Appalachia: Settlement and Coal
With the coming of the industrial revolution, coal became the fuel that fired the furnaces
of the nation, transforming the Appalachian region socially and economically. Unfortunately
mountain people didn't realize the implications of their mineral wealth. Many sold their
land and mineral rights for pennies an acre to outlanders. Appalachians became laborers
rather than entrepreneurs. Coal became a major industry which was extremely sensitive to
outside fluctuations in the economy, leading to boom and bust cycles. The industry was
controlled by interests outside the region, so that little of the profit remained or was
reinvested.

When oil flooded the marketplace in the 1950s it displaced coal as the nation's primary source
of energy. Coal company towns that met housing and other needs of miners and their families,
freezing out the development of more diversified economies, abandoned these communities,
leaving the people to fend for themselves.

This might not have been so devastating except that the coal bust was accompanied by the
region's lack of diversification, and failure to keep pace with changing times and new
technologies. The period from 1940 to 1970 saw the Appalachian region lose more than 3 million
people to outmigration.

By 1960, it looked as if oil had sounded the death knell for coal, and in doing so, had doomed
Appalachia to an economic depression from which it might not ever recover. During the 1980s
outmigration from rural areas accelerated again, as the Ohio Valley was devastated by the
collapse of the steel industry.