These photos document the working conditions, routines, and daily realities of early coal mining communities. Long before modern machinery and safety standards, miners of all ages worked in difficult ...

Any history of industry in the Central Susquehanna Valley over the past two and a half centuries must start with coal, said Harold Aurand, professor of history and American studies, Penn State ...

In the early 1840s, a group of businessmen in the Philadelphia area became aware of stories of untold wealth of cannel coal, a very special coal which would also yield coal oil, which existed in the ...