St. Paul – a hamlet of 830 people in coal country - remade itself into a bustling spot for ecotourism and off-road trails
This is the second in a series about the progress and challenges in Southwest Virginia of The Nature Conservancy's $130 million Cumberland Forest Project.
By Elizabeth McGowan
The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO
Photos by Christopher Tyree
St. Paul, Virginia—Lou Wallace couldn’t bear to watch her hometown on the Wise-Russell county line continue to crumble.
On a whim in the late 1990s, she called The Nature Conservancy’s Abingdon office, lamenting, “Our little town is dying. Can you help?”
Instead of shunning her, a now-retired employee of the nonprofit tossed out a lifeline. He helped her secure a $10,000 grant. That was enough to hire a company that fashioned a strategic plan revolving around the Clinch River—the hiding-in-plain-sight biological jewel bisecting St. Paul that residents had long dismissed as a dirty and forlorn nuisance.
Lou Wallace was a driving force in revitalizing the town of St. Paul, where she grew up. She secured a $10,000 grant from The Nature Conservancy in the 1990s to create marketing around the town’s natural resources, namely the Clinch River. Since then the town has received grants from TNC’s Community Fund for various projects.
That “light bulb moment” prompted Wallace to co-create St. Paul Tomorrow, block out the naysayers and coalesce with other doers who had the vision, desire and bandwidth to evolve.
“An idea starts swirling around in my head and it swirls around some more, and then it lands,” is the way Wallace describes an approach that mixed trust, relationship-building and hustle.
Today, the one-square-mile town of 830 people is the envy of the region with its thriving farmers market, hotel, boat launch, restaurants, shops, university-affiliated conference center and recreation options that include river float trips and all-terrain-vehicle trails.
“All those years ago, did I see recreation and ATVs in our future? No, but revenue from food and drink tax here has surpassed what we used to earn in coal and gas severance payments.”
“All those years ago, did I see recreation and ATVs in our future?” asked Wallace, now an elected member of the Russell County Board of Supervisors. “No, but revenue from food and drink tax here has surpassed what we used to earn in coal and gas severance payments.”
The Conservancy has continued to nurture St. Paul’s health, this time through the Community Fund it created as part of its massive Cumberland Forest restoration undertaking in coal country of Southwest Virginia.
Over the last several years, the town has been awarded two separate Community Fund grants totaling $7,000 to broaden access to the student-initiated Wetlands Estonoa, an environmental learning center.
Today, the wetlands, named for a Native American word meaning "land of blue waters," are a legacy institution tucked at the edge of a neighborhood.
However, science teacher Terry Vencil doubted that was possible when high school students suggested transforming a nearby “scuzzy little lake.”
Retired science teacher Terry Vencil directs activities at Wetlands Estonoa in St. Paul, Va. In the late 1990s, local high school students fearful that the demise of coal would turn their communities to ghost towns turned a “scuzzy little lake” into an environmental learning center.
Back in 1999, students told her they wanted to “do something for the town” because they repeatedly heard that Southwest Virginia communities were destined to be ghost towns due to King Coal’s demise, said Vencil, Estonoa’s director.
At first, those high-schoolers had a ‘build it and they will come’ approach,” the 73-year-old said during a spring tour of the site replete with the trill of red-winged blackbirds. “I explained that they’d have to dig in and do their homework.”
Evidently, her message resonated.
Wetlands Estonoa received two grants totaling $7,000 from TNC’s Community Fund for a pair of projects–adding fold-out tables for student research projects and building sturdy bridges to improve a trail encircling the site.
The students’ ambitious campaign for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to recognize the roughly one-acre site as a protected wetland prevented the school system from filling it to create a softball field.
They also designed a two-story education hub and lab, then with “a grant here and a grant there,” raised $200,000 to complete it in 2005. Today, it’s a magnet for hundreds of local K-12 and college students primed for hands-on lessons as diverse as testing water quality, raising baby freshwater mussels, and sketching plants and animals that call the wetland home.
Successive high-schoolers who inherited the spirit of the class of 1999 have embarked on dozens of projects that encourage long-term preservation. Students at Castlewood High School—three miles away in Russell County—picked up the environmental torch when the high school in St. Paul was shuttered in spring 2011.
TNC’s grant money was spent on fold-out benches that become tables for students’ research and two wooden bridges that expanded the hiking trail encircling the site—all sturdy enough to ride out this year’s mid-February deluges.
Vencil, who retired from Castlewood in 2015 after 25 years of teaching at both high schools, can walk to work because her home is just two blocks away—the house where she has lived since she was three years old.
“I used to swim and skate on this lake, so this is part of who I am. I would be lost without these kids. They come down here and I’m 19 again.”
Those skeptical of TNC’s grants have questioned the value of funding recreation proposals, wondering if that can be the sole answer to the region’s woes.
Brad Kreps, TNC’s Abingdon-based Clinch Valley Program director, agreed that the small grants are just one part of rejuvenating communities. “Putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good strategy. We’re seeking to help create a diversified economy through nature-based industries.”
Emma Kelly, who coordinates the new economy program for Appalachian Voices, is a fan of the TNC grants. She praised them as the equivalent of a community benefits package and “an impressive effort on TNC’s part.”
Her nonprofit received a $15,000 grant to take the lead on installing a solar array to power a yet-to-be-selected community building. Advancing solar energy in Southwest Virginia is an endeavor with a mission overlap for both organizations.
Appalachian Voices, which has a five-state reach and Virginia offices in Norton and Charlottesville, seeks to sustain the region’s mountains, forests and waters by promoting economic solutions that foster community wealth.
TNC grants align with projects that residents in a handful of local communities have spelled out during a series of meetings coordinated recently by Appalachian Voices and funded by a $500,000 environmental justice grant from the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, Kelly said. The Trump administration is in the midst of gutting this type of funding, designed to aid disadvantaged communities, and has also shuttered the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices.
TNC’s Community Fund has boosted outdoor recreation in Southwest Virginia’s coal country. Here, kayaks are at the ready near the Clinch River in St. Paul.
Notably, residents in the five towns—Pound, Dante, Pennington Gap, Clinchco and Dungannon—all chose recreation and downtown revitalization as top priorities.
“These Conservancy grants can be a valuable asset to towns here,” Kelly said. “Managed well, they can provide a gateway to larger pots of money.”
That the five communities seem intent on pursuing prerogatives that St. Paul Tomorrow embarked on decades ago doesn’t shock Wallace. The businesswoman and Russell County Board supervisor, who is well-connected in Richmond, has observed too many localities counting on coal companies, government or businesses for bailouts.
“Flourishing is about community autonomy and instilling hope in the people,” Wallace said. “Without hope, you perish.”
Reach Elizabeth McGowan at elizabeth.mcgowan@renewalnews.org