The Coal Region is a region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is known for being home to the largest known deposits of anthracite coal in the world with an estimated reserve of seven billion short tons.
By the 18th century, the SusquehannockNative American tribe that had inhabited the region was reduced 90 percent[2] in three years of a plague of diseases and possibly war,[2] opening up the Susquehanna Valley and all of Pennsylvania to European settlers. Settlement in the region predates the American Revolution. Both Delaware and Susquehannock power had been broken by disease and wars between Native American tribes before the British took over the Dutch and Swedish colonies and settled Pennsylvania.
The first discovery of anthracite coal in the region occurred in 1762, and the first mine was established 13 years later, in 1775 near present-day Pittston.[3]
In 1818, customers fed up with the inconsistent mismanagement leased the Lehigh Coal Mining Company and founded the Lehigh Navigation Company. Construction of navigation and locks and dams on the Lehigh River rapids, later known as the Lehigh Canal, was completed in 1820.
In 1822, the two companies merged as the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N). By 1824, the company was shipping large volumes of coal down the Lehigh and Delaware Canals. Meanwhile, three brothers had similar ideas from near the turn of the century, and about the same time began mining coal in Carbondale, 15 miles (24.1 km) northeast of Scranton, but high enough to run a gravity railroad to the Delaware River and feed New York City via the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Pennsylvania began the Delaware Canal to connect the Lehigh Canal to Philadelphia and environs, while funding to build a canal across the Appalachians' Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh. In 1827, LC&N built the nation's second railroad, whose Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway ran from Summit Hill to present-day Jim Thorpe.
The region's population grew rapidly following the American Civil War, due largely to the expansion of the mining and railroad industries. English, Welsh, Irish, and German immigrants formed a large portion of this increase. This immigration wave was followed, in turn, by Polish, Slovak, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Belarusian, Jewish,[4] and Lithuanian immigrants. The influence of these immigrant populations is still strongly felt in the region, with various towns featuring and offering various ethnic characters and cuisine.
20th centuryedit
In 1959, the Knox Mine Disaster served as a death knell for deep mining, leading to its ultimate shutdown in the mid-1960s;[5] almost all current anthracite mining is done via strip mining.
Strip mines and fires, most notably in Centralia, remain visible. Several violent incidents in the history of the U.S. labor movement occurred within the coal region, which was the home of the Molly Maguires and the location of the Lattimer Massacre.[6]
Tours of underground mines can be taken in Ashland, Scranton, and Lansford, each of which have museums dedicated to the region's historic anthracite mining industry. Patch towns and small villages, often historically founded and owned by mining companies, also still exist. While they are no longer company-owned, most of them still exist as boroughs or townships, and ne of them, the Eckley Miners' Village, is a museum and preserved historical town owned and administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which seeks to restore patch towns to their original state.
Academics have made the distinction between the North Anthracite Coal Field and the South Anthracite Coal Field,[7] the lower region bearing the further classification Anthracite Uplands[8] in physical geology. The Southern Coal Region can be further broken into the Southeastern and Southwestern Coal Regions, with the divide between the Little Schuylkill River and easternmost tributary of the Schuylkill River with the additional divide line from the Lehigh River watershed extended through Barnesville the determining basins.
^Carpenito, Thomas (2019) "The State of Coal and Renewable Energy in Schuylkill County", https://medium.com/@thomascarpenito3/state-of-coal-and-renewable-energy-in-schuylkill-f8850fec3fa6
^ absee facts cited and cites of American Heritage book of Indians (1961) in articles: Iroquois, Susquehannock
^http://www.msha.gov/district/dist_01/history/history.htm%7Cwork=The Archived 2012-03-24 at the Wayback Machine U.S. Department of Labor|publisher=Mine Safety and Health Administration
^Karen Ahlquist, 2006. Chorus and Community. University of Illinois Press. p. 225. ISBN 978-0-252-07284-0.
^Thomas Keil, Jacqueline M. Keil; 2014. Anthracite's Demise and the Post-Coal Economy of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Lehigh University Press. pp. 15–. ISBN 978-1-61146-176-3.
^Healey, Richard (2005) "The Breakers of the Northern Anthracite Coalfield of Pennsylvania", 'Vol. 1, Major breakers prior to 1902'. Dept of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth. "Northern Anthracite Coalfield of Pennsylvania" (implying there is a Southern Anthracite Coalfield of Pennsylvania)
^Sevon, W. D., compiler, 2000, "Physiographic provinces of Pennsylvania", Pennsylvania Geological Survey of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Pennsylvania Geological Survey, 4th ser., Map 13, scale 1:2,000,000.
External linksedit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carbon County, Pennsylvania.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Coal Region.
Coal Mine Region - The Carpathian Connection
Pennsylvania's Northern Coal Field
A collection of nostalgia and regionalisms from the Anthracite Coal Region of Pennsylvania
The Anthracite Coal region
Map of the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania
History of anthracite coal mining
Abandoned Anthracite Mines in PA
Brief history of the Molly Maguires
"A Jewel In the Crown of Old King Coal Eckley Miners' Village" by Tony Wesolowsky, Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine, Volume XXII, Number 1 - Winter 1996
A website with extensive detail on and a virtual tour of Eckley