ANAWALT — Thurman Chapman sits on the porch of his little house up a curvy road between Anawalt and Jenkinjones. On a sunny day in late May, a slight breeze plays melody on the wind chimes hanging from his awning.
Chapman, 82, lived his whole life in McDowell County. He’s been married going on 53 years, and his daughter is rearing her little family just a few houses down.
His life has been one of labor, working six days a week on 12 hour shifts at U.S. Steel prep plants in Gary and in Pineville, up a piece in Wyoming County. His back has taken the brunt, with two surgeries. But the work supported his family. Back in the day, it supported a lot of families throughout the southern portion of the state.
When Chapman was a kid, Anawalt had stores. He described the sidewalks being so busy, his parents had him walk in the street to make way for the elderly and the infirmed.
Today, all that’s left is a post office, a small playground and a long-shuttered bar.
Chapman is just about blind – he relies on his children to get him groceries. If it’s a little thing, they can drive 10-20 minutes to Gary to the little Exxon that serves as a country store. A big haul requires a trip to Bluefield, roughly an hour away.
When Chapman turns the faucet at his house, some days water spurts out, other days it’s nothing.
There’s a lot that needs to be done in the county and Chapman said the people in charge just don’t seem to care.
“It’s just words spoken, blown with the wind,” he said. “They don’t have to listen to you. You don’t run things; we run things. I think some of them are going to be seeing a difference come election time.”
Over in Welch, Pastor George Masterson of the St. James Baptist Church had a similar opinion, but he doubts anything will get done after the ballots are counted.
“You get promises, promises, promises, but nothing ever comes to fruition,” he said. “They’re doing a little bit more now that it’s election time. But after the election, you’re not going to get very much.”
House candidates in ‘forgotten county’ need votes, and voters need hope
But this November, McDowell Countians like Chapman and Masterson will have a choice in the race for the 36th district in the House of Delegates, where two relatively fresh faces will compete for their votes.
On the Republican side is S. David Green, a local insurance agent who was appointed by the governor in January after Del. Anita Hall resigned. On the Democrat side is Tiffany Clemins, a school teacher who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 2022.
Since 2008, McDowell County has had some of the lowest voter turnout in the state – this spring’s primary election was no different. Only 22% of registered voters cast a ballot in the May primary.
But plenty of people have voted with their feet. In 1950, during the height of coal production, McDowell County had nearly 100,000 people. Today, it’s a few hundred shy of 18,000.
Sitting at a table with her girlfriends at the Welch McDonald’s, Grace Mikels said she remembers the days when the county seat was bustling, when one could catch a cab and all the storefronts downtown were filled.
“You had everything in the 50s and 60s, but then the mines went down and so did everybody else,” Mikels said.
For the people who remain, there’s a myriad of challenges to face: lack of affordable food, dirty water and busted up roads. Over and over again, locals said that the state and federal government have turned their backs on the southernmost corner of West Virginia.
“We’re the forgotten county in this state down here,” Mikels said.
For Green and Clemins, it will be hard enough to just show voters there’s a reason to come out. Both candidates said the county needs hope.
Green said, “I want to be able to see us bring back the hope, bring back the pride in our county. Within 20 years, I want to see us being in the top 10 of West Virginia’s counties and not in the bottom 50.”
Clemins said, “I think it’s really important we talk about hope, because living here, and it being your reality, it’s your home, you feel a sense of pride because you’re from a south county. But you also feel like you’re forgotten about here.”
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Delegate hopefuls in McDowell County talk roads, water, hope and four-wheelers
A county that’s not settling for less than it deserves
A caravan of mud-covered side-by-sides rev their engines in downtown Welch. Their exhaust pops and cracks, the high pitch whine reverberating off the windows of the store fronts.
Stuck behind a car, they snake around the lane in front of the old stone McDowell County Courthouse, where a century ago legendary lawman Sid Hatfield was gunned down by coal company thugs.
These side-by-sides are here for a different Hatfield: the Hatfield-McCoy Trail system. Established in 2000, the system has grown to over 900 miles of off-road trails, making it one of the largest off-road trail systems in the world.
Here in McDowell County, those riders mean money, according to Jennifer Justice, the director of the county’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. People from all over the Eastern seaboard have come to ride the trails, and as result, people in the area are opening restaurants and lodges.
The trails haven’t brought the nearly 3,000 jobs predicted for the seven-county region in the 1990s, but it’s something – according to a Marshall University report, the trails have created about a quarter of that.
Justice is one of the county’s biggest boosters – while acknowledging it’s “not all sunshine and roses” she said there’s more to McDowell than the reports of brown water coming out of taps and generational poverty.
“We are very distrustful because people have come in here to report the bad side of what we are and they try to talk about the negative,” she said. “We’ve had people come in here to do videos and all they show is the dilapidated houses and they turn the camera off before they get to the section where there’s half-million dollar homes.”
When visitors spend a little time in the county, they fall in love with the friendly people and the natural beauty, Justice said.
Green said the Hatfield-McCoy Trails are just one piece of the puzzle to rejuvenate the county.
“It’s not the end-all solution,” he said. “It is something that is positive for us but it’s not going to be McDowell County’s savior.”
For economic growth, Green said the convergence of the King Coal Highway and the Coalfields Expressway at Welch could prove to be a huge boost for the county. He said preparing the local government for the growth that comes with two four-lane highways meeting in the county is key to capitalizing on it.
While Clemins also holds hope for what the highways could bring, she said leaning into tourism could prove to be the future for McDowell. Citing the development in Fayetteville, she said there’s no reason McDowell can’t do the same.
“We have ATV trails, we have trails where you can go hike,” she said. “It’s a very beautiful area, if we use the resources correctly and make sure we’re investing that tourism back into McDowell County.”
Back on his front porch in Anawalt, Chapman said McDowell County doesn’t have to settle for less than it deserves.
“You don’t never be satisfied with what you’ve got when you could have much better if the people in charge would do better,” he said. “Don’t be satisfied, don’t settle for the worst and say ‘well that’s how we got.’ We don’t have to do that, this day in time. Uh,uh. We can have better.”