In the fall of 1831, the anthracite coal industry in northern Dauphin County, Pennsylvania began with a single stone mason and a very long walk into the heavily forested hills.

Writing in 1865, Richard Nolen remembered those moments clearly – the days when he laid a stone chimney at Bear Gap for what would become the first work at the coal mines in Wiconisco Township. Coal had been discovered in the vicinity six years earlier and the Wiconisco Coal Company was about to begin operations at what would become known as the Short Mountain Colliery.

Here’s what he wrote in an extensive history/memoir in 1865:

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In the fall of 1831, Mr. [Henry] Sheafer called on me at my residence about three miles below Bear Gap, wishing me to go up to the Gap to do some mason work.

I went up in October and laid the foundation and built a stone chimney for a little log house which stood at the rise of a little hill near the old blacksmith shops.

This was the first work done about the old Lykens Valley coal mines. It is profitable to remember this and then return to those mines and your town today.

We see now large and well developed works and mines turning out their hundreds of thousands of tons of coal per year, and a large, thriving, constantly growing town where was then but a wilderness.

The next work down was by me for a Mr. White. I built a chimney for a small shanty which stood a little above where the Short Mountain breaker now stands.

This Mr. White had commenced opening a coal vein on the side of the mountain just above what was then called Peter Romberger’s farm, for the Lykens Valley Railroad Company.

I had three miles to walk every morning to get to my work, taking my dinner with me, and in the evening the same distance to walk home…

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You can read Richard Nolen’s full remembrance of the development of Lykens and Wiconisco here.

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