This is an essay about the death of the town of Empire, Nevada that I wrote for my own blog. Yet another one of the great things Harry Reid has helped do for Nevada.
Yesterday the United States Gypsum Corporation (or USG) announced the January 31st 2011 closing of its mine and plant in Empire, Nevada. Residents of the Empire -- the last company town in the west -- will have until June 20th 2011 to leave their homes, at which time the mine, plant, and entire town will be "idled." One hundred employees and their families will have to leave the area to search for work and housing.
Those are the bare facts of the story. The reality is, of course, far less sterile and far more terrible. What is actually going to happen is that my community is going to die -- and, as I predicted in the introduction to An Unforgiving Land, a way of life is going to pass forever from the earth, largely un-mourned save by the few of us that have lived it.
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