I published this article on Medium last year:
“We’re Not Behind — You’re Facing the Wrong Direction”
West of I-85, South of US-421, North of US-74, East of The Blue Ridge Parkway,
You Built Your Cities on Our Back
For decades, the Foothills Corridor of western North Carolina fueled your coastal empires. In the 1950s and 60s, our hands built the furniture in your homes, spun the textiles on your backs, and wired the fiber optics for your internet. Hickory was a name on every chair. Gastonia’s mills clothed the nation. We didn’t just work — we defined American industry.
But when the rules changed, you didn’t hesitate to pull the rug out from beneath us. Trade deals like NAFTA, signed in 1994, sent our factories to the Third World. Between 1990 and 2010, the Hickory metro area lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs. Entire towns — Marion, North Wilkesboro, Lenoir — saw their civic cores hollow out. You offshored our livelihoods to chase margins, leaving us with shuttered plants and broken promises.
Now, you extract what’s left. Data centers in Catawba County drain our aquifers to cool your servers. Industrial runoff pollutes the Catawba River — our lifeblood — causing algae blooms and fish kills, with a 20% rise in water quality violations since 2020, per the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. You take our resources, leave us with infrastructure debt, and call it progress. It’s not nostalgia that keeps us up at night — it’s trauma. We remember the campaign promises that were never kept, the grants that never came, the jobs that vanished while you looked the other way. And we’re not forgetting.
The Collapse Starts Where the Cameras Aren’t
When the factories closed, no one came. No coastal journalists, no policymakers, no saviors. In 2009, I wrote a series of articles for The Hickory Hound using Milken Institute rankings and BLS data. Hickory ranked 191 out of 200 metros, with a 15.4% unemployment rate — matching Rust Belt cities like Flint (16.5%) and Detroit (14.9%). We lost 15,000 manufacturing jobs from 1990 to 2020, a 30% decline, while the Rust Belt lost 800,000, a 32.65% drop. Globalization, automation, and policy neglect hit us both hard. But while you covered Flint’s water crisis, our Catawba River crisis went unnoticed.
The collapse didn’t stop with jobs. It took our youth, our civic life, our identity. Kids who once followed their parents into factories left for Charlotte or Raleigh — or out of state entirely. In Chapter 5 of my forthcoming book, The Foothills Corridor, I call this the “era of loss.” Ballfields emptied. Diners shuttered. Churches struggled to fill pews. We didn’t fail. We were fallout — left to survive a system that treated us as expendable. You call it Flyover Country like we don’t matter, but everything you eat, drink, and plug in is rooted in the ground under our boots. When our rivers dry up and our farms fail, you’ll feel the ripple in your grocery bills. The collapse starts where the cameras aren’t — but it doesn’t stay there.
What You See Here Isn’t Backward — It’s Post-Impact
You see our boarded-up storefronts and aging populations and think we’re backward. You’re wrong. What you’re seeing is post-impact — the aftermath of decisions you cheered from your coastal bubbles. In Chapter 2 of my forthcoming book, I compare the Foothills to the Rust Belt. Both regions were decimated by the same forces: trade policies, corporate greed, and political neglect. But while you wrote off Youngstown and Flint as relics, some of those cities fought back. Pittsburgh diversified into tech and healthcare, repurposing its industrial bones. We’re doing the same, just without the spotlight.
We’ve been surviving collapse while you’ve been chasing trends. In Chapter 6, I talk about “woo, faint, and weak signals” — early signs of reinvention. The Valley Datacenter Academy in Hickory, partnered with Microsoft, trains kids for tech jobs. The Foothills Food Hub distributed 92,000 pounds of local produce last year. Duke Energy’s solar farms are laying the groundwork for renewable energy jobs. These aren’t headlines — they’re proof we can build something new. But we’re not waiting for your applause. We’re too busy coordinating across 20 counties, as I outline in Chapter 18, to turn isolated wins into systems. You might call that backward. We call it resilience. And it’s coming to you.
The Promises You Made Are Breaking Downstream
Your promises — of growth, innovation, globalization — aren’t holding up. You told us free trade would lift all boats, but it sank ours while you sailed on. Now, those broken promises are breaking downstream. The Catawba River crisis is a warning. Pollution here means contaminated water in your cities tomorrow. The youth we lost to brain drain are the workers you’ll need when your tech hubs can’t find talent. The infrastructure debt you left us with — aging pipes, underfunded schools, broadband gaps — is a preview of what happens when you prioritize urban glitz over rural roots.
In Chapter 24 of my forthcoming book, I write about reclaiming control from Charlotte and Raleigh. We’re done waiting for trickle-down solutions from urban centers — or from you. We’re building our own forces to save the Catawba River, our own training programs to keep our youth, our own narrative rooted in grit, not gloss. We’re not asking for pity. We’re telling you to pay attention. The factories you offshored, the rivers you’re draining, the systems you’ve neglected — they’re not just our problem. They’re your future, too.
And It’s Coming to You
Flyover America isn’t a relic — it’s the canary in the coal mine. What happens here first ends up everywhere. In 2009, Hickory’s 15.4% unemployment rate was a warning of the economic fragility that later hit your cities during the Great Recession. Today, the Catawba River’s 20% rise in water quality violations is a signal of the environmental crises you’ll face as this evolution accelerates. You can ignore us, but you can’t escape the consequences.
We’re not behind. We’re ahead of the curve you haven’t turned yet. In Chapter 25, I argue that the Foothills’ future isn’t a revival — it’s a reinvention. We’re building ecosystems, not clusters, linking education, healthcare, and renewable energy to create something sustainable. We’re not waiting for you to save us. We’re saving ourselves — and when your systems start to crack, you’ll wish you’d listened sooner.
So, stop looking past us. Turn around. The Foothills Corridor isn’t Flyover Country. It’s the ground your future stands on. And we’re not carrying you for free anymore.
"The Foothills Corridor" book is on Substack
This article is part of an ongoing project from The Hickory Hound, a website that investigates the economic realities of the Foothills Corridor in Western North Carolina.
The ideas shared here are drawn from my book, The Foothills Corridor, for more, visit:
🔗 The Hound’s Signal on Substack
🔗 YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@hickoryhound link)
Follow for more insights from Flyover America — written not for applause, but as a reckoning.
