Virginia's Coal Fields Counties: Digging Out of a Slump
At the Buster Brown children's clothing factory in Coeburn, Va., manager Joe Gillespie speaks the sort of language unheard for years in the coal fields counties of Southwest Virginia: "We've hired 60 people in the last two months and we plan on hiring another 60 in the next few months."</br></br>Almost unnoticed, the economy of the chronically depressed counties along the Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia borders has begun to stir for the first time since a worldwide boom in coal peaked in 1982.</br></br>Shopping centers are under construction in St. Paul and Norton. Outside Lebanon, Mattaco Inc. has put 65 people to work making parts for automobile cruise-control mechanisms destined for new Fords, a figure that will rise to 150 as soon as the company can get additional production machinery up and running.</br></br>Meanwhile, since the region's rugged landscape makes it hard to find enough flat land for a house, much less a factory site, a remote mountaintop is being leveled in Buchanan County to accommodate a new $32 million state prison that eventually will provide about 350 new jobs and an annual payroll of $7 million.</br></br>The new prison, which was ordered put in Buchanan County by Gov. Gerald L. Baliles precisely to give the area an economic boost, is the largest, but not the only, evidence of a determination in Richmond to try to help the coal fields counties begin to catch up with the economic success of the rest of the state.