A Look At Greene County Coal Mines

Coal mining began in Greene County in the late 1700's with Thomas Hughes of Jefferson. He used his slaves to strip mine coal on his property above Ten Mile Creek . It is believed that much of this was dug in the ravine between the present Jefferson Morgan High School and the football field. Coal mining was limited to small " farmer mines" scattered over the area and it was sold by the bagful. Near the river and larger streams coal was loaded onto flatboats as seen in this old drawing courtesy of Carnegie Museum.

As land transportation was improved from narrow mud paths to rough mud roads so grew too, the business of mining and selling domestic heating coal. By 1868, Mr. R.A. Sayers of Waynesburg was offering " Coal coarse, measure warranted and no disappointment " at 4.00 for a hundred pounds at his Ten Mile Works.

Courtesy of Greene county Historical Society

Local investors ( Dilworth Mining Company 1880-1930) opened Dilworth above Rices Landing in 1902, it was the first large commercial coal mine in Greene County.  Other coal patches and company towns built in the early twentieth-century were Crucible in 1912, Rosemary, Penn Pitt and Sandy Run in Monongahela Township. In Dunkard Township were Poland Mines, Maple Sterling and Rose Mine. The Walnut Hill mine was started in West Point Marion in 1916. The William Pitt mine started around 1916 near Clarksville. Below Pollocks Mill was the Patton Mine (1921-1930) , owned by the Waynesburg Coal Company. Built in 1918-19 were Mather, by the Pickands-Mather Company of Ohio and Nemacolin, built by the Buckeye Coal Co. of Ohio. One of the largest company towns was Bobtown, started in 1920 by Jones and Laughlin.

By the WW2 era, the largely untapped coal deposits in Greene County became very important. Increased mechanization had made it possible to mine some more remote portions of the coal vein through extensive underground systems connected to large portals along the Monongahela River. Several large river front complexes were built including Emerald, Warwick, Cumberland and US Steel's huge Robena Mine.

There were basically 12 major coal mines in Greene County, the last of southwestern Pennsylvania's counties to become a major producer. They are:

• Crucible, opened in Cumberland Township in 1913 by Crucible Steel for its mill coal supply. At its peak in 1953, the mine employed 903 miners and produced 1.3 million tons of coal. Crucible Mine closed in 1961 and throughout its 49-year life the mine extracted 36.5 million tons of Pittsburgh seam coal. It was operated later by other firms.

• Mather started operations in 1918 in Morgan Township by Pickands-Mather Co. of Cleveland. It was the site of a 1928 underground explosion that killed 194. The mine was abandoned in 1965.

Mather Mine by Howard Fogg

Nemacolin  Mine by Howard Fogg

• Nemacolin, in Cumberland Township, began shipping its coal in 1919. Nemacolin was said to be the largest coal mine in the U.S. at that time and it was Greene County's second most productive mine in the 1940s. After nearly 70 years of production the mine was idled in 1986 and sealed in 1988.

• Shannopin was a Jones & Laughlin subsidiary operation that began coal production in 1926 in Dunkard Township. It was closed in 1992 and sold.

• Warwick, a Duquesne Light operation opened by Warwick Coal Co. in 1921, closed, then was acquired by the utility firm in 1940. It underlies several townships.

• Robena, in Monongahela Township, began mining in 1944 by H.C. Frick Coke Co. Disaster came to the early, fully mechanized mine in 1962, when a methane gas and coal dust explosion killed 37 miners.
Production ceased in 1983.

• Gateway, formerly Edward and Emerald, first opened in 1921. It was renamed Gateway in 1963 by a subsidiary of the companies that used its output. The Morgan Township mine closed in 1989.

Dilworth Tipple

• Dilworth, originally opened in 1902, At Rice's Landing, it was the county's first commercial mine. It was a deep shaft mine and had 190 coke ovens and was located along the river on the northern border of Rice's Landing. Coal and coke were loaded directly into barges from the riverside mine.In 1914, the Rice's Landing Coal and Coke Company acquired the Dilworth Mine. Within the next few years, the H.C. Frick Coke Company acquired the mine. It was reopened in 1974 by U.S. Steel, and purchased by Consolidation Coal Co. in 1984.

• Cumberland, in Whitely Township, began production for U.S. Steel in 1977. In 1993, the mine was acquired by Cyprus Arnax and operated by Cyprus Cumberland Resources Corp.

Cumberland's River Tipple at Grays Landing, Eric M. Johnson Photo

• Emerald, opened in 1977 in Franklin Township, was first operated by Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. It has had several owners since.

• Bailey, in Richhill Township, began operations for Consolidation Coal in 1984. For a short time in 1992, it was the largest underground coal mine in the United States and was known for its efficiency and low cost..

Bailey Mine, Consol photo

• Enlow Fork, also in Richhill, was opened by Consolidation Coal in 1990 and was for a long time the most productive underground mine in the United States.

The 1944 Emerald Mine Fire At Chartiers

It was a spark from a grounded trolley wire that started the Emerald Mine fire soon after seven pm on the evening of June 7, 1944. It fell into a load of hay, fodder for the horses that pulled the pitwagons. There was an attempt to push the burning car into a worked out section but the fire got out of hand and started burning the haulageway. The volunteer fire departments of East Bethlehem and Jefferson arrived as men women and children swarmed down the hill from the patch to see about husbands and fathers. East Beth Fire Chief Albie Tinelli sent four volunteers down the 400 foot shaft with hose but they had to return, the bottom was a raging inferno. Of the 157 men on the night shift all but 6 came out within a few hours, most of them by way of the Lippencott air shaft three miles away. Rescue crews from Tower Hill and Clyde went repeatedly into the mine but the flames drove them back. At the main shaft the women of Chartiers organized a canteen and were passing out coffee to the men as they worked.Mine rescue team of the 1940's
All the local mine officials were on hand, Thomas Lamb, superintendent of the Chartiers pit of Emerald, William G. Stevenson, general manager of the Hillman Coke Company, T.P. Latta, superintendent of Crucibile Steel's Monongahela River Mine, George O'Brian, superintendent of the mines at Allison and Tower Hill, Richard Maize, state secretary of mines, district inspectors from Waynesburg, Uniontown and Monongahela City, the Federal Inspector, U.S.Bureau of Mines engineers , William ( Billy ) Hynes, president of District 4 of the United Mine Workers, UMWA International board member Jock Yablonski and other union officials.

Emerald Mine Tipple at Chartiers 1930, looking north, MRy photo

Emerald is a gassy mine and as the flames spread the work became increasingly dangerous. After eighteen hours the state inspectors ordered the sealing of the mine to avoid further loss. If the fire remained unchecked it could start to burn into adjoining mines. Earlier when the Pike Run mine fire got out of control it burned for ten years. The old Coal Hill Mine on the southside of Pittsburgh caught fire in 1765, before they learned about sealing mines, and was still burning in 1820, looking "like the mouth of a volcano".

There was no hope to get the six men and thirty two horses who remained in the pit. Of the missing miners, three were unmarried, one was the father of five children. Another victim, Steve Barnish, a fifty-five year old machine operator, left nine children. Barnish had a home in Chartiers Village on the hill above the mine. Sixteen days after the mine fire a tornado came through, destroying many of the neat white colonial cottages of the patch. Among the dead were Steve Barnish's wife and one of his daughters.
It took twelve hours to seal the slopes and headings. They put in concrete blocks, covered them with a brattice and then plastered over the top. The mine remained sealed all summer and fall. When the mine was sealed, the adjacent Clyde Mines workings were shut down. For a while over 1900 men were idled in the Ten Mile Creek Valley, 640 from Emerald and the rest from the Clydes. By late December it seemed that the fire was out. It was risky to open a sealed mine because even if the fire is out the heat will have cooked a high concentration of firedamp out of the strata and nearly all oxygen would have been consumed. Of four Pa. explosions caused by mine fires, three were from sealed fires opened too soon.
When the inspectors got inside the mine, they found bodies identifiable only by lamp and check tag numbers. They were 2000 feet from the shaft and would have had time to escape through side routes but for some reason did not.
The clean up took several months and after almost a year after the fire, the Emerald mine was back in operation.

Blasting cap token, Emerald Coal and Coke Co., my collection


Tin sign courtesy unknown donor


Emerald's river tipple above the mouth of Ten Mile, on the present river bike trail. MRy photo

Emerald was originally called the Edward Mine and first opened in 1921. It was accessed by three mine shafts, two slope entries, and a bore hole 36 inches in diameter. The Chartiers Slope, Chartiers Fan Shaft, Chartiers Hoisting Shaft, The River Slope, and air vent, and the Lippincott Shaft. Coal was moved to the river tipple and also loaded onto railroad cars at Chartiers. When the 1944 tornado destroyed much of the original patch housing on Chartiers Hill Emerald Coal and Coke built the Burson patch. The Braden patch was another section of company-built housing for employees of the Emerald Mine, and is probably the last coal patch to be constructed in Pennsylvania. It was at that time a Hillman owned mine.
Renamed Gateway in 1963 by a subsidiary of the companies that used its output, this Morgan Township mine closed in 1989.

This Emerald Mine is not to be confused with the currently active Emerald Mine originally operated by RAG-Emerald and opened in 1977 in Franklin Township, Waynesburg Pa. It was first owned by Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and has had several owners since.

Much of this is taken from the book Cloud By Day by Muriel Earley Sheppard.