economy has seen a bump. That has created a demand for steel. The high-quality coal that comes out of Appalachia is well suited for making steel.
With Trump in office, coal mining town begins making comeback
Hazard, Kentucky is one of those small coal-mining towns with one main road snaking through the hollow. Both sides of the road are lined with a handful of retail stores and restaurants. The windows on about half of those stores are now covered with newspaper. The signs out front say, “closed.”
That’s what happens in a one-industry town when the president turns against that industry. Carla Hall at tiny Feltner’s Barbershop, right on the main road, knows that too well.
"My business went down tremendously,” she said.
Like Carla, everyone in town, from the insurance salesman to the waitress at the coffee shop, is ultimately connected to money that comes out of the mine.
“When they start getting laid off, they stretch out the haircuts,” she said.
However, there is a new sense of optimism in coal country and that is linked to a new president who, from the campaign trail, frequently bellowed: “We are going to put our miners back to work.”
“I love mining coal,” Carlos Sturdill said 250 feet underground in the E4-1 mine in Hazard. That mine shut down in the Obama years. There are many factors that allowed the mine to re-open and people like Sturdill to get back to work.
For starters, the entire economy has seen a bump. That has created a demand for steel. The high-quality coal that comes out of Appalachia is well suited for making steel.
With Trump in office, coal mining town begins making comeback