In the 1930s, Benjamin Harrison Hay captured the community where he lived on video with footage he shot at the nearby Buck Run Colliery in Foster Township, Pennsylvania.

The footage shows a variety of scenes, including mineworkers at the colliery, the small gauge locomotive at the mine, and the above ground workings of mining at the colliery in western Schuylkill County during the Great Depression.

Below are some edited clips I’ve taken from the larger film that has been preserved by the Pennsylvania Highlands Community College and made widely available through the Digital Public Library of America. You can read a full description of the mining operations at Buck Run and annotations about the video footage by Dr. Elijah Bremer.

These clips show the operations of a colliery as the Great Depression took hold and threatened the collapse of large-scale deep mining operations in the Southern Anthracite Field in Schuylkill County and adjacent communities in the Coal Region.

Footage shows a “lokie,” a narrow gauge locomotive, moving coal cars to and fro at the Buck Run Colliery in Foster Township, Schuylkill County.

Mineworkers at the Buck Run Colliery in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania in the early 1930s. This colliery was in the patch town of Buck Run in the hills about five miles northwest of Minersville.

This edited footage shows mineworkers at the Buck Run Colliery in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. In the film, we see workers in and around the colliery and on payday at the company office.

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Read more about the Coal Region during the Great Depression

“Due for a comeback?” – An address on the Coal Region on eve of Great Depression

Lykens miners determined to save their workplace at historic Short Mountain Colliery | October 1933

“A Town That Wouldn’t Say Die!” – Lykens, Pennsylvania in 1937

“Bootleg” mine disaster in Wiconisco Township, Pennsylvania killed three miners | 1934

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