Two Porter Township "Patch Towns"
Joliett and Keffers are two separate "patch towns" that are close enough to consider them one village. The earliest mining was Broad Mountain Colliery in the mid-1800s. However, Joliett was the company town for Levi Miller & Company's New Lincoln Colliery, which opened in 1884. (Miller was a veteran of the "Old Lincoln" Colliery nearby. See entry above.) By 1888, New Lincoln's owners were listed as Miller, Groff & Co. In 1890, New Lincoln was listed as abandoned in Pa. mine records, yet was listed as an operation of Graeff, Wilcox, & Co. in 1891. After this time, the history gets murky. It is possible that Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Co. or another company absorbed the coal reserves and their production was reported through another nearby colliery (Lincoln, East Franklin, Tower City). In the 1920s, Hazle Brook Coal Co. opened Westwood Colliery at Joliett. Hazle Brook operated Westwood until 1936, when Westwood Collieries Co. became the operator. In October 1943, Westwood Colliery left and Philadelphia Coal & Iron Co. began strip mining and remining the culm bank. After World War II, smaller operators such as Joliett Coal Co. and Stevens Coal Co. kept the Westwood breaker going until 1954. It was demolished in 1956.
