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.

Journalist records the scene as hundreds of people picked coal from culm banks during the 1902 Coal Strike

Women and children on a coal bank in Pennsylvania

During the Great 1902 Coal Strike, entire families in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, scoured towering culm banks, salvaging bits of anthracite to keep their homes warm. This gripping scene, recorded by a Brooklyn Eagle reporter, reveals the stark realities of the era’s labor turmoil. Read the full story.