USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume Three > Part 29
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The Ralston basins are only a continuation of the Barclay and consist of small patches of the coal measures containing only the lower beds.
The McIntire region was opened in 1870, the mines being situated near the village of Ralston, in Lycoming county. The
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Asa Packer
Philanthropist ; member State Legislature 1844 : first president Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, 1855; congressman 1853-1857; founder of Lehigh University 1865
Natural Resources
coal here lies nearly 1,000 feet of perpendicular height above the level of Lycoming creek, from which elevation it is let down into the valley by an inclined plane nearly half a mile in length. The Towanda deposit is an extension of the McIntire basin and situ- ated on the summit of Towanda mountain. The one seam of coal found here is of excellent quality. The Snow Shoe basin is in Centre county, the deposit covering only about eight by four miles in area. The Clearfield basin was opened in 1871 and soon assumed importance as a source of coal supply. There are sev- eral seams of good workable coal, the product being somewhat softer than the Blossburg coal. The mines are principally on the Moshannon creek, along which they extend a distance of more than twelve miles. Here among the hills coal was taken out for home consumption from the time of early settlement, and was shipped along the Susquehanna river in barges during seasons of high water for use by blacksmiths. The strata of the Clear- field basin extend to the headwaters of Moshannon creek.
The Johnstown region, of Cambria county, seventy-eight miles east of Pittsburg, has five seams of workable character, from which the annual output has always been very large and almost wholly consumed at home in the manufacture of iron and steel. The aggregate thickness of these coal measures is three hundred and twelve feet, and they contain valuable beds of iron ore and limestone, supplying all the elements for the manufacture of iron and the home consumption of coal.
The Blossburg basin is situated in Tioga county, Pa., and is the northwest extremity of the third Alleghany basin. The coal from it is richer in bitumen and is a free-burning, dry product, excellent for steam-making purposes. Like all the other de- tached basins of this region, it consists of many small coal de- posits which are separated from each other by deep erosions. The area of this part of the third basin is approximately fifty square miles. Blossburg coal was sold during the twelve years from 1853 to 1864, inclusive, to the amount of nearly 1.500,000 tons.
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The Broad Top coal region is situated in Huntingdon, Bed- ford, and Fulton counties, with an area of more than seventy-five square miles, the field widening towards its southern boundary in Bedford and Fulton counties. The region is detached and independent and its product, coming from an area between the anthracite fields on the northeast and the great bituminous region on the southwest, possesses in a degree the qualities of both; it is therefore classed as a semi-bituminous coal. The average thick- ness of the workable seams is twenty-six feet and of the coal rocks nearly 1,000 feet. The immediate coal region was reached by railroad in 1856 and during the latter part of that year 42,000 tons of the coal was sent to market. This quantity was nearly doubled in the following year, and from that time the annual product rapidly increased.
The Alleghany coal field, as far as it relates to western Penn- sylvania and eastern Ohio, is separated from the Central coal field lying farther west and of about the same width as the Alleghany field ( 180 miles) by the Devonian and Silurian formations of Ohio and Indiana. Pittsburg coal does not exist to any great extent west of the Ohio river. In now considering the purely bituminous coals of western Pennsylvania we may quote as fol- lows from Prof. J. P. Lesley's valuable Manual of Coal:
"The Lower Coals form in western Pennsylvania a system by themselves. Clinging, as it were, to the face of the Conglomerate, the lower system fared better than the upper one, and has been left to cover an immense area. In fact, it forms by far the largest part-perhaps four-fifths-of all the coal remaining on the sur- face. In Ohio-except near Wheeling-and in all the western States, it is the only coal, and may have been originally the only coal deposited. . . Wherever the dip is gentle, this lower system prevails, the upper being swept away ; but where the dip is steep and in the middle of the narrow troughs, it receives the upper system on itself. It furnishes the beds of northern and western Pennsylvania as far south as the Conemaugh or Kis-
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kiminitas, those of the Allegheny river, and all the country northwestward of the Ohio. It occupies the west and south of Virginia, and provides the coal of eastern Kentucky and Tennes- see. The cannel is, perhaps, exclusive of this system. .. . . At that time [referring to the early survey of Pennsylvania] a large bed in the upper bed of the system was familiarly called 'Elk Lick coal,' from its locality near the romantic falls of that name in Somerset. This bed, which is the upper Freeport bed of the Kiskiminitas and Allegheny rivers, seems to be represented by the large upper coal of the Kanawha and Coal rivers of Virginia, and by the great bed at Karthause and Clearfield to the north. It marks the upper limit of the lower coal beds, and is covered at no great distance by the remarkable sandstone strata hereafter to be discussed [the Mahoning sandstone].
"This coal bed sometimes rivals the Pittsburg bed in size and purity of minerals, but wants its regularity. This is its fault in common with all the beds of the lower system : they cannot hold their own for any great distance in any given direction. This is particularly true of the large bed at Buck mountain, which lies nearly upon the Conglomerate, and seems co-extensive with the coal field.
"At Towanda, on Broad Top, at Johnstown, on the Tennessee river, even at St. Louis, its sections are scarcely to be told apart. Everywhere it is about fifty feet above the Conglomerate ; every- where it has a small satellite some yards below it ; everywhere it is itself a variable stratum from five to twenty feet in thickness-a double bed, with an even roof and an uneven floor, rising and falling stormily on a sea of fire clay, which sometimes has a depth of thirty feet."
The bituminous coal field of Pennsylvania covers an area of more than 12,000 square miles-the largest in the world. The principal mining centers of this region are situated along the lines of the Philadelphia and Erie railroad, the Pennsylvania Central railroad, the Panhandle branch of the Pittsburg, Cincin-
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nati and St. Louis railroad, the Alleghany railroad, the Erie and Pittsburg railroad, in the Shenango valley block coal region, and along the Youghiogheny, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers. These several railroads have in recent years, by consolidation and other changes, become known by other names.
Of this series the Monongahela region is by far the most important. It extends from the State line of West Virginia to the city of Pittsburg, a distance of ninety-five miles. Along the slopes of the Monongahela valley the famous Pittsburg coal crops out on either side of the river, giving access to the coal seam by drift mining. The coal lies in the earth with great regularity and with just sufficient dip to drain the mines of water. The coal is the best in the United States for the generation of steam, the manufacture of gas, the production of coke, and for domestic use. The bed is from four to fifteen feet in thickness and usually rests in two benches. In the vicinity of Pittsburg, where the coal is from nine to eleven feet thick, the two seams are separated by a layer of fire clay of from eight to fifteen inches in thickness. The upper coal is so poor in quality that it is not saved. As about fifteen inches of the bottom coal is left in the mine, only about four and one-half feet are taken out. At some points in Washington and Allegheny counties, and elsewhere in the region, the whole height of the bed is worked, the product being all of excellent quality. In Westmoreland county most of the mine openings are by shafts, while in Allegheny, Washington, and Favette counties the coal is all obtained by drift mining. This famous coal bed is known throughout the world and the impor- tance of its product in developing the prosperity of the city of Pittsburg, and less directly of the whole State and country, can scarcely be estimated. Every year during more than half a century has seen the rich coal dug from the earth and transported down the Monongahela river and over the railroads in millions of tons, bringing to the region an enormous flow of wealth that never ceases.
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The coal mined on the Youghiogheny river in the vicinity of Connellsville is celebrated for its coking properties, which has given it an immense consumption not alone in Pittsburg, but in many of the western and northern States. A hundred bushels of this coal produces one hundred and twenty-five bushels of coke, forty bushels of which will smelt a ton of iron from a rich ore. The coal bed is nearly eleven feet in thickness, but only seven or eight are mined.
The Shenango valley coal region occupies the extreme outcrop of the coal measures of western Pennsylvania, the mines being mainly situated in Mercer county. The block coal of the region just east of Sharon is usually found in one seam, the lowest of the series, and is the equivalent of the block coal of the Mahoning valley and of the Massillon coal of Ohio. It is an excellent fur- nace coal and is consumed in its raw state. At Greenfield, seven miles southeast of Sharon, an upper coal was discovered some thirty years ago which had an average workable thickness of four feet ; but the quality was poor, when compared with the block coal. Like the lower coal, it lies in patches of unequal levels, and the troughs in which it is found are generally wider than those which enclose the block coal. Professor Rogers located the lower coal of this valley below.the Conglomerate, and sometimes patches of the Conglomerate rock form the roof of the coal bed, but the true place of this seam is in the coal measures, of which it forms the base. It rests upon the upper surface of the Waverly sandstone, and sometimes upon a coarse grained sandstone. ("The Coal Mines," Roy, p. 266.)
Bituminous coal was mined near Richmond, Va., about 1750, and was extensively used during the Revolutionary war. It was transported to Philadelphia in 1779. In 1789 its price in that city was Is. 6d. per bushel. In later years and during the war of 1812 this coal became scarce in Philadelphia, but it was the principal source of supply for many years for that section of the State and down to 1850 supplied the Philadelphia gas works and
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those of other cities. During twenty years after about 1830 the importation of bituminous coal from Great Britain to Philadel- phia steadily increased, as the Virginia supply diminished. About 1856 the coal of western Pennsylvania came into use in the city.
The first coal mined west of the Alleghanies, as far as is shown by records, was in 1760, when Captain Thomas Hutchins visited Fort Pitt in July and found a mine open on the opposite side of the Monongahela river, from which coal was taken to supply the garrison of the fort. The fort was then under com- mand of Major Edward Ward, who obtained coal from near the summit of what has been known as Coal Hill, sending it down to the flat in a shute. This pit was long known as Ward's pit. Colonel James Burd already in the previous year had mentioned the discovery of coal along Redstone creek and Coal Run near Brownsville. In 1766 Rev. Charles Beatty mentions the deposit in Coal Hill, where it "had been burning almost a twelvemonth entirely under ground." The non-importation agreement made by Philadelphia merchants, in 1765, mentions coal as one of the commodities that could be brought from Great Britain as ballast. In a paper read by William J. Burke before the Pennsylvania Historical Society in January, 1875, he quoted Penn manuscripts showing that the Penns were well aware of the existence of coal at Pittsburg and its value for fuel, as early as 1769. Thomas Penn, in that year, sent a letter from London to his son, John, directing him to have a survey made of 5,000 acres of land around Pittsburg, including the site of the town. In May of the same year he wrote regarding this survey, saying: "I would not engross all the coal hills, but rather leave the greater part to others who may work them." The oncoming war troubles pre- vented the execution of these plans at that time. In 1784, the Penns still retaining their proprietary interests, which included the manor of Pittsburg, surveyed the town into lots and in the same year the privilege of mining coal in the "great seam" was sold at the rate of £30 for each mining lot, extending back to the
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Simoncameron
Editor ; banker; contractor; United States Sen- ator, 1845-1849; secretary of war in President Lincoln's cabinet, 1861-1862; minister to Russia, 1862; United States senator, 1857-1861, and 1867- 1877; born 1799; died 1889
Natural Resources
center of the hill. ("Iron Making and Coal Mining." Swank, pp. III-12.)
From this time forward the demand for the rich coal increased rapidly for both domestic and manufacturing purposes. Various minor industries came into existence which drew upon the supply to a considerable extent. The first steam engine was put in operation in Pittsburg in 1794, and salt was produced there by evaporation at a very early day. Coal pits were opened on the Pittsburg side of the river at Minersville and elsewhere in 1797, and a glass works was established on the south side of the river at a point where coal could be had near at hand. The first twenty years of the consumption of coal at this point saw a marvellous increase. Numerous steam engines were installed for a variety of manufactures, the population multiplied and all drew heavily upon the fuel that was to constitute so great a factor in the de- velopment of the place. A newspaper of 1814 said : "This place is celebrated for its coal banks. ... . . It is in general use in all private houses and the extensive manufactories established through the town. Coal is found in all the hills around this place for ten miles at least and in such abundance that it may almost be con- sidered the substratum of the whole country. . . Little short of 1,000,000 bushels are consumed annually. The price, for- merly 6 cents, has risen to 12. There are forty or fifty pits opened" [on Coal Hill].
The first coal was shipped from Pittsburg in 1803, when the Louisiana was "ballasted with the fuel, which was sold in Phila- delphia for 371/2 cents a bushel." In 1820 coal mining was begun at Coal Centre (Greenfield), and ten years later at Limetown, both on the upper Monongahela, in Washington county. Most of the product of those early years was put on board of boats sixty-eight to eighty feet in length, sixteen feet wide, and five feet deep, holding from 4,000 to 6,000 bushels. On these it was floated to Pittsburg and the Ohio river towns. A directory of Pittsburg for the year 1837 has a list of ten collieries on Coal
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Hill, which produced over 5,000,000 bushels at that one point. It was then estimated that the total product was 12,000,000 bushels, the selling price of which was about 5 cents per bushel.
The coal industry of this immediate region received a power- ful impetus from the operations of the Monongahela Navigation Company, which created a slack-water navigation by means of dams from Pittsburg to the West Virginia line. The first survey for this improvement was made in 1838, and between 1841 and 1844 the system was completed' to Brownsville, in the south- eastern part of Washington county. Similar works were com- pleted on the Youghiogheny river in 1850, which have since been abandoned. The Pennsylvania railroad did not reach Pittsburg until 1852, giving the navigation company eight years of great prosperity. Between 1845 and 1847 the revenues were nearly doubled. The toll on coal over the entire navigation system was $2.91 per 1,000 bushels. There was also a large revenue from passenger traffic, the number carried in 1850 being more than 18,000. But with all this it cannot be said that the confident expectations of the company were wholly realized. The expense of operation, and particularly the cost of repairing damages by floods, ice, etc., was great. The shipments through the locks of the system in 1844 were 737,150 bushels; in 1850 they were 12,297,967 bushels, and in 1860 they were 37,947,732 bushels; in 1870 they had risen to 57,596,400 bushels, and in 1880 to 84,048,350 bushels, with still further increase in later years. The construction of the railroads into this region added greatly to the transportation facilities and widened the field of consumption.
The Pittsburg coal region includes parts of five counties- Allegheny, Washington, Greene, Westmoreland, and Fayette. Definite geographical limits cannot be fixed, and it is also difficult to give it geological limits, for the location of the different coal basins along northeast and southwest belts of the country at angles to the geographical points of the compass, and the great trans- porting mediums of the district make them only in part tributary
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ТЯСЬЯТЯЕН АЛТЯЗЛАЯЯ И НОГ Isdinosodt xr M ed drow zins not bedoser ferrolstuf) ed dasigotodą ont Hory
JOHN FREDERICK HARTRANFT
Etched for this work by Max Rosenthal From the photograph by Gutekunst
Sichad, by Mon Rose
Copyright by The Poems grunn Host . I Fudressing con 200 There 140.
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to Pittsburg itself, a large part of their product going to other markets.
The year 1843 saw what was probably the first use of bitu- minous coal in Pennsylvania for the reduction of iron ore in blast furnaces. In that year it is recorded that coal in the vicinity of Sharon, without coking, "has been successfully tried for smelting iron in a common charcoal furnace." This was doubtless only an experiment, but its significance was most important. "In July, 1845, Himrod & Vincent, of Mercer county, Pa., blew in the Clay furnace, not many miles from the Ohio line, on the waters of the Shenango. About three months afterwards, in , consequence of a short supply of charcoal, . . . . a portion of coke was used to charge the furnace. Their coal belongs to seam No. I, the seam which is now used ( 1875) at Sharon and Youngs- town, in its raw state, variously known as 'free-burning splint' or 'block coal,' and which never makes solid coke. A difficulty soon occurred with the cokers, and, as Mr. Himrod states, he conceived the plan of trying his coal without coking. The furnace con- tinued to work well, and to produce a fair quality of metal." At the same time, Messrs. Wilkinson, Wilkes & Co. were building a furnace on the Mahoning, at Lowell, Mahoning county, Ohio, intending to use mineral coal from seam No. 1, on which they owned a mine near Lowell. The credit of making the first iron with raw bituminous or semi-bituminous coal. in the United States, belongs to one of these firms. An account of the blowing in of the Lowell furnace, on the 8th of August, 1846, was printed in the Trumbull Democrat, of Warren, dated August 15, 1846, where it is stated that to "these gentlemen [Wilkinson, Wilkes & Co.] belongs the honor of being the first persons in the United States who have succeeded in putting a furnace in blast with raw bituminous coal. . . It is admitted that Mr. David Himrod, late of Youngstown, produced the first metal with raw coal, about the close of the year 1845, and has continued to use it ever since. The friends of Wilkinson & Co. claim that it was an accident,
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and a necessity, while their works were built and intended for raw coal." ("Youngstown Past and Present," printed 1875.)
It required much agitation, extending over a number of years, as well as the influence of many mine disasters, before legislation was enacted providing for State supervision of the coal mines. A bill was introduced in the legislature in 1858 which provided for such supervision over the mines in Schuylkill county, but it was not favored and was soon withdrawn. Again it was intro- duced in 1866, when it passed the lower House, but failed in the Senate. It was finally passed in 1869, but the law-makers were so short-sighted as to make the provisions of the bill apply to only the anthracite mines. A few years later the Governor appointed a commission of three practical miners, in accordance with a resolution of the legislature, and this commission made an ex- haustive examination of the bituminous mines and reported to the Governor, recommending the extension of the provisions of the mining law to all of the coal mines of the State. This purpose was effected, and the bituminous field was divided into three dis- tricts, with mine inspectors for each.
The Bureau of Internal Affairs of the State was organized on the first Tuesday of May, 1874, and for more than a quarter of a century since has been of immense benefit through its elaborate reports upon natural products, manufactures, etc. The report of the bureau for 1874-5 gives the total product of bituminous coal as 1,289,594 tons. Five years later, in 1880, the quantity had increased to 8,327,561 tons. As the quantity mined increased and the mining area extended it became necessary to increase the number of districts. In 1890 there were eight districts, their boundaries including territory in the following counties: First district-Allegheny, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmore- land counties. Second district-Allegheny and Westmoreland. Third district-Armstrong, Butler, Clarion, Indiana, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mercer and Westmoreland counties. Fourth district -- McKean, Potter, Tioga, Bradford, Sullivan, Lycoming, Clin-
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ton, Cameron, Elk, and parts of Jefferson, Clearfield and Centre counties. Fifth district-Fayette and Somerset counties. Sixth district-Blair, Cambria, Clearfield, Jefferson and Westmoreland. Seventh district-Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland. Eighth district-Bradford, Centre, Clearfield and Huntingdon counties. By the year 1900 two districts had been added to this number, making ten, and at the present time a still further addi- tion has increased the number to twelve.
In 1890 the production of bituminous coal in the State had increased to 40,740,521 tons, and this immense quantity was nearly doubled in the next ten years, the amount mined in 1901 being 80,914,226 tons. There was only one year in this last decade when the quantity decreased; this was 1893, when 43,422,498 tons were produced, against 46,225,552 tons the pre- vious year. During the decade under consideration the annual production of coke has been as follows: 1892, 7,854,620 tons; 1893, 5,459,297; 1894, 5.724,244; 1895, 8,922,380; 1896, 6,613,253 ; 1897, 8,523,291 ; 1898, 10, 171,920; 1899, 12,192,570; 1900, 12, 185, 112; 1901, 12,125,156. It is of interest to note that of the 24,000,000 tons of bituminous coal produced in this State in 1884, Allegheny, Washington, Fayette, and Westmoreland counties supplied 13,000,000 tons, or 54 per cent. of the product of the whole State. About one-third of this latter named quan- tity was made into coke.
In the early years of the bituminous mining industry there was far greater fluctuation in prices from time to time than in later years, and those prices were directly affected by prevailing rates of tariff. In 1834 the average price of the coal was $4.84. The duty was reduced to 20 per cent. in 1839-40 and the price of coal at once rose as the duty decreased. In 1842 the highest duty ever imposed on foreign coal was levied-$1.75 per ton- and the price at once went down in 1843 to $3.27. During the succeeding ten years, under more regular and reasonable duties, prices were more nearly stationary and there was greater pros-
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perity in the mining industry. But in 1854 foreign coal was admitted free and prices at once rose, and were only reduced by the financial stress of 1857. In 1866 the duty was made $1.25, and prices fell again. These relations between the price of coal here and the rate of tariff need not be followed further.
The subject of the amount of available bituminous coal and the probable duration of the supply under the normal yearly increase of mining is an important one and has caused much dis- cussion. A paper on the subject, "Available Coal," was prepared and read in 1880 by Dr. H. M. Chance, in which he gave some interesting figures and observations. The commonly estimated area of the coal field (between 12,000 and 13,000 square miles) greatly exceeded his estimate; also, the estimates by others of the tonnage of available coal as from 180,000,000,000 tons to 300,000,000,000 tons, are vastly higher than those arrived at by him. He ignored seams of less than two feet in thickness, and his estimate of available coal, excluding the Broad Top field, was 33,547,200,000 tons, which he divided thus: Beds over six feet thick, 10,957,200,000 tons ; three to six feet thick, 19,586,800,- 000 tons; two to three feet thick, 3,003,200,000 tons. From the year 1864 to 1880 he placed the yearly average increase of pro- duction at six per cent. He concluded that the output would not ever reach more than 50,000,000 tons, at which rate it would require 500 years to exhaust the supply.
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