The Glen Robbins coal camp, on the border of Jefferson and Belmont Counties.
Another view of the coal company-built town of Glen Robbins, Ohio. There doesn't appear to be anything left of the coal mine there
except an orange creek full of acid mine drainiage.
Eastern Ohio has been noted for large stripping shovels and drag lines at large surface mines. Some of these machines reached mythical status, like the Big Muskie, the Mountaineer, and the Gem of Egypt. And here is the only remaining one - the Silver Spade - like the dinosaurs on the brink of
extinction, shown here in January 2006 on one of it's last working days removing overburden from the coal seam at Consolidation Coal Company's Mahoning Valley surface mine. It is scheduled for retirement at the end of January 2006, having given many years of service since it was constructed in 1965 by the Bucyrus-Erie Company of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
It was built for the Hanna Coal Company, which was the dominant coal company in the Pittsburgh No. 8 coalfield, and has been employed in later years by CONSOL, who probably took over Hanna's operations. It is the largest machine I have ever seen.
The stockpile of coal that was uncovered by the Silver Spade at the Mahoning Valley surface mine. It has never been explained to me how the coal gets to the train or barge for final shipment.
Coal company-built town of Provident, Ohio, just outside of St. Clairsville. Only 25 percent of Ohio coal miners lived in company-owned coal camps,
also called "patch" towns.
A different perspective of the duplex company housing at Provident, OH.
One of the few remaining gob piles along Wheeling Creek in Belmont County. Almost all of the mines in this "hollow" have been reclaimed, but one can determine from
looking at all of the abandoned mine lands that the area was once a tremendous source of coal.
Houses probably built by the Youghiogheny and Ohio Coal Company at Barton, OH.
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Barton is still functioning for the descendents of the many immigrants that came to the Pittsburgh No. 8
Coalfield a century ago.
Evidently the once-mighty Hanna Coal Company had their main offices and shop building here in Georgetown, OH. It all sits in ruins now.
The repair shops at Georgetown are in shambles.
Coal miners' homes in Dillonvale, OH, where the Dunglen Coal Co. operated the mine. Hannah Coal Company, a subsidiary of Consolidtation Coal Company and the major coal company in Jefferson and
Harrison Counties in the 1940s and '50s, operated the Dillonvale No. 1 mine.
Monument in front of the bowling alley in Dillonvale. Hannah Coal Company was the operator of the Dun Glen No. 11 mine and preparation plant.
Newtown, OH, a coal mining camp built for the families of miners of Hanna Coal Company's Dunglen mine.
The interior and staff of Hanna Coal Company's store in Willow Grove, OH, including store manager Hunter Brown on the right.
Bill writes, "When I was growing up, along Rt. 78, between Woodsfield and Clarington on the Ohio River, there were 5 or 6 portals punched into the north hillsides along the road. They were no longer used, and a couple of them had cave-ins that closed them off. Dad told me those mines were dug by the local residents to get coal for home use in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A lot of the farmers cut the locust trees off their land then and sold them for mine props. I was always told that locust would not rot even if it was under water. I know that it made good fence posts. A lot of strip mining went on in Belmont Co., and a little in Monroe. You could see the top of the boom of The Gem of Egypt sticking up over the hills when you went North on Rt. 800 from Barnesville. Dad's brother lived in Adena, OH in the early '40's, and when we went to visit there, Uncle Al would always take us to watch the shovels work where they were stripping... There is currently a big flail going on in Belmont Co., Smith Twp, OH. New Century Mining wants to long wall under the Dysart Woods near Centerville. The woods are the last remaining patch of old growth forest in Southeastern Ohio, and the residents there are fighting to stop the longwall for fear that it will damage or kill the trees, or even make them cave into the mine. The New Century portal is the old Y & O in Belmont Co., near Beallsville which is in Monroe Co. Another Belmont Co. mine that I know is still in operation is #6 near Alledonia in Washington Twp."