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West Laurel Street, Shenandoah, PA, circa 1891.
Credit: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County, Pottsville, PA
Hundreds of the mines opened in northeast Pennsylvania’s rich anthracite coal region in the 1800s. There, poor immigrant miners and their families populated makeshift frontier boom towns built around the extraction of coal as cheaply and swiftly as possible.