From Coal to Comeback

A decade of rebuilding America's mining communities.

In Pikeville, Kentucky, there is a room where the lights are soft and a couch is angled toward a loved one. Here the family has gathered for their next medical appointment.

At the Leonard Lawson Cancer Center, patients receive treatment closer to home than they once thought possible. For many across Eastern Kentucky and the broader Appalachian region, that distance used to mean hours on the road. This time was measured not just in miles, but in fatigue and the uncertainty of what comes next.

The expansion and renovation of the center was possible thanks to financial investment from the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program, or AMLER. Since opening in 2023, the center has treated more than 51,000 patients.

On its face, it is a healthcare facility. But what it represents is a response to a question that has lingered across coal country for years: What happens next?

The Turning Point

There was a moment, not so long ago, when the answer felt uncertain.

For decades, the work of reclaiming abandoned mine land was funded by fees tied to coal production. It was a system that made a certain kind of sense. Until it didn't. As production declined, so did the funding, even as the need remained, etched into landscapes and communities affected by pre-1977 coal mining activities.

In 2016, Congress intervened.

Through a series of appropriations, lawmakers created what would become the AMLER program, recognizing something that had been building for years. Restoring land, while necessary, was not enough.

At the time, Lanny E. Erdos was overseeing the abandoned mine land program as Chief for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

"I saw firsthand that this funding was critical for communities," said Erdos, the OSM Director and Acting Assistant Secretary of Lands and Mineral Management. "AMLER gave states and tribes the ability to do more than reclaim land. It gave them the ability to invest in what came next."

And while the distinction may seem subtle, the impact of reclamation, paired with revitalization, has been profound.

Transformation Takes Many Forms

The effects of AMLER are not uniform. Nor are they meant to be.

In some places, the transformation is visible from miles away.

In Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, reclaimed land has been reshaped into the Anthracite Outdoor Adventure Area, a landscape of engineered terrain where off-road vehicles climb over boulders and navigate trails carved from what was once considered unusable ground. The award-winning Bear Valley project reclaimed hazards that had long made the land unsafe, then repurposed the land for something else entirely. Today, the area draws visitors from across the region, its success measured not just in recreation, but in the steady rhythm of local business returning.

Elsewhere, the changes may be less visible, but no less essential.

In Jasper, Alabama, transformation moves through fiber and signal, instead of rock and soil. Broadband infrastructure may seem unremarkable in places where it is taken for granted, but here it has helped stitch the community into a wider economy. Small businesses that once struggled to operate can now reach customers. Remote work becomes possible. Opportunity, once distant, feels closer.

And with it, something else begins to take hold: the ability to build a life without leaving it behind. While some transformations announce themselves, others simply make it easier to stay.

Building on Local Terms

On the Navajo Nation, the story of transformation is still unfolding.

In Shonto, at the junction of two highways, a hotel is rising from a 10-acre stretch of land. The project offers economic, cultural, and practical solutions. It will bring travelers. It will create jobs.

And it will offer something that has long been scarce: a place to stay.

Not just for visitors, but for the community itself: a foundation for participation in a local economy that reflects the people who live there.

"AMLER projects are creating jobs, building infrastructure, and opening doors for communities," Erdos says. "That is what makes this program so important. It is not just about restoring land; it is about restoring opportunity for coal communities that have powered this country for decades, providing the baseload energy that has kept the lights on."

What Revival Looks Like

Across the country, similar efforts are taking shape, each one rooted in the needs of the place it serves.

In Shawnee, Ohio, a long-quiet theater is being restored. When complete, it is expected to draw thousands of visitors each month. It is not just as a venue, but a signal that something has come back to life.

In Arizona, on Hopi lands, community spaces are being expanded and modernized to create places where people gather not just for services, but for ceremonies, for meetings, for the daily activities that hold a community together.

In Virginia, a manufacturing company is expanding not by replacing workers, but by rethinking how they are trained and by introducing automated systems that open the door to people who might not have otherwise seen themselves in the industry. The students who move through the training program is given a new pathway to stay and build a career locally.

On tribal lands in Montana, the Crow Tribe is building something different still: a recycling system designed to sustain itself, rooted in a long-term vision for environmental stewardship and economic independence.

And in Thomas, West Virginia, a three-story building in the center of town offers a mixed-used space for coworking and housing workspace, designed to attract more workers while meeting the immediate need of giving people a place to live, and a reason to stay.

Over the past decade, AMLER has supported more than 300 projects across nine states and tribal nations. These projects have created or sustained nearly 28,000 jobs, trained thousands of workers each year, and reclaimed thousands of acres of land that once sat idle.

But the numbers alone cannot explain the impact of these stories.

They cannot capture what it means for a patient to receive cancer treatment closer to home. Or for a small town to see its main street lit again at night. Or for a community to build something that feels like a future.

Giving Reason to Stay

Back in Pikeville, the work continues.

Patients come and go. Treatments begin and end. Families sit together in rooms that did not exist a few years ago, in a place that was once out of reach.

And while this story might have begun with coal, it does not end there. It is a story about what can be built from its legacy, and the futures that take shape in its wake.

Ten years in, the question that once defined these communities still lingers. But the answers of what comes next are no longer abstract. They are written in the landscapes reclaimed, the places rebuilt, in the growing opportunities, and by the people finding reasons to stay.