Beer BUST: MillerCoors' plant closing raises doubts about rural North Carolina's promise and unites political rivals in condemning globed corporate consolidation.

• Author: Martin, Edward

Like sunlight shining through the branches overhead, late-summer heat filters down to the Smith River. As Tar Heel streams go, it's modest, ambling through the foothills to arrive at this seemingly wild setting. In reality, it's a half-mile from Eden's busiest street and its largest employer, Morehead Memorial Hospital.

Two years ago, volunteers helped create this trail where small butterflies flit in the damp morning air. What they built was intended to look good and to filter runoff into the river.

"We're proud of our natural resources," says Myla Barnhardt, in love with Eden since her family moved here some 30 years ago. The Smith empties into the Dan River about a mile downstream. "We made things we were proud of, too," adds Barnhardt, whose late husband, Calvin, relocated in the 1980s for a human-resources position at Fieldcrest Cannon Inc. "We made beautiful towels that were so luxurious you could find them in the finest hotels in New York. But most of all, we're proud of the hardworking people who live here."

Some of the volunteers who made the trail worked at MillerCoors on the outskirts of town. Vernon Gammon, 64, started when the plant opened in 1978 as Miller Brewing Co. It became Eden's signature industry after Fieldcrest, then owned by Pillowtex Corp., closed in 2003, continuing the decline of the city's textile economy that once employed more than 4,000. Three years out of a recent five, it was the company's brewery of the year; one year, its productivity and profitability made it the nation's top manufacturing plant. "You pride yourself on your work," Gammon says.

Chicago-based MillerCoors concluded that wasn't enough. In September 2015, the beer-maker announced it was leaving, too. It then employed 520, averaging $60,000 a year or more, sharply higher than prevailing local wages.

Two years later, the 1.3 million-square-foot plant sits vacant, and Eden's beer bust highlights the plight of scores of small towns. The middle class, once fueled by jobs such as these, is shriveling amid a widening gap between urban prosperity and rural decline. Some experts call the trend universal and irreversible. Others blame divisive politics. What's undisputed is that the Edens of North Carolina are in trouble.

Nearly 50 of the state's 100 counties lost population between 2010 and 2015, say demographers at the Carolina Population Center at UNC Chapel Hill. They're concentrated in the eastern flatlands, but Piedmont communities such as Eden aren't exempt. Farther west, in the mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge, a half dozen counties are shrinking.

"All of the winds over the last couple of decades have been shifting toward the metros," says N.C. State University economist Michael Walden. State demographers predict a fourth to a third of N.C. counties--all rural--will depopulate over the next several decades. From 2000 through 2016, Walden adds, "almost two-thirds of the job growth in North Carolina occurred in two metros, Raleigh and Charlotte. In unemployment rates, you see a big difference between rural and urban metros, too."

While Charlotte and Raleigh populations each grew about 14% between 2010 and 2016, Eden lost 1% of its roughly 15,500 people, and neighbor Reidsville declined 3%. Overall, Rockingham County lost 1.5% as urban Wake County grew by 10.1% and adjoining Durham County, 8.7%.

In response to the widening division, North Carolina's Republican leadership since 2011 has instituted a sweeping series of business and personal tax cuts, business and environmental deregulation, shifts in economic-development strategy and other business-friendly measures. North Carolina's 3% corporate tax rate--it will drop to 2.5% by 2019--is among the nation's lowest. The state's effective tax rate for so-called mature corporations is lower than all but four states, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., research group.

Just outside Eden, Phil Berger practices law and plots the state's direction from a small, weathered brick cottage under shady oaks with a cracked sidewalk in front. A rural-urban gap? "There's no question it...