A Harper's Weekly artist documented work in an anthracite mine in Pennsylvania in 1869.
“Miners at work” – Harper’s Weekly illustrations of the Coal Region from 1869
Explore the George Bretz collection of Coal Region photography
A digital archive allows researchers to view hundreds of photographs taken in the Coal Region in the 19th century.
“East Meets West: Pennsylvania at Gettysburg” – A Facebook Live event
We are hosting our first Facebook Live event with Civil War Pittsburgh from the Gettysburg battlefield.
Captain Alexander Frazer – Civil War hero and Coal Region mine foreman
Captain Alexander Frazer became a hero during the Civil War. And after the war he shined as a mining expert in the Coal Region.
Christmas Eve in Pottsville – December 24, 1902
The Pottsville Republican captured the bustling final moments before Christmas 1902 in its Christmas Eve edition.
“Coal is gonna be king”
Reactions to a December 2018 story about a new coal mine in Schuylkill County.
A ‘wet’ Christmas in the Coal Region during Prohibition
A reporter for the Hazleton Plain Speaker interview bootleggers to get a scoop on the booze situation in 1926.
Christmas in a Coal Region ‘patch town’
A writer from Kalmia Colliery in Schuylkill County details Christmas celebrations in a newspaper dispatch from 1877.
“Children of the mine” – The Coal Region’s breaker boys at work
"Children of the mine are they, born in the shadow of the culm heaps with the roar of the breakers ever in their ears, with mines beneath their feet."
A Coal Region editorial from 1900 speaks to income inequality a century later
A writer at the Lykens Register opined in September 1900 about rising inequality in the Coal Region.
