Trump’s vow to revive coal country is met with measured hope
WILLIAMSON, W.Va. — The hard-eyed view along the Tug Fork River in West Virginia coal country is that President-elect Donald Trump has something to prove: that he’ll help bring back Appalachian mining, as he promised time and again on the campaign trail. Nobody thinks he can revive it entirely — not economists, not ex-miners, not even those recently called back to work.
But for the first time in years, coal towns are seeing a commodity that had grown scarcer than the coal trains that used to rumble through around the clock: hope.