How ‘the Energy Capital of the Nation’ regained its optimism

The resurrected feeling of American possibility came not from pontificating TV pundits or a radio host in a studio miles away. Optimism arrived here because of what people were seeing: the unemployment lines getting shorter and their daily commutes getting longer.

Tom Gorton, 41, drove through those increasingly congested streets in his Arnold Machinery truck late on a spring afternoon, under the watch of mountains covered in white from a spring snowstorm. As Gorton settled behind his desk, he was heartened to see how messy it was with orders, one year after hundreds of layoffs at two nearby coal mines cost him his job and delivered a gut punch to a county that produces more than a third of the nation’s energy supply.

In another room at Arnold’s, branch manager Adam Coleman fixed his eyes on statistics tracking economic trends. Electricity had flatlined. To Coleman, this was good news.

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