Nov. 2003 image by author
Collier is a patch built in 1907 by the H.C. Frick Coke Company. The company-built housing there is typical of that found throughout Western Pennsylvania.
Nov. 2003 image by author
The houses on this street in Collier are a little different than those in the photo above. They may have been built at a different time. Coal and coke companies would build additional homes during boom years to house the expanding work force.
Nov. 2003 image by author
This building, which was one the repair shop, is all that's left of the Collier coal mine, which closed after the 1950s.
Nov. 2003 image by author
A eroding refuse pile from years of coal mining and coke manufacture at Collier has yet to be reclaimed.
Image courtesy Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Penn State Fayette
This photograph was identified as the Collier mine site shortly before it closed.
Nov. 2003 image by author
Collier, along with Phillips, was the last coke yard/coal mine combo built by Frick Coke in the Connellsville Field. As such it represents the end of the first chapter of the famed coking coal field. Collier played out as the next chapter was written: transporting the coal to far off by-product ovens. While I was taking this photograph, I could hear the machinery of the nearby Burd surface mine extracting one of the remaining blocks of Redstone seam coal, thus writing the final chapter in coal mining in the Connellsville Field.
