Destitute Live in Coke Ovens, Uniontown PA, Feb. 23, 1935.

In the winter of 1935, Universal Newsreels sent a film crew to document the homeless Pennsylvanians living in abandoned coke ovens outside of Uniontown. Once a thriving bituminous coal mining and coke making region, Fayette County was one of the Commonwealth’s hardest struck regions during the Great Depression.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration