Reporting

The story of coal in western Kentucky is an old one that shaped a region and supported its people for decades. Coal rose and fell on the banks of rivers in this region. Cities and towns followed the ebbing tides, too, and by the mid-century, a self-supported economy had formed. Coal was shallow and easy to extract from hillsides and it seemed to last forever. But, as embodied by John Prine's hit song "Paradise," about the fall of a community on the Green River to the east