DAVIS, W.Va. — Stretching nearly a million acres through the rugged mountains of eastern West Virginia, the Monongahela National Forest links some of the state's best known natural attractions. The vast area ranges from the ski slopes of Canaan Valley to the dark skies of Blackwater Falls and Spruce Knob and includes the small towns of Davis and Thomas that serve as gateways for visitors to the region.
For the past seven months, Kaleb Skelton, his wife, Ella, their 2-year-old son, Ryder, and dog Mabel have lived in a camper in this corner of West Virginia's "almost heaven." Kaleb is finishing a seasonal stint as a campground manager on a lake near Spruce Knob, the state's highest point.
On clear nights atop the isolated peak, they get to experience a river of stars in one of the very few pockets of darkness remaining in the Eastern United States. The area has become a draw for amateur astronomers.
During summer's new moons, Kaleb says, one in four campsites he oversees is occupied by someone with a telescope. He thought his family's cabin in eastern Texas offered "the craziest" dark skies he'd ever seen, "but coming out here definitely rivals it."
A dark history for 'Stump Town'
Those inky-black nights — and the natural beauty they shelter — are now under threat from what many residents see as a modern-day version of extractive industries like logging and mining that once defined the region. In a place where tourism, outdoor recreation and community are deeply intertwined, a gigantic power plant and data center campus in nearby Tucker County would bring large-scale development into the heart of it all.
A stark image of the town of Davis from 1885, during the heyday of logging, is a reminder of that transformation. The photo shows a handful of squat buildings amid a broad clearing littered with forest remains.
They used to call it "Stump Town," says Kim Williams, president of the Snow Sports Museum of West Virginia in Canaan Valley. At the turn of the century, massive first-growth trees dominated the landscape.
Then, logging companies "came in and clear-cut the whole valley and everything around it," he says.
By the early 20th century, entire mountainsides of red spruce and eastern hemlock had been stripped bare. Then came the coal companies, which left the nearby Blackwater River acidic and dangerous to drink.
Today, the scars still show. The big trees won't return for generations, but a century of natural regrowth, conservation and deliberate restoration means the land is on its way to healing.
While few expect that the latest tech boom presages anything like the environmental destruction of the past, many see the proposed new Ridgeline data center as a big step backward, undoing the progress the local community has made to recover.
A roughly 785-megawatt generating plant is slated to be the first part of "a large-scale data and energy infrastructure project designed to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and enterprise systems," according to Purcellville, Va.-based Fundamental Data LLC, the company behind Ridgeline.
The complex would rely primarily on natural gas, with diesel as a backup fuel source. Power generated on-site, rather than purchased from the regional grid, could ease some concerns about the project's effects on electricity rates. It does not, however, resolve concerns over air and water pollution.
Located on a reclaimed coal-mining site, plans are for an initial 291 acres that could eventually expand to 10,000 acres — 15 square miles — and include parts of neighboring Grant County, according to local news reports.
Speaking to NPR, Casey Chapman, listed in court documents as Fundamental Data's "responsible individual," declined to speculate on the facility's ultimate size, saying only that "if fully developed … it would be thousands of acres."
Light pollution is a common complaint from residents living near data centers. Chapman says the company will use "well-designed" lighting to help minimize the effects of sky glow, in an effort not to jeopardize nearby Blackwater Falls State Park's pursuit of an official dark-sky certification.
An analysis by the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club, which hosts an annual star party in the region, found that Ridgeline's initial footprint could increase sky glow near Blackwater by 528%, transforming its nighttime rural sky to one comparable to a suburban area. (The same analysis found only a minimal impact on Spruce Knob.)
But safety and security — not light pollution — take precedence, Chapman says. The facility will be "an industrial plant that runs around the clock," he notes. "Crews need proper lighting to operate and maintain equipment safely."
Opponents face an uphill battle
Chip Chase is among the skeptics. He runs White Grass Ski Touring Center, a popular cross-country ski area that he helped found 45 years ago. He is a fixture in the local community that he describes as "Vermont, with Southern hospitality."
"If you're an outdoor person, this place is paradise," he says. "People come here to get away from data centers. People want dark skies here. People want to have a peaceful, quiet recreational area."
Economic development, however, is a top priority for the state of West Virginia. It ranks among the poorest in the country and has the unique distinction of having lost population since 1950.
John Deskins, director of the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research, says data centers could be a boon. "As long as we're making sure that we follow all the proper procedures around noise pollution, water pollution, [and] other elements of environmental pollution ... I think they're a good opportunity," he says.
It is those proper procedures that worry people in Tucker United, a grassroots group opposing the data center plans. As in so many other places across the country, they are battling what they see as a lack of transparency.
The first anyone in the community heard about the Ridgeline project was March 2025, when an obscure notice appeared in a local newspaper announcing the request for an air-quality permit for a proposed power plant, says Davis Mayor Alan Tomson. A resident called him to ask if he knew anything about it. "I told her that I did not," Tomson says. He then called the mayor of neighboring Thomas. "He also had not heard anything about it."
From there, Tomson says, things moved quickly. A month later, the Republican super-majority in both houses of the state legislature passed a highly unusual bill exempting certified microgrid districts and high-impact data centers from county or municipal zoning or any local restrictions related to horticultural, noise, viewshed, lighting, development or land use.
A lack of guardrails
Opponents quickly gathered 1,000 signatures on a petition urging Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey to veto the bill. They were unsuccessful. Signing the legislation, the governor noted the state's need to "continue to focus on economic development and utilizing our many natural resources," adding that "companies will now be able to quickly build, expand, and increase job creation right here in West Virginia."
"They completely got rid of any … sort of regulation or guardrails for these data center developments," says Tucker United spokesperson Nikki Forrester. "They want to sell us out, … extract our resources and leave us with the mess."
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection approved Fundamental Data's air-quality permit without, according to Tucker United and other activist groups, conducting a comprehensive assessment of the facility's potential public-health impacts on the surrounding valley. When asked by NPR about Tucker United's concerns, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection responded that it "does not comment on active litigation" and declined an interview request.
Opponents of the project subsequently commissioned their own analysis finding that the Ridgeline plant could cause between $19 million and $35 million a year in health-related damages and premature deaths.
Tucker United, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Sierra Club challenged the air-permit decision in court. Their appeal was dismissed in August on jurisdictional grounds. The groups say they will go to the state's Supreme Court.
Chapman says Tucker United's air-quality study assumes Ridgeline will emit the maximum amount of pollution allowed by its air permit for an entire year, when in fact the permit sets an upper limit and "we're going to operate within those limits," he says.
There are other environmental concerns. Forrester notes that Canaan Valley's bowl shape and temperature inversions can trap air pollutants near the ground. As for water, she says, "storing 30 million gallons of diesel right on a creek that feeds into our water supplies is really dangerous and puts not just our community, but every community downstream at risk."
Fundamental Data's Chapman says the storage would be safe and that all of the tanks would not need to be filled at any given time.
In addition to the potential environmental and health hazards, many residents find it particularly galling that West Virginia House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, a Charleston-based attorney with the law firm Bowles Rice, is listed as lead attorney for Fundamental Data in the permit dispute.
"Here's a guy who's writing laws [and] sponsoring legislation while under contract for one of the people that he's working for," complains Gary Berti, a retired homeowner in Davis. "To me, that's a conflict of interest."
In an email to NPR, Hanshaw stated: "I am not now, nor have I ever been, employed by Fundamental Data. I am a partner in a law firm. It is public record that the law firm of Bowles Rice is currently counsel for Fundamental Data in a litigation matter pending in West Virginia."
Jobs are needed, but at what cost?
Fundamental Data believes building the Ridgeline facility would bring thousands of temporary jobs and about 500 permanent ones in IT, electrical and cooling systems, engineering and security.
While no two data center campuses are alike, a Brookings Institution study found that on average, data centers produce around 100 to 200 permanent jobs.
Berti agrees that West Virginia needs jobs, but "there are places that need it more than others," he says, and is skeptical that data centers would bring many permanent workers to the area.
And if artificial intelligence ends up being more hype than substance, he says, it could be a repeat of history.
"A lot of times they leave us behind," he says, referring to the coal and logging industries. "When I moved here 40 years ago, it was two rundown towns," he says, referring to Davis and Thomas. "Look at them now. They're doing well."
Given that history of exploitation, Tomson, the mayor of Davis, says he thinks the data center developer thought it could run roughshod over residents. But they got more than they bargained for, he says.
"This is a very educated community," Tomson says. "Many of the people here that have retired had very high-level scientific and technological careers elsewhere, and they bring that knowledge and expertise to bear on this situation."
Despite the organized opposition, some residents have voiced support. Tucker County Sheriff Jake Kopec thinks much of the criticism amounts to fear-mongering. The landfill for Davis and Thomas blocks the view of the Ridgeline facility from those towns, he says. "I really believe that you would drive past it and not even know it's there."
Kopec acknowledges that the dark skies will be less dark. But he says the county has more immediate needs that the Ridgeline facility would help remedy, including better-paying jobs and tax revenue to fund essential public services. "We have no cops on after midnight in this county, but we serve a million-plus visitors a year," he notes.
A vibrant arts scene
Davis and Thomas — both with populations of roughly 600 people — are not only a base of operations for skiing, hiking, mountain biking and white water rafting, but they've also developed a lively arts and music scene.
"This area was just about written off," according to Tomson. "And what ended up happening was music and artists discovered the city of Thomas, and there was a beginning of a resurrection of the area."
On a Sunday night in October well before the start of the ski season, there's a poetry reading at Creature in Thomas and a few doors down at the Purple Fiddle, a standing-room only performance by Driftwood, an Americana/folk rock band from Binghamton, N.Y.
Most of the hundred or so people in the bar are tourists like Adam Brooke, from Charlottesville, Va. He has been visiting the area for the past decade, taking in the mountains and the color of the fall leaves.
"We're mostly hikers," he says. "We just like getting out there on some of the lesser known trails and just enjoying nature for a bit."
Drawing hope from past environmental wins
Despite the obstacles, opponents of the Ridgeline facility remain optimistic. They're buoyed by the growing national opposition to data centers.
In their own state, Gov. Morrisey — a strong advocate for data centers in the past — appears to be pumping the brakes somewhat, with a recently proposed 20-year plan for "responsible" data center development. It's not much, Tucker United's Forrester says, but it's something.
She also points to the region's past grassroots successes. "Tucker County does have a long history of fighting bad development proposals … but we've been successful in every single one of them."
Forrester and others point to two major environmental fights in the 1970s: a proposed hydroelectric project that would have flooded Canaan Valley and part of Dolly Sods — a protected wilderness area now popular with hikers and skiers. A second, at Otter Creek, saw the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy successfully challenge plans for coal exploration and road construction in the Monongahela National Forest. Both were halted.
Those victories are tempered by the region's darker past, too, she acknowledges.
"They're playing by the same playbook they've always played here," Forrester says. "People don't want to relive that history again, and they will fight every step of the way to make sure that doesn't happen."
Copyright 2026 NPR