In 1938, Tower City residents opened the Herald newspaper to despair: The Brookside Colliery - lifeblood of their town - was shut down as “unsafe and unprofitable.” Pillars robbed, tunnels flooded, 1,200 jobs vanished; families turned to relief, WPA, and bootleg mining. The mining era in Williams Valley's history was coming to an end. Read the full story.
On April 7, 1933, changes to the Volstead Act allowed the sale of beer with up to 3.2% alcohol, marking the beginning of the end for Prohibition. In Tower City, PA, Frank Mione’s Café celebrated the occasion with an enthusiastic newspaper advertisement welcoming beer back to their business. Read the full story.
An account from the 1977 Porter Tunnel Disaster offers a chilling first-person perspective on a deadly wall of water rushing through a Pennsylvania mine. Discover how these miners fought for survival and faced unimaginable terror deep underground. Read the full story.
Discover the story behind a poignant 1977 photograph capturing an exhausted miner during rescue efforts at the Porter Tunnel disaster near Tower City. An unforgettable chapter Schuylkill County history. Read the full story.
Discover the story of the East Brookside Mine Disaster on August 2, 1913—the deadliest mining accident in Schuylkill County's history. Learn how a series of explosions at the East Brookside Colliery near Tower City, Pennsylvania, claimed 20 lives and impacted the entire Coal Region community. Explore the investigations that followed and the lasting effects on local mining practices. Read the full story.
Tower City was criticized as its volunteer air raid spotter tower was left unattended at key moments in the summer of 1942.
Ivan C. Lewis, a Pearl Harbor survivor from Tower City, Pennsylvania, narrowly escaped death in the 1941 attack only to later fall while serving as a tail gunner with the 8th Air Force in World War II. His B-17 was downed over Germany in 1943. Read the Full Story.
Women in the Schuylkill County community locked arms and blocked streets to prevent coal trucks from navigating the town's streets.
On March 1, 1977, water poured into the Porter Tunnel mine in western Schuylkill County. Emergency crews raced to the scene.
Civil War veterans in Tower City, PA were infuriated by an insulting story about them in a local newspaper. So they took action.