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Postscript U.S. Steel’s departure from Gary Hollow was not a departure from the company’s coal mining business. The company, after all, continued to maintain coal mines, like the ones in Wyoming County, whose reserves amounted to a roughly 400-year supply of coal. Even so, U.S. Steel was mining less and less of that coal each year while continuing to pay heavy taxes on what remained in the ground.1 Given this scenario, support among U.S. Steel officials for maintaining the company’s coal mining interests began to erode. By the early 1990s U.S. Steel was rumored to be negotiating with potential buyers to divest itself of more mining properties and perhaps of the company’s entire mining operation.2 The rumors proved true, but a deal to sell U.S. Steel’s mines was not finalized until July 2003, when the company announced that PinnOak Resources would acquire all U.S. Steel Mining Company assets for a total purchase price to be determined in the future. U.S. Steel received $50 million as an advance payment, but more would be added to that amount once final asset inventory was completed.3 The number of mining jobs that remained in Gary Hollow in 1990 was estimated at 180. There were only 1,250 estimated for all of McDowell County. Young persons were encouraged to leave the place once they completed high school, since there obviously was little future for those who remained.4 And leave they did. Gary’s 1990 population was estimated at 1,355, a 39 percent drop from 1980. Among that population, 458 were males, twenty years of age and older. Of the 458 males, 53 percent were fifty-five years of age or older.5 Clearly, Gary’s male population had skewed toward the older crowd. More discouraging yet were numbers from the 2000 U.S. Census that revealed a Gary population estimate of 920—a near 32 percent decline from 1990. Of the 920 residents, age sixteen and over, 340 were males; 424 were females. Little more than a third (37.3 percent) of the Gary population was estimated to be in the labor force. And only 421 of the 543 housing units then existing in Gary were occupied.6 Many of those who elected to remain in Gary Hollow were retired. Maybe they could have moved elsewhere, but they owned their home in Gary, they probably had spent much of their life there, and they were 214 Postscript content to stay. Some also were content to use their seniority to put them at the head of any recall list. And some, it might be assumed, stayed because they simply had nowhere else to go. What also was clear was that Gary had come to resemble other McDowell County towns in ways that for so long had kept it apart. All the big coal companies, U.S. Steel being the biggest, now had departed the county. Small operators had moved in to scavenge what coal remained. But the “wagon mines” that these operators opened had about twenty employees per mine. And many of the miners, like the operators themselves, lived in Virginia or perhaps no closer than Bluefield.7 Oddly, coal mining in Gary Hollow had become a kind of commuter enterprise. Coal production in general migrated toward the western part of the county and away from the once-vaunted Pocahontas Field, which now was capable of yielding far less coal with far less metallurgical quality.8 The year 2002 marked Gary’s centennial. One hundred years before Gary Hollow was bursting with activity. Trees were falling to make way for mines and communities. Houses and other structures were beginning to appear. Mining engineers were plotting the best spots to begin opening portals to the rich and abundant veins of Pocahontas coal. And the folks who would work the mines and inhabit this place—in some cases for generations to come—began arriving. One hundred years later, there would be no parades, no speeches, no pageants, no celebration of any sort to mark the occasion of Gary’s birth. Most Gary Hollow residents probably had no idea that Gary had been around so long. Quite likely, few cared. The trucks and trains that so seldom moved along Gary Hollow’s roads and railroad tracks in 2002 were a constant presence in year’s past. Such a buzz of activity as existed in Gary was common for what arguably was...

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