An undated photograph said to be of the entrance to Tommy Hall‘s mining operation near Gratz, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. The photo below is also believed to be of the same mine.
The start of this mine was some time in the early 1870s by a man named Tommy Hall who, according to the census, lived in Gratz in 1870. After Tommy Hall died in 1876, the mine was not active and remained so until the 1930s, when activity began again by bootleg miners who were permitted to work to obtain a load of coal.
The following information is from a Gratz history published in 1997:
Not a great deal is known about this mine. Thomas Hall lived in Gratz in 1870, and the census noted that he worked in “the tunnel.” He died about 1876.
Many years later, during the depression of the 1930s, a team of men from Gratz mined coal from Tommy Hall‘s Tunnel for their own use. Anyone who worked the required amount of time was entitled to a load of coal.
During those years, a “tunnel mule” was stabled at Schminky’s farm. On the way to work, the men stopped to get the mule, and he walked up the mountain with the men. At the mine, the mule was hitched to a mine buggy. The buggy was pulled into the end of the rock tunnel, to the place where the men dug the coal. There a wooden turntable was built. The mule pulled the heavy buggy onto the turntable. Several men turned it, and when loaded, the mule could pull the buggy out loaded with ‘mine run’ coal.
Outside,. the coal was dumped onto a swinging screen in the shack. One of the men was delegated to shake the screen back and forth by hand all day long, to get rid of the coal dust. The it was dumped on a pile to be taken home.
A wooden shack built close to the tunnel, was used by the blacksmith to sharpen saws and picks and to repair shovels. The shack was probably a holdover from the days when “Tommy Hall‘s Tunnel” was in full production.
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