Google Street View image
These homes on Railroad Street in Penn are among the oldest coal company houses in all of Appalachia and were probably built circa 1860.
Image source lost
Tipple, powerhouse, and coke ovens of the Latrobe-Connellsville Coal & Coke Company's Derry Mine No. 1.
Nov. 2003 image by author
Coal mining village of Carbon, Pa. The Carbon mine was closed by the Keystone Coal and Coke Company after 1917.
Nov. 2003 image by author
The Haydenville patch, also known as Red Onion, housed the workers of the Greensburg Coal Company's Greensburg No. 1 and Greensburg No. 2 mines. Coal mining lasted into the 1930s, and today Haydenville is not an isolated coal patch but a neighborhood of South Greensburg.
May 2004 image by author
Brenizer, Pa., was a "model" company town. This photo shows some of the styles of homes in Brenizer. The Garnet Coal and Coke Company established the mine and town, but the Westmoreland Mining Company operated the mine in its later years, closing it in the 1950s. There are a few ruins of buildings related to the Brenizer mine across the highway from the patch, and the slate dump is still there, but nothing warranted a photograph.
May 2004 image by author
A typical Westmoreland County patch is Keystone Coal and Coke's Salemville, one of the patch towns in the Westmoreland Coalfield that featured beehive coke production. Sadly, from the vantage point of Route 22, it looks like the ovens are gone.
1960s image taken by Pete Starry
A view of the Salemville coke ovens after they had gone cold.
Nov. 2023 image by author
Former company store at Salemville. Per Pennsylvania state law, the coal company operated this enterprise as "Hempfield Supply Co."
Apr. 2005 image by author
A company town known as Hannastown. The mine associated with this particular patch was Jamison No. 2, which closed in 1949.
Image source lost
Coke oven pushing machine of the Atlantic Crushed Coke Co.
2005 image by Mark D. Holm
Remains of a wooden coal tipple in the Saltsburg vicinity.
Feb. 2015 image courtesy of coalandcoke.blogspot.com
Old coal mine fan from the Greensburg Coal Company's Hawksworth mine.
May 2005 image by author
One of the last coal mining operations in the Westmoreland Coalfield was the Jubilee rail-loading facility, operated by Coal Loaders, Inc. in Derry, Pa., in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They must have used the front-end loader at the left of the photo to load hopper cars with coal from their strip mines around Westmoreland County. The facility is shown here in a half-dismantled state. The scale house was a wreck, the conveyor was in pieces, and the stockpile had been seeded with grass. I believe that it has since been reclaimed.
