{"id":52314,"date":"2022-04-07T07:38:49","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T06:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/?p=52314"},"modified":"2022-04-07T07:38:52","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T06:38:52","slug":"how-an-ex-coalmining-town-is-turning-to-ecotourism-to-rebuild-its-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2022\/04\/how-an-ex-coalmining-town-is-turning-to-ecotourism-to-rebuild-its-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"How an ex-coalmining town is turning to ecotourism to rebuild its economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"How<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

E<\/span>ighty-five years ago, Bobbie Gullett was born in the heart of coal country. She grew up in Dante,\u00a0Virginia<\/a>, a bustling municipality of 6,000 with a hospital, a hotel, schools, a movie theater, a taxicab stand, a train line. She remembers living in a worker house owned by the Clinchfield Coal Company: Back then, Gullett recalls, while the supervisors lived up on the ridges, coalminers and their families lived in the hollows of the nearby mountain range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their squat houses spread along the winding streets of town, which sat in a bowl created by the bumpy, tree-crested hills. In spring and summer, mountain laurel bloomed in the forest and kudzu spread in patches, and in the winter, snow blanketed the town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe how pretty Dante used to be,\u201d said Gullett, reminiscing at the Dante Coal<\/a> Miners museum on a late January day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dante\u2019s economy was largely built around coal, and the gains from extraction allowed families in town to prosper. \u201cWe lived in a bubble where coal was king, life was good, everybody had money,\u201d added her friend Lou Wallace, whose family worked in railroading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now all of that is gone. As coal jobs have disappeared from Dante, other industries have not yet taken root. But Gullett and Wallace want to change that \u2013 by harnessing new sources of funding to transform Dante into a hub of ecotourism as well as a place where information economy workers can live and work remotely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCoal is not renewable,\u201d said Wallace. \u201cIt\u2019s come to the end of its way. We\u2019ve come to a new generation, and we need to start thinking. We have to be OK with a building becoming something else, with change and renewal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gullett and Wallace are part of a group called the Dante Community Association, which is working with other regional and national groups to remediate the town\u2019s abandoned coalmines. The work isn\u2019t just about revitalizing their local economy; it\u2019s also about nurturing the environment around them, and bringing some of the natural beauty Gullett remembers so fondly back to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe feel like we\u2019re doing all this as a pilot program,\u201d said Wallace. \u201cThis can encourage other communities to say, wow, we can be forward thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an excerpt from an article by Emily Cataneo, originally published by The Guardian<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dante, a Virginia town, is seeking to transform itself into a hub of ecotourism by nurturing the environment around it, and bring some of the natural beauty back to the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":52315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,16,130,535,3177,3255],"tags":[163],"yoast_head":"\nHow an ex-coalmining town is turning to ecotourism to rebuild its economy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dante, a Virginia town, is seeking to transform itself into a hub of ecotourism by nurturing the environment around it, and bring some of the natural beauty back to the community.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2022\/04\/how-an-ex-coalmining-town-is-turning-to-ecotourism-to-rebuild-its-economy\/\" 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