Credit: Harold Cramer, "An Overview of Pennsylvania Mapping Circa 1850 to 1900," http://www.mapsofpa.com/article4.htm
Pennsylvania is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, including a millions of acres of timber, ore deposits that enabled it to lead Britain’s North American colonies and then the new United States in iron production, 95 percent of all the antracite coal in the Western Hemisphere, and petroleum deposits that enabled it to become the birthplace of the world oil industry. Not present on this 1872 map are the state’s rich deposits of bituminous coal, the fuel that enabled Pennsylvania to become the birthplace and heartland of the American steel industry.
