A brief “official” history of Tower City and Porter Township , Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, was produced for the centennial celebration in 1968. Included was a story on the development of and collapse of the coal mining industry in the area.
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COAL HAD PROMINENT PART IN HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT OF AREA
Early mining in our area occurred at Wiconisco at the Short Mountain in the 1830s and a little later at Gold Mine, Rauch Gap and Yellow Springs in the Stoney Creek Valley. Wendell Houtz is believed to be the first to discover the outcroppings of the local coal reserves but he conducted no large scale mining.
The earliest commercial mining venture was that of James Stees and Oliver Stees at Lorberry in 1833. The mining methods were crude. A shaft was dug by pick and shovel, with the dirt or coal hoisted in buckets. The coal was crushed by hammers outside the mine, loaded on wagons and taken to Pine Grove for shipment to Philadelphia or Harrisburg. The Lorberry venture was disbanded because of financial problems.
Henry Heil, in the mid-1850s, opened two mines. The first was located at Rausch Creek and the other in the year 1857 at East Franklin which was the first documented coal mine in Porter Township.
A few years after Heil opened East Franklin, Henry J. Osterman sank a shaft a short distance north of Keffers. It was known as the Broad Mountain Colliery and remained in operation until about 1865.The present Keffers was laid out in 1864 by the then landowners but was called Ostermansville in honor of the man who opened the first mine. The name was changed to Keffers about 1875.
Lincoln Colliery was opened in 1869. It employed 260 miners and 12 boys inside. A breaker was constructed with a 300,000 ton annual capacity.
KALMIA COLLIERY
Kalmia Colliery was opened in the same year by the driving of a water level tunnel. The colliery breaker was built abut 1872, destroyed by fire in 1881, and rebuilt in 50 days consuming in its erection nearly one half million board feet of timber. In 1881, a slope wast of the breaker was sunk and a large fan was erected three miles from the main water level tunnel. The power for the fan was supplied by a hot air engine as the expense of piping water for boiler supply over so great a distance was prohibitive. This was probably the first hot air engine introduced in the southern coal fields for coal mining purposed. It proved to be highly successful.
Phillips and Shaefer operated the colliery until 1864 when it was purchased by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company which continued operations until 1889 when it was abandoned. During the ownership of the latter company, the coal was transported by rail to the Lincoln Colliery for processing. Under their ownership, the mines total production was 1.345.986 tons.
Coal prices varied considerably in the early ears of the mining industry. In 1838, coal was selling at the Union Canal Company at Pine Grove at $2.75 per ton and in Philadelphia at $6.00. The mines were usually operated in the winter with the coal stock piled in Pine Grove for shipment via the Union Canal in the spring after the waterway was free of ice. During the summer, mining was usually not carried on because most of the men then worked their farms. Mining wages were $1.00 per day, with boys receiving half that sum. Wages fluctuated with the supply and demand for coal in 1840, when coal was selling for $1.50 a ton at the canal head, and $4.00 in Philadelphia wages were reduced to 80 cents per day. Canal rates varied from $1.50 to $2.50 per ton for shipment to Philadelphia.
FIRST LARGE MINE
Ebenezer Seeley and his son John Seeley started the earliest large scale mine venture in our community about 1840. They purchased about 800 acres from Philip Braun, John Hand, Henry Miller and others and entered into a cooperative venture with them and other land owners to drive a tunnel north through the mountain to Klinger’s on the other side. The digging was all hand labor with the dirt and debris moved by wheelbarrow and later by mine buggies and mules over wooden tracks. The tunnel was driven in red shale, but the hardness of the shale and the hand labor prevented little more progress than one yard per day. By 1845, the tunnel was driven about 900 feet, at which point they were about 300 feet from the first coal vein when heavy rains weakened the timbers and the tunnel collapsed and lack of funds caused abandonment of the project. Had the fall not occurred before the mine became productive, abundant capital would have certainly become available to resume operations and our past history might have been quite different!
By 1866, Henry J. Osterman drove a tunnel about one mile west of s, and by 1867 the work extended 343 feet north when it too was abandoned becaue of lack of capital.
BROOKSIDE MINES
Two mines which contributed most to the growth and development of our community were East Brookside and West Brookside Collieries. In 1868, Charlemagne Tower leased a portion of his lands to four men who sank a 450 foot slope in the Lykens Valley. This operation was named Tower Colliery and was mined by them for five years and later another company for a year before it was abandoned in 1874. During this time the colliery the colliery produced about 101,550 tons of coal. In 1892, the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company reopened the colliery, called it East Brookside, and operated it in conjunction with West Brookside.
In 1868, West Brookside was opened when a 442 foot slope was sunk on the north dip of the Lykens Valley No. 5 vein. It was operated until about 1872 when Reppelier, Gordon and Company purchased it but that company in turn sold it to the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company in 1873. The mine was then developed for large production sinking No. 1 slope to a length of 170 feet. In 1879 the surface openings consisted of one tunnel and three slopes, and inside working consisted of six planes and seven main gangways. Coal production increased tremendously and in the five year period from 1875 to 1879, 1,382,083 tons were shipped, the largest production of anthracite coal of any colliery in the world at their time!
BREAKER USED IRON
For the preparation of the coal mined, two breakers were in use. The West Brookside Breaker was destroyed by fire in 1885, but rebuilt to accommodate the shipments of coal. The new breaker had a larger capacity than the old and its mechanical devices for handling and preparing coal were more efficient than any breaker in existence in the Schuylkill area. Cast iron amounting to 389,300 and 170,00 pounds of wrought iron were used in its construction. This was the first extensive use of iron in breaker construction in the world.
The development of the colliery continued. In 1888, a slope was sunk on the White Valley Lykens Valley vein and in 1894 East Brookside slope was sunk 2,374 feet on the Lykens valley No. 5 vein to the basin. In 1895, a new slope was sunk on the No. 4 vein directly over the No. 3 slope. The No. 3 slope and the Lykens Valley No. 5 vein, in 1898, became exhausted, the pumps were removed, and the water in the slope rose to the point where it flowed into No. 4 slope.
EAST BROOKSIDE SHAFT
In 1900, the foundation walls were built to support the headframe for sinking the East Brookside shaft, and water hoist. The shaft was located south of the top of the No. 5 Lykens Valley vein slope. This slope had a north dip and the shaft was started south of it in the red shale measures underlying the lowest No. 6 Lykens Valley vein. In 1901 the shaft was completed to a depth of 1, 864 feet, one of the deepest shafts in the anthracite field. In 1906 the Brookside shaft was connected with the working of the colliery by a tunnel driven 1,180 feet from the Lykens Valley No. 5 vein new slope. In 1907, the coal and water headframes were completed, the permanent hoisting machinery installed and the shaft placed in service for hoisting the coal and water from the colliery.
About 1907, a tunnel was driven from the bottom of West Brookside slope northwardly through the mountain emerging at Kohler’s Gap. It was intended to bring the coal from the Bear Valley through the tunnel t the West Brookside Breaker, but the increased coal production of East Brookside and West Brookside exceeded the breaker capacity so it was never used for that purpose. The Bear Valley coal was then raised by a plane to railroad on the Hegins Mountain and taken east to the Good Spring Breaker.
TOP COAL QUALITY
In 1914, a new breaker was competed at West Brookside at which time the colliery enjoyed a world-wide reputation for the quality of its coal which sold at a premium of 70 cents to $1.10 per ton.
Total shipment from Brookside Colliery from the time of its acquisition by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company totaled 16,038, 837 tons to 1928 and in 1931, its total shipment was 19,100,169 tons the last figures available.
in July 1917 the tunnel located northeast of Reinerton was driven 3,100 feet northwardly across the basin to the south dip of the Buck Mountain vein and was completed in 1919. This tunnel continued in operation until Brookside was abandoned.
KEFFER’S TUNNEL
No. 3, or Keffer’s Tunnel, was driven in 1919. It reached a distance of 2,130 feet to the north dip of the Diamond vein and was completed in 1920. All the tunnels were extensively mined with gangways, a mile or more in length. Total production to 1928 was 1,150,30 tons.
Fresh water for the steam boilers at Brookside was pumped from a small catch basin at Fireman’s Park which was fed from a strong spring south of Wiconisco Avenue near the site of John Hand’s house and barn. A series of huge steam powered pumps hoisted the water through a line beneath Hand Street to the north to the top of Big Lick Mountain — a vertical lift in excess of 800 feet — where it was stored in huge tanks then piped by gravity to the engine houses and boiler rooms below. About 1922, electric pumps replaced the steam powered giants.
in 1936, East Brookside was abandoned, followed in 1938 by West Brookside. These world famous mines were stilled, never to be opened again.
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Text above is from the West Schuylkill Herald (Tower City), June 26, 1968, via Newspapers.com, and was also printed in the souvenir book for the Tower-Porter Centennial in 1968.
The undated post card view of the East Brookside Colliery was previously posted here on May 2, 2019.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.