CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- I will always remember 2011 as the year I participated in the March on Blair Mountain. I was born in West Virginia and lived the first 28 years of my life in the Mountain State. Now I live in western Pennsylvania where I teach history. Historians are not in the business of looking into the future, but as 2011 came to an end I found myself thinking about the future of Boone County.

We faced quite a bit of harassment as we marched through Boone County on our way to Blair in Logan County. People shouted obscenities and threats at us from the other side of the road. Trucks sped by us, horns blaring. And we were threatened with arrest in Racine. Nevertheless, I found it to be a wonderful place. I remember the school children of Brookview Elementary waving at us as we walked by the beautiful park in Madison, and the small communities located along Route 17 like Ottawa where people waved from their front porches. After the march, I learned that one of my high school classmates has lived in Boone County for some years, and he says that it is a great place to raise a family.

Now I am back in western Pennsylvania. This tree-hugger did go home just as many people had asked of me. But here it is, six months later, and I am still thinking about the people of Boone County and the future they face.

I am well aware of the long history of well-intentioned outsiders who thought they had all the answers for how poor Appalachians should be living their lives. I neither think that I have "answers" for how they should live, nor do I think of the people of Boone County as "poor Appalachians."

In fact, I would not have been on the march if it weren't for the leadership and vision of people who live in the coalfields and are tired of their land and their health being destroyed by mountaintop removal.

The only thing I know for sure about the "answers" for the long-term health and prosperity of Boone is that mountaintop removal is not one of them.

But even if we cannot agree on mountaintop removal, change is still coming. A 2010 report by Downstream Strategies predicts that coal mining in Central Appalachia will decline by more than half over the next 25 years (from 234 million tons in 2008, down to 99 million tons in 2035) for reasons ranging from competition from natural gas to depletion of the most productive reserves.

Then there are the growing concerns of people around the country and around the world -- people who have never heard of Boone County or mountaintop removal -- that burning coal is leading to climate change, and their efforts will further restrict the markets for coal. Not to mention that coal is a finite resource.

I am not an expert on the economics of coal, but as a historian I can tell you that West Virginia ignored the signs of change in the late 1940s with tragic results. After a post-war high of about 125,000 jobs in 1947, more than half of the coal jobs in the state disappeared in a little over a decade. By 1960, less than 60,000 still worked in the industry. Competition from natural gas and oil and mechanization of underground mining all contributed to the job loss.

Two million people left Appalachia between 1945 and 1970, and many others were trapped in newly purchased company houses, living on donated flour and beans after their unemployment ran out.

Leaders like John L. Lewis and Gov. William Marland foresaw the massive job loss, but adequate preparations for this crisis were not made and working people paid the price with their suffering.

There is a crisis in the making in Boone County. In May, CNN Money reported that 3,800 of the county's 8,600 employed people worked in the mining industry. And a report by economists at WVU and Marshall titled "The West Virginia Coal Economy 2008" reported that 60 percent of the county's roughly $35 million in property tax revenue came from coal. While those figures certainly speak to the importance of coal to Boone today, they also represent the potential for devastation when the coal companies leave. Imagine when half of those jobs and tax revenues disappear as Downstream Strategies predict they will. Boone County will be left with slurry ponds, "reclaimed" mountains and dirty water.

As a society, we do not plan well for economic transitions; nor do we tend to plan for the long term. Our elected officials have a vested interest in helping businesses and industries that are here now, not imagining future businesses and industries. Coal companies focus only on this year's profits. Unions protect current members' jobs. Planning the future of Boone County is too important to leave up to the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, the CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, the president of the United Mine Workers, or even government officials like Sen. Manchin and Gov. Tomblin.

This time, the people need to plan out their own future. What do we want the future economy to look like? I propose that we try to create a society that will last for another 100 years, 200 years, or maybe even 1,000 years. But under the current plan, Boone County will face utter devastation --economic and environmental -- in just 25 years.

Martin is an assistant professor of history at Chatham University, lmart...@chatham.edu.