This 1862 illustration of the coal mines at Bear Gap in Wiconisco Township, Pennsylvania is one of my favorites from years of researching Coal Region history – largely because it depicts a place I know well.
The image appears in the upper right corner of an 1862 map of Dauphin County, now preserved by the Library of Congress and the Pennsylvania State Archives, and offers a rare Civil War–era view of industrial life in northern Dauphin County.
The illustration shows the operations of the Short Mountain Coal Company and the Lykens Valley Coal Company at the height of the Civil War, just north of the mining communities of Lykens and Wiconisco.
In the images, which I have cropped and zoomed to show more detail, we can see the breaker and culm bank of the Short Mountain breaker on the west (left) side of the Gap.
In the middle, we can see the small brick worker homes that once occupied the center of the Gap along the waters of Bear Creek. We can also see the head house of the Lykens Valley slope that descended hundreds of feet below Bear Gap and Big Lick Mountain during the Civil War era.
On the right (east) side of the Gap, we can see the Lykens Valley breaker and the top of the “Inclined Plane” railway that took loaded coal cars down the mountain through Wiconisco to the Lykens Valley Railroad.
In 1862, coal would have been taken west along the Lykens Valley Railroad to Millersburg and then either picked up by trains on the Northern Central Railroad or placed on arks on the Wiconisco Canal to be shipped south to Harrisburg.
From Harrisburg, the coal from Wiconisco Township went to heat homes and power factories from Harrisburg to Lancaster and York, Baltimore and Washington.
The mines at Wiconisco Township proved to be immensely important to the Union war effort as the Civil War raged and briefly closed in June 1863 when Confederate forces invaded the Keystone State before being turned back at Gettysburg.
Today, all that’s left of this once vast industrial operation are a handful of ruins and a pock-mocked landscape. This was my playground as a kid – I wanted to learn more about all these mining operations that once built the towns I grew up in.
This illustration helped bring my childhood imaginings to life – showing me what this place once looked like during the Civil War years.
Subscribe to the latest from Jake Wynn – Public Historian
Enter your email below to receive the newest stories.
always loved your podcast of our coal region. being from Williamstown and my dad and grandfather being coal miners its great to hear these stories. with the Williamstown tunnel and colliery being the largest coal producing site in the world at one point in time gives tribute to our past
Hi Jake, Joe T commenting, one of the last strip mines the Tallman Family and your Uncle George ran a Dragline on, was up into the Bear Gap/Valley. We had to access it up from the Wiconisco town mine roads that were still passable in the late 1960’s. I even worked there as a teenager in the Dragline as the Oiler, with another Operator to help Backfill the Strip Mine. Keep the History Alive! Thanks, Joe T
My Great Grandfather, Jeremiah Splane lived in Lykens after emigrating from Ireland in 1850 to work in the mines.
Hi Jake. Judy Cook Lengle -I’m from Lykens and often rode my horse out Market Street, going toward the gap. About halfway up on the right were huge culm banks with truck paths forming a big flat circle on the top. We used to race our horses around the circle. We called that place “the moon” because that’s what that bleak landscape reminded us of. This was in the mid-sixties. We also rode up into Bear Gap as far as the few houses that were left there .There were truck roads that went up the east side of the gap to Bear Gap and then returned along the west side of the gap, completing a circle. During that time we also explored the ruins of brick buildings there belonging to the briquette plant. Found lots of papers strewn about the floor and an old desk in one of the small buildings.