In September 1938, residents of Tower City, Pennsylvania, opened their local weekly newspaper, the West Schuylkill Herald, to devastating news that had already filtered through town through the previous week: the Brookside Colliery of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company – the economic lifeblood of the community – was shutting down.

The records of the P&RC&I show the closure officially listed as August 26, 1938.

Mining had ceased entirely, leaving only a few dozen men employed at the washery and pumping station. The once-mighty colliery and its neighboring operation at East Brookside above Reinerton, which had provided steady work to more than 1,200 miners at its peak, had gone forever silent. For Tower City and neighboring Schuylkill County towns in Williams Valley, the closure marked the another death blow for large-scale deep coal mining in the region as the Great Depression lingered.

The collapse of the Brookside operations followed a grim pattern already familiar to coal mining families in Williams Valley. The Short Mountain Colliery in nearby Wiconisco Township, Dauphin County, had gone dark five years earlier, in 1933, a casualty of the Great Depression and the failing anthracite market. Its closure left more than 1,600 men jobless.

A few miles west of Tower City, the Williamstown Colliery – once among the most productive in Pennsylvania – struggled on through the late 1930s, before finally closing its deep mines for good in 1942. The losses were cumulative and crushing. With each shuttered shaft and dismantled breaker, the Williams Valley’s economy – built almost entirely on the extraction of anthracite coal – crumbled.

For Brookside, the shutdown was no surprise to miners who had watched the workings deteriorate. A decade of “robbing the pillars” – a desperate form of mining that extracted coal from already weakened supports – left the tunnels unsafe and exhausted.

“Consistent robbing, without development to provide new work,” the Herald reported, “has exhausted all available coal and made further mining both unsafe and unprofitable.” By 1938, the company had withdrawn completely, leaving behind flooded slopes, idle hoists, and hundreds of unemployed men reliant on unemployment compensation, public relief, or the WPA program of FDR’s New Deal.

From the West Schuylkill Press-Herald, September 2, 1938:

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All Brookside Closed Except Washery 

Only About Fifty Men on Payroll; Mining Ceases 

Blame Mining Methods 

Every part of Brookside Colliery except the washery, boiler houses, water hoist, and pumping station, with the necessary maintenance for these units, has been definitely closed down. Coal is only produced now at the washery, and only about 50 employees, including monthly men, remain on the payroll. Underground mining of coal has ceased, and it is believed for all time so far as the old workings are concerned. 

It required no order of the U.S. District Court to close Brookside colliery. The method of mining instituted by A.J. Maloney 10 years ago, and continued by the present management of the company, has brought about a gradual deterioration of the underground workings.

Consistent robbing, without development to provide new work, has exhausted all the available coal and has made further mining both unsafe and unprofitable. 

First came the closing of the three Tower City tunnels within the space of two years through exhaustion and lack of development. Then came the closing of No. 4 slope for a year and a half, with its subsequent reopening 9 months ago, only to rob the slope pillars and complete the destruction of this mine. It was closed after two men lost their lives.

Now comes the closing of East Brookside, the only remaining underground workings. A weak rope on the water hoist was replaced by taking a rope from the coal hoist. 

Wagons, machinery, and worthwhile recoverable rails are being removed from the colliery in preparation for entire abandonment. It is proposed to operate the washery with water from the pumping station in Firemen’s Park, when the water hoist at the shaft is also abandoned. 

Several boilers at West Brookside are being disconnected, and only a few will be used to provide steam necessary to run the breaker and washery. 

Monthly men are being gradually laid off, and within a short time it’s quite probable that this once great colliery, employing a peak of more than 1,200 men, will have sunk to the insignificant employment of probably not more than 30 or 40 men. 

Meanwhile the hundreds of men thrown out of employment are subsisting on unemployed compensation, or have graduated from that into the public relief rolls or the WPA.

The future holds out little encouragement for opportunity to secure legitimate employment at coal mining. 

Already many miners have taken to the mountains in quest of bootleg locations, and it is predicted that the next year will see bootleg mining of coal in this end the county on a scale undreamed of before. 

Groups of local men are pondering the situation and are trying to devise some means of securing other employment, or to bring about early action upon the development of the large virgin deposits of coal in this vicinity by independent operators who are said to be eager to secure leases.

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The death of the Brookside Colliery marked the unraveling of a way of life for Tower City and its surrounding villages. Families who had lived for generations by the rhythm of the mine whistle faced an uncertain future.

Many miners turned to bootleg mining, carving makeshift shafts and tunnels into the surrounding mountains to dig what they could from abandoned veins. These illicit operations – dangerous and often deadly – became a lifeline for survival in the late 1930s. Others left Tower City altogether, beginning a long period of exodus from the coal towns of Williams Valley.

Today, the ruins of the Brookside and East Brookside have largely been consumed by nature, but its story lingers in the identity of the Williams Valley.

The closure of Brookside, Short Mountain, and Williamstown collieries reshaped the communities at the southwestern edge of the anthracite coal fields, ending an era of industrial dominance and beginning one of economic struggle.

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Read more about the Brookside collieries

Fire On the Mountain – The Brookside Colliery Fire of November 1869

An 1872 description of the Brookside Colliery above Tower City

The East Brookside Mine Disaster | August 2, 1913

First funerals for the victims of the East Brookside Mine Disaster | August 1913

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