The sad fact is that McDowell County needs to downsize even more. That's the biggest failure of our various anti-poverty programs, they fail to give people the assistance they need to successfully get out of communities whose economic reason for being has ended, yet they give them just enough to survive and produce another generation that will end up in the same trap their parents are in. Back before coal mining began in the 1880s, the population of McDowell was under 5,000. I don't think it needs to get that small, but if they transition to a rural tourism economy, they probably don't need but about 10,000 people in the county, less than half of what is there now.
It would incredibly hard, even in New Deal times, to sell people on the idea of a welfare program for helping people move to new cities.
