THE TOWNS:
WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA COALFIELDS
CONNELLSVILLE FIELD
This famed coalfield was centered around the segement of the Pittsburgh seam that ran from Latrobe to Fairchance
and was known as the "Nine Foot" or "Connellsville" seam. The coal was soft, easily mined, in a pure thick seam (up to
120-130 inches), and was nationally known as some of the finest high-volatile metallurgical coal in the world. Sporadic use of
it in Pennsylvania iron furnaces from the 1810's blossomed into a beehive coke industry in the 1860s. By the 1910s there were over 40,000
beehive and rectangular coke ovens in Fayette and Westmoreland Counties. At that time these two counties mined one-third of all the coal in
Pennsylvania and one-ninth of all the coal in the U.S.A. A large portion of these coal mines and coke works were owned by the H.C. Frick Coke Co., after
1903 a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. After World War 1 the trend was by-product coke production. Coke production in the field declined until the last beehive
coke works in Calumet and Shoaf were closed in 1972. An experimental coke works in Alverton was shut down in 1982. The D.E.P. closed these operations
because they couldn't meet new clean air standards. Coal mining declined to the point where there are no deep mines in Fayette and Westemoreland Counties anymore.
The "Nine Foot" section of the Pittsburgh seam of coal is almost exhuasted, and coal mining in the field now is relegated to smaller scale stripping of the
Redstone and Sewickley seams.
THE TOWNS:
WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA COALFIELDS