PRICEDALE MINE

Memories of Pricedale

We are fortunate that Tim Shaffer is sharing his memories of growing up in Pricedale.

I have many memories of growing up near the "coal patch" of Pricedale, PA in the early 1940s, and one of the strongest was the sometimes overpowering stench from the slate dump just out of town. One of the largest "gob piles" in the area, this dump was from the Somers No. 4 coal mine, owned by the Pittsburgh Coal Company (PCC) since about 1905. Also strong in my memories was the burned slate that came from burned slate dumps; slate ash, known locally as "Red Dog" due to its color, covered many back roads and driveways in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Pricedale was developed after PCC bought the largest of the four Somers mines existing since the late 1800s near Belle Vernon, PA. After realizing the potential of their new acquisition, they brought in a construction company from Ohio to build their company houses and company store for the army of miners required to dig into the rich Pittsburgh Coal Field. Originally known as Ohio City, the name was eventually changed to Pricedale, in honor of a local Rostraver Township politician. PCC also enticed the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad to build a spur track up to Pricedale from their main line on the Monongahela River to haul out the Somers No. 4 output.

Another strong childhood memory was the daily banging and clanging of the P&LE coal cars being shunted around near our Pricedale elementary and high schools, both within a few hundred feet of the Somers No. 4 pit mouth. This railroad action, the noise from the tipple, and the occasional shift whistle, were great disrupters of our classes. Other memories of that era were the daily hikes to and from elementary school, around - and sometimes over - the burning slate dump, or skinny-dipping (boys and girls alike - those were different times!) in the many pools on our 1/2-mile school route. These pools were formed when a local company strip-mined what was probably the remnant of the Somers No. 1 pit. (Somers No. 2 had been sold to the Victoria Coal Company and the Zundel Coal Company by that time; both were located on the Pricedale-Monessen road).

We children often explored another abandoned and unnamed mine just south of Allen's Crossroads, rooting through the cast-off tools and animal bones that we found there. Strip mining the various abandoned shaft mines near Pricedale provided an opportunity for many of our older local enterprising boys to go into business for themselves. They would borrow a little money from parents and buy old worn-out coal trucks and haul the strip-mined coal to railheads or to the steel mills in the area. Not to be left out, we neighborhood boys would flag them down and spend entire days riding around in these overloaded clunkers, racing each other mine-to-mill, and evading the state police with their portable scales and truck inspection lists!

All that is now gone; the last working mine near Pricedale was shut down in the 1960s, and the patch houses were sold off to private owners. La Grange, our elementary school, later burned down, and the Rostraver High School was abandoned, in part because it sat atop a mine fire, but mostly because it became overcrowded. The huge slate dump was eventually hauled away, replaced by a Wal-Mart! We children of Pricedale are, for the most part, scattered far and wide, chasing opportunities not available to our parents and grandparents, who spent most of their lives in or under Pricedale, Pennsylvania!