As a Kentuckian, I confess my bias that Appalachia is as beautiful as any place on Earth. The Rockies may be dramatic, but they are geological teenagers compared to the Appalachian Mountains that are more than half a billion years old, existing long before dinosaurs and even before bones existed on land. Hundreds of millions of years of wear have reduced the Appalachian Mountains to their softer profile. But a coal company can take the top off of a mountain in less than a year, depending on its size and amount of coal.