Abandoned Appalachia Series A Mid‑Century Push for Modern Utilities In the years after World War II, small cities across the southern Appalachian coalfields raced to install the public works that bigger towns already took for granted. Whitesburg’s answer was a stout, cinder‑block water‑treatment plant erected at the foot of School Hill, just yards from Main Street and the North Fork of the Kentucky River.

Appalachian History Series On a sweltering July dawn in 1973, the sleepy hamlet of Brookside woke to the rumble of coal trucks and the sight of cardboard signs nailed to wooden staves: UMWA ON STRIKE—NO CONTRACT, NO COAL. By nightfall gunshots echoed off the Clover Fork valley walls, and Harlan County was once again poised to earn its nickname, “Bloody Harlan.” Over the ensuing thirteen months,

Appalachian History Series On a gray Tuesday morning—May 5, 1931—a handful of laid‑off coal miners shouldered rifles along the Poor Fork Road just east of Evarts, Kentucky.

Repurposed Appalachia Series ​ Being perched between 4,100 and 4,223 feet on the rugged spine of Stone Mountain, the modern High Knob Observation Tower greets each sunrise with a gleam of galvanized steel on sandstone. Long before it became a scenic waypoint for motorists and hikers near Norton, Virginia, High Knob’s summit served an urgent purpose: keeping watch for wildfire.

Forgotten Appalachia Series Tucked away in downtown Harlan, Kentucky, an unassuming patch of grassy ground at 206 East Clover Street conceals one of the county’s oldest and most intriguing burial grounds. Once hidden behind the walls of a crumbling Ford dealership building, this “secret cemetery” has only recently come back into public view—and with it, the faded chapter of Harlan’s early settlers and their storied feuds.

This is the Fourth in a series exploring once-thriving Appalachian towns left behind by shifting energy markets and changing times.

This is the First in a series exploring once-thriving Appalachian towns left behind by shifting energy markets and changing times.

This is the Second in a series exploring once-thriving Appalachian towns left behind by shifting energy markets and changing times.

This is the Third in a series exploring once-thriving Appalachian towns left behind by shifting energy markets and changing times.