Ghost Towns of the Ohio Valley...I have been researching and posting Ghost Towns of the Ohio Valley. There arent many in the immediate Upper Ohio Valley, but there are quite a few in our coverage area. There are actually many more in West Virginia than Ohio or Pennsylvania. Most are in the same area and the story is the same. They started out when coal mining was king back in the late 1800s. Towns sprang up around the coal mines. They were company towns controlled and run by coal companies. You were paid in script and had to buy from the company store. You never got out of debt. As the old Tennessee Ernie Ford song went, Sixteen tons...and what do you get...another day older and deeper in debt? That was the story. The populations of these towns were around 2000, about the same size as the typical town in the local Ohio Valley today. Then, during the 1950s, the bottom dropped out. Sometimes, the local coal seam was depleted so there was no more coal to mine. Other times, the small coal operators could no longer afford to compete with the larger coal operators who could afford the newer technologies. .Some of these townS still have a small population of 5 to 10 souls. In most cases, there is nobody left there. Do you find these stories depressing and a prediction of what is to come for the rest of us, or do you enjoy hearing about these ghost towns? As I am researching this, the story is very depressing, but these are the facts! youtube/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 09:31:01 +0000