Photograph shows efforts to remove “burning banks” in Williamstown, PA | 1940s

For decades, a slow-burning fire smoldered beneath a massive culm pile on Big Lick Mountain in Williamstown, Pennsylvania, sending sulfurous smoke over the town. In the 1940s, efforts began to reclaim the site - hauling coal from the “Burning Banks” and battling the underground blaze that wouldn’t die until the 1970s. Read the full story.