This colorized postcard from 1900 captures a coal colliery in northern Schuylkill County, a striking image of Pennsylvania’s anthracite heartland at the peak of the anthracite boom.

The Mahanoy City Colliery, like many others in the region, was a massive complex of towering coal breakers, railroad lines, and industrial buildings, all designed to extract, process, and transport anthracite coal – the fuel that powered factories, railroads, and homes across the eastern half of the United States. Originally constructed during the Civil War, the colliery was operated until around 1950 by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company.

Preserved in the collections of the National Trust for Historic Preservation at the University of Maryland, this image offers a rare glimpse into a coal town at the height of its prosperity.

By 1900, Mahanoy City and the surrounding valleys were among the most productive coal mining regions in the United States. The town had grown rapidly since the mid-19th century and the Civil War era.

By the turn of the 20th century, collieries like the one seen in this postcard were operating around the clock, processing thousands of tons of coal daily to meet the growing energy demands of the Gilded Age. In 1920, the population hit its peak at around 15,000.

By the 1930s, deep mining in Schuylkill County was struggling amid the Great Depression and by the 1950s, all the major collieries had closed and the era of Mahanoy City as a thriving coal town had come to end.

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Read more Coal Region history

The Breaker Boys of Pennsylvania – Child Labor in the Coal Region

Mary Severn – The postmistress of Mahanoy City

“The lonely valley was alive with workers” – The Mahanoy Valley in 1874

A Civil War officer’s grisly amputation at Spotsylvania Court House on May 10, 1864

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