Stahly stopped by Saturday night for the drawing of a local raffle. Up on a small hill overlooking Paonia, past orchards touting tree-ripened peaches, sits the American Legion Post 97. The local school district is down almost 350 students from a decade ago. That all brings its own benefits, but it doesn’t bring families the way coal did. Paonia’s community character has been shifting for a while now - to more of a Colorado mountain tourist destination complete with organic farms, coffee shops and yoga studios. “Well, I don’t know if you’d call it profits,” he laughed. Holt’s grocery is noticing the downturn, and profits are dropping. He said for decades, the mines provided lots of stable, high-paying jobs for the area Stahly makes almost $100,000 a year working at West Elk. He said a lot of kids did back then, since the store was flexible with school and sports schedules.īrad Holt is the co-owner of the market, which has been family-owned in Paonia since the 1930s. He worked for Don’s Market in high school. He has connections to almost everything, including the grocery store in nearby Paonia where he went shopping on that first day off.

Stahly has lived in the coal-rich North Fork Valley nearly his whole life. Still, the economics of coal aren’t looking good, between decreasing demand and low prices for natural gas and renewables. Trump has been trying to fulfill his campaign promise to bring back mining jobs, working to roll back environmental regulations and increase mining on federal lands. No working man has been more lauded under this administration than the American coal miner. Jobs like these are held in high regard by President Donald Trump, who idealizes a traditional view of American life based on industry and lifting up the image of the blue collar working man. The valley has lost more than 700 mining jobs since 2010. The two other mines in Colorado’s mountainous North Fork Valley have closed in recent years. Stahly has watched the West Elk Mine, like many around the country, suffer through difficult layoffs. Saturday would be his first day off in nearly a month. Freshly showered and wearing a Denver Broncos ball cap, he was ready to go home and sleep. Miner Don Stahly, 39, was catching a ride home with a friend. Workers had been opening up a new section of the mine four or five miles underground, a tough job made tougher considering that the current economics of the coal industry means fewer workers at the mine. Cars and trucks started rolling out, signaling the end of a coal mining shift in this rural pocket of Colorado. on a recent Friday night, the West Elk Mine outside Somerset opened its gates. He said he understands his job will not last forever, but is happy with what President Trump is doing to bolster the coal industry.Īt 11 p.m.

Don Stahly, a third-generation coal miner, has been working underground in Colorado's West Elk Mine since 1999.

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