No the future destroyed McDowell County, Coal is a dying source of energy, the coal that's still being mined is mined mostly be mechanized processes, not by laborers. even if the coal industry returned and mined as much coal as they did in the 1950s it would employ only a fraction of the workforce.
much like in the 1990s, two towns in WA state, Port Angeles and Hoquiam had large bustling mills that employed many people to produce Rayon, an almost completely pure fiber, out of wood. rayon was used to make many products from womens lingerie to film, and then nylon came along, and then film died out as CDs and digital media became the thing, and their rayon mills shut down. couldn't sell enough rayon.
now coal is dying, as it should, and coal communities will decline. there are many, many communities that no longer functionally exist because market forces make them incapable of being profitable.
Coal was great when we needed electricity in the 1880s, it's 2016 now and time to move to clean energy, and there will be losers in the market shift.
