This illustration of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad’s Pottsville train station looking south appeared in the 1861 travel guide Our Whole Country. This was published just as the nation began to tear itself apart and civil war began.
The authors described the scene like this:
“The view is taken from near the passenger station at the western terminus of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. The Clay Monument is seen on the elevation on the right, the coal cars on the left, beyond which are iron foundries. The river, canal, and railroad pass at the base of the mountain, seen in the extreme distance.”
They described Pottsville as well:
“Pottsville, the principal town in Schuylkill County, and the great mining depot for the anthracite coal and iron regions of the Upper Schuylkill, is situated just above the gorge where the Schuylkill breaks through Sharp Mountain…
Pottsville was incorporated as a borough in 1828, including in its limits the once separate villages of Mount Carbon, Morrisville, Greenwood, Salem, Bath, and Allenville. It contains 15 churches, in three of which the Welsh language, and in two the German language, is used. Population about 15,000. This place is remarkable for the rapidity of its growth, the picturesque wildness of the scenery, and the immense trade in coal, of which it is the center.”
Read more about Pottsville in the Civil War era
How Pottsville commemorated the first anniversary of the Confederate army’s surrender | 1866
An 1863 assassination attempt on a US Army commander near Pottsville
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