Job Losses Plaguing Southwest VA – Trails Can Help

The Richmond Times Dispatch recently featured a series of articles on declining communities across Virginia. The August, 14 edition featured Southwest Virginia, former home of booming coal and textile industries. Many of these industries have closed, and locals are desperate to find work.

A number of hiking and cycling trails, including the Appalachian Trail, Virginia Creeper Trail, US Bike Route 76 and New River Trail pass through Southwest Virginia, bringing tourism dollars and desperately needed jobs to these communities.

Trails like the A.T. and Creeper have become economic engines for small towns like Damascus, where work in traditional industries is hard to come by. This type of tourism is so vital to Damascus, it bills itself as “Trail Town, USA”.

In the Times-Dispatch article, one resident, Tony Blair, who returned to Pulaski, summed up the situation and stated the benefits of these types of trails quite well:

Blair, 65, was born and raised in Southwest Virginia before leaving to embark on a career as a geologist. He recently returned to take care of his ailing mother in Pulaski County and can’t find work. “It’s a beautiful area, but it’s a really tough place. The textile industry has really gone down. It’s that and geography,” he said, adding that having to blast a road through the mountains is less desirable than building them in flatlands. “And maybe the image, too — that we’re all hillbillies.” Blair added that one thing that Pulaski, and all of the Southwest, has to build on is its natural beauty, pointing to the New River Trail State Park — which meanders 57 miles through four counties along an abandoned railroad right-of-way — as a prime example. “One of our best assets is the trail, because it’s kind of hard to move a trail to China,” he said.

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