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I woke up to a rainbow over Charleston. After exploring the city's western side, I can assure you there’s no pot of gold at its end. Better Homes and Gardens is never going to feature that particular part of West Virginia's state capitol.
I can also assure you that few of the people I passed in the mountains on the way here are singing John Denver’s ode to the Mountain State, proclaiming West Virginia almost heaven. For many if not most, it’s hell.
Rebel With a Cause
I begin my chronicle of West Virginia's green hell (as opposed to the Nurburgring) mindful of a regular reader's remonstration.
"True rebels of today shine the light on the forgotten, hidden good," he chided.
Yes, well, there's nothing hidden about the poverty I saw in West Virginia. And while I couldn't bring myself to photograph the desperation – unwilling to create poverty porn – neither could I ignore or fail to report it.
Desperate Times
The Western Appalachians are home to tens of thousands of desperate Americans. Entire communities eviscerated by chronic unemployment and the ongoing ravages of methamphetamine and opioid addiction.
Clinging to the roads winding through the Appalachians: shuttered shops with shattered glass. Decrepit mobile homes better described as permanent hovels. Tiny wooden houses falling to rack and ruin.
Sad structures all. Many strewn with dead cars and appliances rusting in full view. Swingless swing sets. A farrago of broken artifacts from better days.
By the Numbers
Perplexity's poverty stats confirm what I saw with my own two eyes. Government assistance accounts for nearly 34 percent of West Virginians’ personal income. The highest rate among all 50 states.
Not surprising, then, that West Virginia also has the highest child poverty rate in the U.S. Twenty-five percent of the state’s children live in households with an annual income below $32k per year.
And if that isn't enough misery to go 'round, and it surely is, West Virginia recorded some 1300 overdose deaths in 2021 (nearly three times the national average). Opioid abuse accounts for half of the 7000 children in foster care.
Backroad Bliss But...
My inner rebel bids me pause this disheartening litany to point out the astounding beauty surrounding the poverty I encountered riding from Fayetteville to Charlottesville.
West Virginia may not be almost heaven to its downtrodden residents, but it's motorcycling manna for two-wheeled travelers.
Fritz and I sashayed down mile after mile of twisting tarmac. Roads that snaked through lush forests. Guiding us up, over and around impressive peaks, offering stunning vistas before plunging us into deep, verdant valleys.
Even as I marveled at the scenery, I was cognizant of the fact that the roads only existed because of the natural resources to which they provided access. The beauty I was enjoying was a coda to the indiscriminate rape of the land by large scale logging and strip mining.
I was further reminded of the source of West Virginia's past prosperity when we crossed the railroad tracks running parallel to our progress.
Railroads that were once the region’s lifeblood, enabling mile-long freight trains carrying coal to what’s now known as the Rust Belt. Feeding enormous steel-making factories and power plants throughout West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.
The weeds growing over those tracks spoke of King Coal’s collapse. Good for the land, bad for the people. Obviously.
Country Roads
West Virginia now has more clean energy jobs (whatever those are) than coal jobs. Regardless, the Mountain State will never be the literal powerhouse it once was.
To rescue West Virginia's forgotten men, woman and children from poverty and drug abuse, the state must find another way forward.
The growing rafting, hiking and touring industry around Fayetteville is a bright spot on an otherwise bleak economic horizon.
Whether there are enough out-of-state outdoor enthusiasts to put money in the pockets of the state's more remote populations, and how that could happen, is anyone's guess. This much I know...
My Appalachian odyssey opened my eyes to the suffering of the residents who call West Virginia's country roads home. It also made me understand why most of them don't want to leave. Let me put it this way...
After my first ride through the Blue Ridge Mountains, I bought a sticker for my computer that said "I hear the mountains calling and I must go."
For more than a million long-suffering West Virginians living in or near the Appalachian mountains, the sticker would read "I hear the mountains calling and I must stay."
Respect.
It’s interesting to me how the Democrats are attacking the writer of hillbilly elegy, because he is the real deal. The left can’t decide if it likes poor people or hates poor people. Here in Oregon we had 30% of the folks on welfare, despite all the natural resources that exist in the Pacific Northwest. Gotta admit it was a shock to me. The first time I saw so many poor white people. When you grow up sheltered from poor folks, and only see poor blacks and Mexicans, then seeing a whole culture of poor white trash is rather unsettling.
Just as Steve Jobs told a Congressional Committee when asked to move production back to the USA: “those jobs are not coming back.” Your ride through the Greenbrier Valley only exposed you to the tip of the iceberg as the Greenbrier Valley is one of the richer parts of southern West Virginia and the most beautiful. You want to see economic devastation travel Logan County and the SW counties boarding Kentucky. The mines are gone, the jobs are gone, the people remain. Fifty years ago many of us argued that the natural resources were being pulled from the state to benefit of other regions of the country and absentee owners. The answer was but it proved jobs, but when the…
My grandfather - a Hungarian immigrant - was a coal miner in West Virginia in the 1920s. He was an active part of efforts to unionize the miners. (Check out the John Sayles film “Matewan” for more on that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matewan ). The company town my grandfather and his family lived in - Ward - disappeared after the vein dried up about 1969-70. I would say that my family was lucky to get out of West Virginia when they did. But I have visited the state a number of times and understand the residents’ despair. Thanks for posting this.
The second photo is particularly powerful the way it juxtaposed the beauty and the poverty, as is the writing. What you say jibes with some medical articles I've written probably 2-4 or five years ago having to do with WVA. Such beauty. Such despair. I camped in a couple of the beauty spots around 45-plus years ago. You tempt me to want to drive there.
I did drive through a small piece of that state, traveling from a friend's in Quakertown PA to my nephew's wedding in Charlottesville VA, but on that particular maybe 30-40 mile stretch of highway, I felt neither WVA's beauty or its despair.
I really look forward to these accounts of your travels.