The Eastern Kentucky Renewal Community: Breathitt, Owsley, Wolfe, & Lee Counties Posted: January 1, 2006
Picture yourself standing on a forested ridge top overlooking a narrow valley in the foothills of the largest deciduous forest on earth. As you look across the valley to the next ridge, carved out from under the canopy of trees you can see ten acres of cleared land upon which tobacco is growing. A small farmhouse and trailer are visible and clothes hanging on a line are next to what appears to be a small kitchen garden. Glancing down into the valley a river that once was clear but now is occluded by deposits of silt resulting from the mining of coal and timber slowly winds its way toward town. Still blessed with an abundance of fish, which pregnant women are discouraged from eating and in which swimming is frequently forbidden, a small boat trolls the waters edge. The silence of the woods is punctuated by a flowing brook which spills over the rock cliff wall, an occasional animal scurrying about and the noise of an ATV as it makes its way along a path toward the two-lane blacktop road which passes through three of the four RC Community counties of Breathitt, Owsley, Wolfe and Lee. The BOWL is an area of breathtaking beauty and severe economic disadvantage as well. It is rural Appalachia.
Welcome.
These four southeast Kentucky counties have come together to participate in the federal government’s Renewal Community program. Over the course of the next eight years they will attempt to expand their combined economic base by capturing tax dollars and using them to revitalize their communities. This site will keep you abreast of their efforts.
Click here: https://www.appal.org/rc_bowl/ to read the BOWL RC pages.
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