Popular rhetoric suggests that the future of post-industrialized regions is dependant in part on young people's engagement. If so, school and community educators will do well to work with youth to better understand influences on how they envision engagement--both historical and present-day--and assumptions on which they are premised. They then may be better positioned to critique the local value of dominant notions of civic engagement and to envision definitions that more closely reflect their own lives and communities' needs. I examine young people's historical perceptions of their post-industrial region in the early to semilate (1980s) 20th century. I discuss their views of and emotional responses to what they perceive as markers of the past, what they feel has changed, and what has remained the same. I consider ways their emotional responses are entry points for youth and school and community educators to critically consider the impact of changing cultural, social, and economic arrangements on young people, their communities, and their civic engagement.