Boy, talk about a remote coal town in the middle of nowhere. Gahagen, Pa. was at the very end of the railroad in Shade Township. It was built by Gahagen Coal Co. in 1919 to house the workers of the Huskin No. 3, 4, and 6 coal mines. Mining was in the Upper Kittanning and Lower Kittanning seams.
Apr. 2018 image by author
Former coal company houses.
Apr. 2018 image by author
I figured that there was originally a house between these houses and that they had been torn down. But I checked the 1939 aerial photo on Penn Pilot and the original spacing of the houses was actually this generous. Maybe this is because the owner of Gahagen Coal Co., William Gahagen, was a local man, and not some financier or industrialist in some distant East Coast City, and thus cared more about the workers and his little coal town.
Apr. 2018 image by author
These houses were probably for managment.
Apr. 2018 image by author
The porches have been converted to rooms, window changed, etc.
Sources:
Summers, Patrica, editor. Somerset County, Pennsylvania; An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites. 1994.
