An undated photograph believed to have been taken before 1942 of loaded coal cars exiting the Newkirk Tunnel west of Tamaqua. The coal was headed headed for the Tamaqua cleaning plant.
From a series of articles that appeared in the Pottsville Republican and Herald in 1998:
In 1853, the Newkirk Colliery was leased by four different parties, with each owning and operating separate breakers. The collieries were operated by Ratcliff & Company, Bowman & Company; Wiggans & Son, and Jones & Cole.
The original opening was the Newkirk water-level tunnel, driven 1,200 feet north into the Locust Mountain by the Little Schuylkill Navigation Railroad & Coal Company in 1830. The veins cut in the tunnel were mined by the company in 1846.
This tunnel was called the Providence Colliery. In 1846, Booth, Wiggans & Son leased the colliery and mined the veins in the tunnel until 1861.
In 1845, Bowman, Moyer & Richardson leased the south basin from the Little Schuylkill Navigation Railroad & Coal Company, sinking a slope 350 feet on the Bowman Vein and driving a tunnel to the overlying Diamond Vein (Primrose), on which a pump slope was sunk.
In 1853, Moyer left the company and mining continued by Bowman & Richardson to 1855. In 1850, Jones & Cole leased the South Dip Holmes Vein, sinking the slope 318 feet in the south basin, driving the west gangway 4,200 feet into the Buckville Colliery workings.
About 1850, R. Ratcliff & Company leased the northern basin from the Little Schuylkill Navigation Railroad & Coal Company and sank th South Dip Holmes Vein slope 650 feet and mined the slope gangways to 1861.
In 1861, Jones and Cole leased the three collieries of Ratcliff, Bowman and Wiggans (the three operators) and combined them as one individual colliery, operating them to 1867 under the name of the Newkirk Colliery.
In 1867, Pardee, Roberts & Company, landowners, took possession of the colliery. After making many improvements to the hoisting and pumping machinery and rebuilding the breaker, it leased the colliery to Frey, Shoemaker & Company, which extended the slope on the Holmes Vein 300 feet below the old level.
They continued mining the new lift to 1875, when it was purchased by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company, which in 1876 abandoned the colliery because of the heavy expense necessary to bring up the production to where it could be worked economically.
The colliery was named after the secretary and treasurer of the Little Schuylkill Navigation Railroad & Coal Company, Matthew Newkirk.
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Article by Frank Blase, Historian, Reading Anthracite Company Historical Library, Pottsville Republican & Herald, May 9, 1998. Obtained from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.