#arthurdale

Arthurdale was the first of the New Deal's planned communities, one personally championed by Eleanor Roosevelt to give miners and farmers impoverished by the Great Depression a second chance at independence. Although the ideals that founded it did not survive the Second World War, Arthurdale was a beacon of hope at a desperate time in the nation's history.

Arthurdale was the first of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” towns, model planned communities intended to put impoverished Americans back on their feet during the Great Depression. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt was the community’s greatest champion. She had hoped Arthurdale would become the blueprint for a self-sufficient, self-sustaining community. Although it ultimately fell short of her hopes, the project nonetheless improved the lives of the poor miners who found homes and started new lives in the community. Nearly a century later, Eleanor’s passionate commitment to Arthurdale is commemorated by the historic district’s garden and museum.

Various experimental programs and projects enacted by the New Deal left their marks on Central Appalachia, none more so than the planned community of Arthurdale, West Virginia, located on West Virginia Route 92. Championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, Arthurdale was a social experiment intended to help impoverished local miners and farmers attain self-sufficiency through self-governance and entrepreneurship, although its critics miscast it as government-mandated socialism. Eventually, the experiment lost its support and funding, and the community was returned to private ownership shortly after the start of the Second World War. Nearly a century after its founding, however, many of Arthurdale's original public buildings and houses remain in use.  The historic district, which includes the New Deal Museum, is well worth a visit. 

Tucked away in a steep hollow at the foot of a sprawling commercial and retail center on the outskirts of Morgantown, WV, Osage is a community lost in time, awash in memories of King Coal’s heyday and the New Deal’s promise of a better life for all; it seems barely cognizant of the chain restaurant and box store signs glaring down at it from the top of the hill. The town is one of a dozen communities established as coal camps along Scott’s Run in Monongalia Country prior to America’s entry into World War 1. The camps drew in coal miners and other laborers representing nineteen different ethnic groups from the southern United States, Europe, and Mexico. The mines boomed through the 1920′s, but the Great Depression knocked the bottom out of the coal industry and drove the residents into deep poverty. In 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled to Scott’s Run to fight for social justice and civil rights and build a blueprint for the New Deal at Arthurdale in nearby Preston County. Nearly a century later, the Scott’s Run Museum and Trail documents the area’s bittersweet history, its exploiters, its champions, and its resilient residents, whose memories live on in their oral histories. 

Eighty-plus years after the community’s founding, Arthurdale continues to survive and commemorate its origins in the New Deal through the Arthurdale Heritage complex and museum.

Admittedly, I did my final university thesis on Arthurdale, so I know a little more about it than the average person reading this book, and certainly more than the usual lard ass in the YouTube comments section screaming "LIBERALISM GONE AMUCK!!! SOCIALIST CONSPIRACY!!!" But I would think that the professionals editing this book would at least know the difference between Scott's Run and Arthurdale and could get the date right. Blanche Wiesen Cooke, arguably the foremost expert on Eleanor Roosevelt today, wrote the introduction. Did she not read the book? Did she not catch this?

Eleanor, you have a lovely garden

Lunch!!