Once upon a time: the land of coke
I suppose it takes a half generation or so for the collective memory to slip. I recently asked the person I was sitting with at a high school basketball game if she recalled the nickname formerly used by Connellsville sports teams.
Today, it’s the Falcons. Before the Falcons, it was … what?
She didn’t know. “Cokers,” I said. She laughed, given the contemporary trappings of the word. But it made perfect sense, I said. Cokers. Coke. Coke ovens.
She got it. “Did you know,” I added, being something of a show off, “this whole area was once known as the Connellsville Coke Region?
“Really? I had no idea.”
For those like her, here’s a historical brief. I know, I know. History’s boring. I’ll try to keep it snappy. Here goes:
Running north to south from Latrobe to Fairchance, the Connellsville Coke Region produced the finest coking coal in the world.
The Pittsburgh steel industry rocketed to greatness on the strength of the so-called Pittsburgh coal seam mined in the region.
Why was Connellsville Region coal and coke so valuable?
Writing in 1900, former mine superintendent Fred Keighley, said because Pittsburgh seam coal was thick, when processed as coke, it possessed a mechanical strength that was highly resistant to the crushing strain of the blast furnace. It was low in phosphorous, ash, and sulfur, but high in carbon.
Its metallurgical qualities, he said, were nearly perfect.
The coke itself had a silvery sheen or glow. When plucked, it had an almost metallic ring. Altogether, it was a curious piece of work.
The same could be said of the thin sliver of land comprising the Connellsville Coke Region. Think of a long, bony, slightly misshapen forefinger. The tip of the finger was located on the outskirts of Latrobe. In this region, early in the 20th century, were Dorothy and Baggeley and Whitney mines as well as Ellen 1 and 2 and Marguerite.
The Mount Pleasant area included mines at Hecla, Carpentertown, Standard, Southwest, and Buckeye.
The seam narrowed at Scottdale, but then branching out, tumbled toward Connellsville, which in the earliest days was the scene of the greatest activity. Here were Jimtown and Davidson, Breakiron, Tyrone, Sterling, and Coalbrook, to be joined in later years by Trotter, Paul, Ft. Hill, Nellie, and Adelaide.
To the south was Leisenring 1, and down the road, Leisenring 2 and 3 as well as West Leisenring.
Juniata, Bitner, and Elm Grove were hereabout while Braddock and Youngstown were on the far eastern edge. Lemont Furnace was next. Nearby were Olivers 1, 2, and 3, and across the spine, Phillips.
Still close to Uniontown were Leith, the Continentals, and Revere. Shoaf anchored the southern base. Clustered here were Oliphant, Kyle, and Wynn in the Fairchance area, and several miles away, Collier and York Run.
Not was this all. Outside the slender finger was the Klondike coal and coke region, so named because at the time the great Alaskan gold rush was on.
Thus, east of Shoaf, there was Leckrone. Next were Griffin 1 and 2. Heading north, we find Edenborn, Lambert, Buffington, Shamrock, Adah, Brier Hill, Fairbank, Searight, Orient, the Allisons, Gates, the two Tower Hills, Alicia, Royal, and Colonials 1, 2, and 3, the former near Grindstone, the latter right outside of Smock.
It was all wonderful grimy and dirty, this land, and, of course, productive and busy with its lines of commerce. The mighty Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran tracks along the region’s eastern edge, in the direction of Fairchance as well as toward McKeesport, Braddock, and Pittsburgh.
In time, the Western Maryland Railroad and outfit calling itself the Virginia Railroad laid down tracks.
In addition, there was the Youghiogheny River, which though useless for transport, was lovely to look at (for a change), as well as the river of coal barges bearing toward the steel mills of the Mon Valley, the workhorse of rivers, the Monongahela.
Geography alone is not destiny, however. To this sweaty outcrop of land came the people – the Irish and Poles and Italians, the Hungarians and the Slavs and the others – who labored and struggled and sometimes died in the service of coal and coke.
Union chief John L. Lewis summed up the plight of labor in 1920, “Ever voicing its demands for fuel, society exacts a terrible toll on life and limb from the men who work in the country’s mines.”
There you have it, in capsule.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.