During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an estimated 300,000 Lithuanians journeyed to America. This number is hard to document fully because census records did not officially recognize Lithuanians as a separate nationality until the twentieth century, and the country’s people may have been reported as Russian, Polish, or Jewish. Several cities and large READ MORE >>
The disappearance of a Jewish community in a small mining town in Pennsylvania sheds light on the disappearance of many other small Jewish communities that once dotted the American landscape. Upon arriving in America in the late 1800s, many Jewish immigrants were faced with the same problem—earning a living. They were forced to peddle various READ MORE >>
Today’s Church of St, Patrick in Pottsville, Pa. was the first Catholic church in the lower anthracite coal region; the first between “John Potts and the coal mines” and the New York state boundaries to the east and to the north. It would become the mother church in which many other area Catholic parishes found READ MORE >>
The Mahanoy Plane is an engineering feat that moved hundreds of millions of tons of anthracite coal up Broad Mountain, just north of Frackville, PA. What made this mega-machine run was a tandem frictional rope with a 6,000 horsepower steam hoist at Mahanoy Plane. The anthracite coal from the surrounding 48 collieries went through the READ MORE >>
Boilo — making it AND drinking it — is a local obsession here in the Coal Region around the holidays. This spirited beverage is the thing of legend in Schuylkill County and everyone has their preferred recipe and method of producing it. But one thing that remains constant is the almost exclusive use of blended READ MORE >>
1 2 3 4 What happened to this region is part of the story of anthracite. The impact of hard coal upon the economy of Northeastern Pennsylvania is another. But the story that lingers is the saga of these that historian John Bodnar in 1983 christened the Anthracite People—the resourceful, vibrant, brave, and hardy people READ MORE >>
There are more than a million homes in Pennsylvania that sit on top of abandoned coal mines, and although there is not really any way to prevent a hole from caving in, there is one thing you can do before it happens. If you’re on top of an old coal mine, please get mine subsidence READ MORE >>