Caption: A mule and mule driver in a coal mine. Mules - many spending their entire lives in a mine - were a common means of transporting coal and workers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Drivers usually named the animals to reflect their disposition, such as Sparky or Pokey. They also sang a common tune called "My Sweetheart's the Mule in the Mine," reflecting the amount of time they spent with mules.
Photo by John Horgan, Jr./PHMC Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums/Anthracite Heritage Museum
Caption: A coal "breaker" was a massive stucture, and most stood over 100 feet high. Many of the tasks required to process the hard coal were performed in this building, including breaking the coal into various sizes, sorting, cleaning, and loading the coal into railroad cars for transport. The breaker shown here is the Deringer Breaker of the Cross Creek Coal Company, Luzerne County, PA, probably from the 1890s.
Courtesy the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Anthracite was cleaned and separated into various sizes for market at 'picking tables' like this one at a coal breaker in Luzerne County.
Photo by John Horgan, Jr./PHMC Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums/Anthracite Heritage Museum
Caption: Mine owners constructed and rented shanty-type houses to their workers, mostly immigrant laborers. Conditions in these communities, known as patch towns, were less than ideal. Here, women are drawing water from one well, which had to supply twenty-five families.
Courtesy the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: A group of boys play ball during their noon break, dwarfed by the coal breaker behind them at the Kingston Coal Company near Wilkes-Barre. Boys as young as eight years old worked in the breakers and in the mines, and became known as "breaker boys".
Courtesy Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Anthracite mine workers often included young boys such as those depicted here at the entrance to a drift mine in the anthracite region. The anthracite industry peaked in 1917 when one hundred million tons of coal were mined and processed by over 160,000 workers.
Courtesy the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: A "gangway" or main entrance to an anthracite coal mine. Coal cars would travel the rails each day in hundreds of anthracite mines, taking coal to breaker for processing and workers to and from their worksite.
Courtesy the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Anthracite mineworkers at a shift change. A crew prepares to enter a mine; the crew that just completed their shift pose nearby. Like the coal they mined, they were transported in the mine via coal cars.
Courtesy the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Blast furnace at Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company, Scranton.
Courtesy the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: The Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company colliery in Scranton.
PHMC Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums
Caption: The Lackawanna county seat, Scranton was a center of the anthracite coal industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division
Caption: Workmen building canal boats for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad during the 1870s. The Schuylkill Canal, covering nearly 60 miles, was used to transport anthracite coal from Port Carbon to Philadelphia.
Courtesy Pennsylvania State Archives