President Obama wrote a piece for medium.com titled “On the Strength and Resilience of Rural America,” in which he comments on how rural communities and cities help shape the country and adapt to new challenges. Pikeville, Kentucky is mentioned in the president’s piece, in which he wrote:

“Former coal miners are trading coal for code. They’re retraining to learn HTML, JavaScript, and PHP, transforming an old bottling factory into a digital hub. It’s a transition that not only supports good jobs, but also offers a glimpse of what the future could look like in other communities like Pikeville.”

Obama also addressed rural unemployment dropping from a high of ten percent to six percent, along with rural child poverty dropping and household incomes rising again. He concluded his piece by writing “when America’s rural communities are strong, America is strong.”