Jobs Depart, Hope Lingers Travelocity's Leaving Is Va. Town's Latest Blow

Even in the hard-luck hollows of Appalachian coal-mining country, where adversity and unemployment hang as constants, the dashed hopes of Clintwood stand out.

The town has been "in transition," as people here put it, for half a century, as one set of jobs after another vanishes.

Coal-mining work dwindled with automation. Textiles decamped for Latin America. A shell building designed to attract manufacturers never could be rented. Dickenson County lured Nexus Communications, only to have it go bankrupt three years later in the dot-com implosion.

A new day seemed at hand in 2001 when online vacation company Travelocity signed a six-year lease to operate a call center in the abandoned Nexus building. It brought tech-age jobs and endeared itself by co-sponsoring the Fourth of July celebration.

Now Travelocity is pulling up stakes, too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41578-2004Mar8.html