Today, it doesn’t look like much. A forked path in the woods on State Game Lands in northern Dauphin County. Not much else. We are looking west, the trail on the left headed toward the village of Wiconisco and the right headed one mile to the long forgotten Big Lick Colliery. Behind us, the trail heads up the mountain toward the end of the line at the abandoned Williamstown Colliery.

In 1865, the Summit Branch Railroad Company opened a new section of railroad from Wiconisco to the new mining operation called Williamstown Colliery. A shortage of labor caused by the Civil War meant the project became delayed by several years.

When the railroad opened and loaded rail cars full of anthracite trundled down Big Lick Mountain towards Wiconisco and eventually Millersburg, junction with the main line of the Northern Central Railroad.

The small branch to Big Lick Colliery opened a few years later, bringing rail cars beneath the breaker to take in coal mined at what was originally called the Lykens Valley East Colliery. A slope there descended hundreds of feet below the mountain to connect with tunnels and workings that ran three miles west to Bear Gap above Wiconisco.

The tracks running to Big Lick Colliery were abandoned by the 1880s, but coal still ran on the main line of the Summit Branch Railroad Company to Wiconisco until the line was abandoned in the 1940s.

The railroad beds that remain here have now been abandoned longer than they were ever in use.

Today, the Lykens Valley Rail Trail follows the path of this once prosperous anthracite railroad. (featured image)

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