Chapter 2

Millenium [1950 – 2023]

Northern Appalachia’s glory days are gone. Her crumbling factories and abandoned railroads are the fossilized skeletons of a magnificent past. Appalachians first confronted post-industrialism sometime in the midcentury and saw it completed by Y2K. With the Soviet Union crumbling during the 1980s, globalism accelerated. The availability of cheap foreign labor stretched or pushed out many of the remaining manufacturing jobs in Northern Appalachia. While labor still exists in Northern Appalachia, it is mostly utilities and logistics: warehousing, trucking, or infrastructure maintenance. Even highly “homegrown” brands like Hershey and Heinz shifted most of their production outside the United States. Industrial jobs are far below midcentury levels, when labor and manufacturing accounted for over two-thirds of urban employment. For example: In 1990, in Youngstown, OH, roughly 60,000 citizens worked in manufacturing. By 2022, only about 24,000 citizens worked in manufacturing. Youngstown is widely comparable to many cities and towns in Northern Appalachia.

The fall from prosperity to squalor was not sudden or universal. But it was widespread and decisive. Starting sometime in the 1960s, heavy industry struggled to hold against global pressures. Long-standing weakness began to show. Bankruptcies and consolidations could only hold back the greater pain for so long. Factories closed, companies went under, and entire communities lost livelihoods. By the end of the 20th century, heavy industry and manufacturing were widely defunct across Northern Appalachia. Some small operations persisted, but employment and output were a fraction of earlier levels. Governments, families, and individuals all struggled with less work, less money, and less hope.

Much of America is familiar with the issues and imagery of modern-day Appalachia. J.D. Vance’s nostalgic, somewhat mythical memoirHillbilly Elegy captured the curiosity of readers around the world. And the later Netflix movie popularized and Hollywoodized the spectacle for non-readers. “Appalachian Fiction” is now a genuine subgenre of popular literature. Other works of non-fiction also arrived in mass media around the same time (2015 – 2023). Sam Quinones’Dreamland told a fascinating saga of death by opioids. A dozen other best-selling books tried to uncover the injustices of the opioid epidemic, crystal meth, “black tar” heroin, and/or fentanyl. Most of those books centered on Northern Appalachia; Quinones focused specifically on Ohio. Even scholarly works like Hillary Isenberg’sWhite Trash tap into the same curiosity and the rekindling energy around Appalachia. And then there is the internet. Modern media like documentaries, exposés, podcasts, and investigative reports all tap into the same curiosity.

Stories likeHillbilly Elegy show a strong juxtaposition. Many Americans live in a technocratic, idealistic, google-powered society. This contrasts sharply with the humble, isolated, quaint people of the Appalachian Mountains. The rustic charms of Appalachian society can be captivating. Some experience a similar curiosity tow