If you go to pittston there's a mine there they sealed up. 113 men are at the bottom. My grandfather was a demolition expert and was told to blow a wall. He refused saying if he did that the river would come in and kill everyone. His boss insisted and pop told him where to stick his job.
I used to deliver the liquor stores in that area.Always wanted to explore the area,I'm fascinated by the coal mining history of our area.I really enjoy your channel
My summer of 1959 was spent at my aunt house in Kulpmont Pa . which is close to Shamokin PA. I was told to stay out of the old mines so I only went in the entrance of the solid rock mines and avoided all those timber mines entrances. As a kid of 12 I had a hell of a good time checking out those old mines around Kulpmont Pa. It is still hard to believe that 180,000 people worked in those hard coal mines during those good times. In Kulpmont Pa.during the 60s less then a quarter mile behind Ash st and behind a kids park there were dozens of open square shaft vents or exits from the mines below. There were so many mines your eyes never left the path in fear you might fall in and never be seen again. During the 80s a young couple were driving back there and drove right into a mine one night sad. Most of the people that lived in Kulpmont Pa . during the 1960s came from the same area in Europe around the Ukraine.
John Blecker- if you spent the summer of 1959 in Kulpmont, then your grandmother might have given you Maurer's milk to drink, which was a dairy in Mt. Carmel and owned by my maternal grandparents. I spent many a summer (during the 70s and early 80s) there. Even played baseball against teams from Kulpmont. I enjoy these videos because of the memories they bring back.
People were killed. One day I was getting a haircut, and a girl came in to tell the barber that her uncle had been killed when a rock fell on him in the mine.
My moms father Paul Melnick's Death Certificate read body crushed by fall of top rock while working in a mine AUG 16 1916 10 or 12 years later her older brother Mike also died in the mines. Some local people claim that the mines were the best thing to happen in that state and most of the deaths that happened were caused by miners that took too many short cuts to make more money which could be ture.When my mom passed away 8 months a go at age 104+ I was able to meet all my good Penn relatives again.
Wish you could do the coal mines in WilkesBarre! My grandfather and his brother both worked in those mines. Sadly, my great uncle died in a cave in. Thank you for all the sharing of this kind of forgotten history! Awesome job! This is my first time!
The big drum was the cable winch that pulled the dinky cars up the mountain. There were two small cable cars that took the spoils from the breaker up the mountain and then they were hauled to the current dumping spot on the very large coal bank in large Euclid dump trucks
Your video is awesome! I was born in Shamokin, and used to climb the coal hills when I was a kid. The mining was strong and they even had mining tours. Everything you found is really very cool. Thank you for sharing this!
Grew up in minersville, really appreciate your time and videos. Takes me back. Would like to discuss other locations with you. Ones nobody else knows about. Father was chief of police in Cass township, and even he didn't know of my discoveries til I showed him.
One year, around 1962, Shamokin and Cass Township faced off in the championship game, and I think Cass won it 2-0 on a safety. Also, I seem to recall it was played on a weekday.
I used to drive thru that area everyday for work years ago. I didn't realize everything was still there. I want to visit in the fall when there is less foliage. If your interested in exploring it again, let me know.
I love how you bring a level-headed approach to your adventures- not a reckless daredevil but curious & brave enough to go into places I wouldn’t! (Arachnophobe) the cave-like entrance at 15:40 is fascinating, for the tilt of rock layers and obvious seam of coal. I’d expect a more modern way into the mine is somewhere- but that looks like a hand-dug version!
Some of that looked like air compressors for pumping air into the mine. The other stuff might have been pumps to pump water out of the mines into those troughs. Totally wild . I was just near there looking for the Plane in Manahoy. Great stuff.
My Grandfather and Father both worked in the Mines in that area. My Grandfather worked 50 years in the mines going in at 11 years old in the 1800's , my Father went in the mines in 1930 at 14 yrs old.
There used to be a radio station, WISL, 1480, that would announce which mines would be working and would also read the admissions and discharges from the miners' hospital in Shamokin.
Patricia Haddock Good question. My Pop never mentioned any one he worked with from back then. He’s been gone now since 1985, so I can’t ask him anymore. Sorry.
robert feinberg Wow!!! That would sure be great if that station was still happening. My Pop had a huge dent on his head from when the mine had fallen and he probably went to that hospital. Do you think maybe the hospital still has a record of that?
Fascinating how Mother Nature is taking back and reclaiming the abandoned mines. My Grandfather was a coal miner in Shamokin; he arrived in PA after emigrating from Poland around 1906. Shamokin was once a thriving area thanks to the mines, silk mills, and woolen mills (my Grandmother worked in the mills). Once those industries died, Shamokin began a sad, slow decline.
i live not too far from here and wanted to do a video on this place as well, but im like you not sure what everything is i hope someone can give us a lil history lesson on this stuff. great video buddy cant wait to see your return visit maybe you can find out more info on your return
That big "Wheel" I believe is a cable hoist, and yes, it would have been used to pull the coal cars out of the mine. Back where I am from in WA state we had a lot of coal mines. One town in particular had a cable hoist, but nothing is left of it, so to see this cable hoist I can get a better picture as to what the hoist would have looked like. Very cool stuff! I completely agree with your statement about preserving history. Things should not be torn down, but rather preserved in such a way that everyone can enjoy. Keep it up! Love your videos!
@mrt57rn I live in Northeastern Ontario Canada in a gold mining town, I'm a career miner here, but as a kid I used to play in the old abandoned mines here too. Those were the best days of my childhood, thanks for telling your story, sir!
Great exploration! You are correct, it is sad that this site could not be salvaged and made into a living museum, in some manner. The younger generations who know only the digital world do not have a theoretical or practical knowledge of what humans can engineer and do by brain and by hand.
I use to work with someone who use to work at the Glen Burn Colliery Shamokin Pa. The Glen Burn colliery was owned by the Susquehanna Coal Company Nanticoke Pennsylvania. I had relatives who worked for the Susquehanna Coal Company in Nanticoke.
If that was the cable hoist you were standing by, does that mean there was a vertical shaft beneath it or was this a horizontal hoist? Is there a safety risk if there was a shaft imedeatly below there? I couldn't tell from what was left of the structure which direction (vertical/horizontal the loading was applied to the hoist. Anyone know?
Some of those buildings were pump house's and some of machinery were old Goyne pumps, i guess they were pumping water up to seperate the coal from the rock because coal floats
enjoyed the tour and the comments. Some people knew what some of the machinery was. if no one wanted to preserve history the area could use the money from recycling all the iron and other metals to create new industries in the area.
I think that's been tried. What little industry was developed is in an industrial park in Elysburg, which is relatively prosperous but not part of Shamokin.
This was the biggest mines back in the day I remember sitting and watching the coal carts going up and down the side of the mountain.right now a company is reclaiming some of the coal on the mountain
My partner said he used to have a job hauling trailers (temporary homes) for the coal miners working there. He wants to make a drive up there. He said the roads would sometimes cave in from the mines. Similar to Centralia?
Looks like you're at the glenn burn it use to be a very large coal mine Google it the buildings ran all the way up the side of the mountain there was also one that the mine itself was still intact but I think they might have bulldozed over it
If you Google Glen Burn Colliery there is lots of information including articles, videos, and photos. Lots of history. I remember the name Glen Burn very well because my father ordered and we burned coal from there.
The story was told in Witness, and they got a dramatic effect by filming in color, but the landscape was so bleak that the only times the viewer would see color was the blue sky.
It takes a lot manpower and $ to build these structures to mine....What do you think would be a percentage of cost to mine versus the profits of mining?
The veins were in a sine wave formation, so in some places they would come to the surface and be easy to exploit. The cost and danger were in following the veins underground, and the mines would be stricken by floods, fires, and cave-ins, and as the coal was mined, deadly methane gas would be released. There's a book called St Clair, by Anthony F. C. Wallace, that explains this stuff, and you can visit the town, which is next to Pottsville, which is just about the only coal town with a somewhat surviving economy. BTW, I read in Wiki that the Eagle Silk Mill was oce the largest in the world, and I know the National Ticket Co. was once the first and the largest.
It would be Route 61, which becomes Sunbury St. I think it goes from Sunbury to Reading, another severely depressed city that by some measures is the poorest in the country unless it is Shamokin, but Reading is much larger. Reading has a fascinating history as a mob town. Check out the Minker Mob.
around locust dale there is places to explore just be mindful of where you park, i would say park at the end of fire house hill rd. there is a place on the right of the tracks heading west that has a mine opening that water pours out of when it rains hard. and in image 1 where the telephone pole is go north and then east on the path and you will find the base of a structure. www.google.com/maps/@40.7782699,-76.3788499,167m/data=!3m1!1e3 . 2nd image www.google.com/maps/@40.7793663,-76.3761352,268m/data=!3m1!1e3 still going east take the 2nd left heading north walk a bit and you will see a steep slope to your left/west and will see a mine opening in the side of the slope. 3rd image www.google.com/maps/@40.7824602,-76.3774086,371m/data=!3m1!1e3 if you remain on the north path, there is a structure to the right/east and from what i can remember it goes way down. and if you keep going up the path it splits, go north and stick to the left and there use to be some buildings up there and a huge mine opening with a sliding door on top of it. i can see the remains of the buildings but not the opening. there has been mining going on in the area in the last few years so it may be active in some parts. and stick to well worn paths. years ago i was up walking a path i used all the time, i had used the day before this day i was walking and 2 large sink holes opened in and area next to the path. after that i walked way around to avoid the sink holes. and if you look at the aerials of the area you will see blue/green water near the paths, years ago the area around the water was extremely steep going to the waters edge, so be careful.
if you have ever driven Ashland to Lavalle or the opposite or driven Ashland to Shamokin bypassing Mount carmel you have driven right thru it. its just a little blink and you missed it village.
Great videos, I live in Pa, been to Centralia many times , need to go back and check out some of the stuff i missed that you show on your videos . In interested in this one , where in Shamokin is this , can you give me a leed to get there , either off 61 or what ever road to the old mines, thanks.
@@thewanderingwoodsman7227 I too would like to visit the site but the coordinates you gave were downtown, pretty sure you were not downtown. Any other hints where you parked?
If there are no openings in the sides, the purpose of the metal troughs running down hill was likely to run the water that typically has to be pumped out of a mine down to a stream below. Similar metal troughs--but with openings in the sides-- were part of the system for separating the anthracite from other rock by breaker boys, crippled older miners, and sometimes even girls. There are good photographs of this in a book that I highly recommend: The Kingdom of Coal; Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields by two Anthracite Region locals, Prof. Donald L. Miller and reporter Richard E. Sharpless, published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 1985 ISBN 0-8122-1201-0 Thanks very much for this documentary video.
I would disagree that it's cool. I think depressing is more like it. There used to be a tourist venue where people could go down into the mine. I think Ashland may still have a working museum. You might want to check out Centralia, but I don't know how close you can get. At some point it's closed off. I've heard that the culm bank is the largest in the Western hemisphere, that there might be a larger one in Japan. Also, it's one fire, like Centralia, and when the wind blows a certain way, you can smell it where you're living. I was reminded of it when I went to college in West Philly, and on some days we could smell the sulphur from the tank farms in South Philly. The most interesting thing I can tell you was that when I attended the Washington elementary school, one night the was a torrential downpour, and the muck from the culm bank flowed into the town and into some people's basements and kitchens. They let us out at noon, and I found a street to wade across where it was only up to my ankles, pretty dangerous for elementary school kids, because we could easily have tripped and fallen into it. A friend told me that whereas Shamokin used to be known for coal, now it's known for crystal meth. A claim to fame is that St. Edward's church was the first to be electrified. A more interesting place to visit would be Sunbury, another depressed town 20 miles west of Shamokin, where the Hotel Edison, which I think is still functioning, was the first hotel to be electrified, and Edison lived in Sunbury for a time. Northumberland, across the river was the home of Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen. I hate to think about what people were breathing before that event. Sunbury, by the way, is the county seat of Northumberland County, so you could visit the courthouse. As far as I know there isn't a single higher education establishment in the county. The most prominent one nearly is Bloomsburg University, which most Shamokin graduates would choose. The two most prominent private universities are Susquehanna, whose beautiful campus is in Selinsgrove, and Bucknell University, located in Lewisburg, which I think has the feel of a southern college town. Students from Shamokin High used to drive to Bucknell for enrichment classes on Saturday mornings and then go to lunch at the Bison restaurant.
robert feinberg Great to read the information you’ve shared. It would be so wonderful to come back someday and see that town. So sad that it’s become just like other small towns in the US where it’s now a drug users home. Hopefully there’s still some nice places to visit.
@@franniebayne6470 It's the real deal, not drab and dingy like the rest of the region, although I have to qualify that with the observation that Shamokin had a higher quotient of pretty girls than one would expect. At JT you might be able to take a scenic train if it's still running.
Sorry, but it just occurred to me that if the train isn't running, and even if it is, you might be able to find a video. Another nice place to visit with a train ride is New Hope, Bucks County.
Coming from Danville you'll go across the new Cameron bridge when you hit town, just go down to weis and drive and park in the back of the building. Walk the railroad tracks under the bridge and you will find all this crap
There is a small fourtune in scrap metal on that site. It should be salvaged and the area reclaimed before someone gets seriously hurt or worse. I worked underground in coal mines for about 22 1/2 years. I still have occasional nightmares and some PTSD from many brushes with death.
Gas meter and a helmet. But they collapse when they want to. No warning Jeffrey it happens. Remember also that they were digging for profit early on, not safety
