The Richest County in West Virginia Became the Poorest

In March of 1983, one town in West Virginia hit 90 percent unemployment — the highest rate ever recorded in any American town. The town was called Gary. It sits in McDowell County, a place that once mined more coal than any county in the entire United States and once held almost 100,000 people. Today, fewer than 17,000 do. This is the full story of McDowell County, West Virginia — from a dollar-an-acre land deal sealed with a horse in 1888, through a coal boom that fed a quarter of U.S. Steel's wartime coal supply, to a union's own mechanization deal, a bank scandal that ended with federal records buried in a hundred-foot trench, and a county still recovering from a flood that hit four months ago. — Topics covered: The founding of Welch and the Flat Top-Pocahontas coalfield McDowell County at its peak — the "Free State of McDowell" The 1950 Mechanization Agreement and the decline of coal jobs The collapse of Gary, West Virginia and the First National Bank of Keystone scandal What remains today — This video uses AI-generated imagery created to visually represent historical scenes and present-day locations. — This is Abandoned US Industries — the channel that covers the places American industry built, used, and walked away from. New video every week. Subscribe to follow the series.