In the years after World War II, small towns, villages, and cities in the Ohio River Valley region of Ohio and Indiana experienced a high level of industrialization not seen since the region's commercial peak in the mid-19th century. The development of industries related to nuclear and coal technologies, including nuclear energy, uranium enrichment, and coal-fired energy, changed the social and physical environments of the Ohio Valley at the time. This industrial growth was part of a movement to decentralize industry from major cities after World War II, involved the efforts of private corporations to sell free enterprise in the 1950s, was in some cases related to U.S. national defense in the Cold War, and brought some of the largest industrial complexes in the U.S. to sparsely populated places in the Ohio Valley. In these small cities and villages, including Madison, Indiana, Cheshire, Ohio, Piketon, Ohio, and Waverly, Ohio, the changes brought by nuclear and coal industries meant modern, enormous industry was taking the place of farms and cornfields. These places had been left behind by the growth seen in major metropolitan areas, and they saw the potential for economic growth in these power plants and related industries. Some locals argued that this type of industrial development hurt the environment. They organized into anti-nuclear, anti-plant, environmental movements, and as consequences of both nuclear and coal technologies became increasingly clear in the later decades of the 20th century, environmentalists gained power in guiding the futures of these industries. The failure of the coal and nuclear industries to adapt to growing environmental regulations and increased costs in the 1970s and onward affected the communities of the Ohio River Valley. In these Ohio River Valley cities, villages, and towns, the local environment, local economic development, and local social values were influenced by federal regulations and the often pro-industry efforts of state politicians. The story of U.S. industrial development in the postwar era to the present can best be told through the actions and experiences of people who lived in these places, small towns in the U.S., far away from centers of economic and political power. Grassroots movements bubbled up in these Midwestern and rural areas, and demonstrated the strength of environmentalism in small towns far from urban centers. But, politicians, workers, and others concerned with losing industry countered environmentalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The story of the Ohio Valley in the post-World War II era provides a counter-narrative to discussions of deindustrialization in the Midwestern U.S. focused on loss of industry in the 1950s and beyond, and provides an important local social and environmental context for understanding how people negotiated the economic benefits of industrial development and the potential consequences of pollution. This narrative demonstrates the difficulties of maintaining small town environments when they faced increased pollution, acid rain, economic decline, and major industrial transformation.