MISC. WINDBER FIELD
The motor barn/repair shop from Reitz Coal Co. No. 5 mine. There was a small group of four coal company houses constructed at the site 4 houses. Three of them are still
standing in 2021.
Reitz No. 5 pump house.
This centrifugal mine fan is still extant at the site of Johnstown Coal and Coke's coal preparation complex at Allendale, PA. This is a different design than the axial
vane mine fan.
Unfortunately, this tipple that was at the same site in Allendale has been torn down.
Part of the coal mining village of Beaverdale, PA, where the Logan Coal Company operated. Michael Costanzo writes, "I came across your website looking for historical
information about the Johnstown Coal & Coke Company. I was shocked to find photos of tiny little Beaverdale, PA - even more shocked to see in your photograph my grandparents' old house. My family has
a long history in Beaverdale; my great-grandfather died in a mining accident at the Beaverdale mine in 1956. According to my grandfather, Beaverdale was a private town, although the Logan Coal Company built
stretches of worker housing throughout the town. The housing in your picture along Jefferson Avenue was Logan-built housing, including my grandparents' house. He said that further up Jefferson Avenue, in the opposite direction of the photo, the housing
was private, not company-built. They also built some housing in the village of Onnalinda, further down PA-869 on the way to Blue Knob State Park and what he calls 'the Shaft house on the road to Portage.' My mother thinks that is on the road across the
creek in Beaverdale near the Roman Catholic cemetery. My great-grandparents moved into the house in the late 1920's when it was still owned by Logan Coal. They rented their half of the duplex for many years
from the coal company with rent deducted from my great-grandfather's paycheck. My grandfather said that Johnstown Coke and Coal took over the mines in Beaverdale sometime in the 1940's. In 1953, the houses were placed up for sale
and the miners that were renting were given the first option to purchase their half of the duplex or the entire home. My great-grandparents bought their half and my grandparents bought the other half. The store in the background of
the picture was in fact a company store. My mother
said it was a company store through the late 1950s until it became a private store. My grandmother worked there when it was owned by the Mihalik family in the 1960's."
Mine ruins and gob pile at Beaverdale.
The Maple Ridge, PA patch town, up the track from Hollsopple, operated by the Maple Ridge Coal Co. This may have actually been a subsidiary of the Shallmar Coal Company. Several seams of coal were
mined at Maple Ridge, but all mines closed by the 1940's.
Large single family company houses at Wilbur, PA, built by the Wilbur Coal Mining Company during the 1910s, housed the workers of the Knickerbocker No. 3 and No. 4 mine. Deep mining at Wilbur
ended in the 1950's, but surface mining of the coal continued for many years.
Sam sent in this photo of acid mine drainage around the Hughes borehole near Cassandra, PA, about which he writes, "As for the borehole, you can
smell it from a half a mile away."
A surface coal mine in northern Somerset County, PA in 2003.
Carpenters Park, Pa., where miners worked in the Cambria Fuel Company's Cambria No. 1 and Cambria No. 2 coal mines.
Remnant near Dunlo, Pa. of the Henrietta No. 2 coal mine of the Henrietta Coal Mining Co. Don't know why they mispelled Henrietta - maybe some immigrant
still learning English.
Gahagen Coal Co. built the coal town named Rockingham, Pa. in 1916.
Ruins of a shop building from the White Elephant Mine.
Small coal company town known as Hiyastoa in Conemaugh Twp., Somerset County. It was built in 1912-1918 by the Hyasota Coal Company. Later owners and operators were
Penn Smokeless Coal Co. and Penn Smokeless Fuel Co. The mine probably closed in the 1950s.
As this old map attests, the Windber Coalfield contained some of the
highest quality bituminous coal in Pennsylvania.
An example of a modern day coal mining operation is Rosebud Mining's No. 78 prep plant on the Somerset-Cambria County line. The plant processes the Upper Kittaning coal from Mine No. 78, which was previously a captive mine of
Bethlehem Steel that closed in the late 1980s. Rosebud reopened the mine in 2007 and the plant was completed in 2008.
Dec. 2021 image by author
Apr. 2015 image by G.S.
Mar. 2004 image by author
Mar. 1988 image by Jet Lowe, HAER, Library of Congress
Mar. 2004 image by author
Mar. 2004 image by author
Jul. 2002 image by author
Aug. 2004 image by author
Image courtesy of Sam Baker
Mar. 2003 image by author
Dec. 2021 image by author
Mar. 2009 image by Mark Plummer
2018 image by author
Image courtesy of Portage Area Historical Society
2020 image by author
Circa 1959 map from the "Atlas of Pennsylvania Coal and Coal Mining, Part 1,
Bituminous Coal"
Apr. 2009 image by author