;GNNELL^VILLE CUAL_ & COKE REGION PA1 ;cnneIlsville Vicinity =* 7 C3 •*" T" C3 Pennsy1vania H* ^ * ? * 4 WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA REDUCED COPIES OF DRAWINGS Historic American Engineering Record Nationa 1 Park Service Department of tne Interior P.O. Box 37127 Washington, D.C. 20013-7127 HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD CONNELLSVILLE COAL & COKE REGION HAER No. PA-283 Location: Connellsville Vic, Fayette County & Latrobe Vic, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania Significance Considered among the world's richest mineral deposits, the Pittsburgh seam of coal underlying portions of Fayette and Westmoreland Counties in southwestern Pennsylvania produced metallurgical coke of exceptional quality. Covering nearly 147 square miles, the seam's thickness, nearness to the surface, friable structure, and chemical attributes made Connellsville coke the ideal fuel for late nineteenth and early twentieth century iron furnaces. Combined with the adjacent Klondike fields, the region contained the world's largest complex of beehive coking ovens. Historian: Frederic L. Quivik Project Information: In February, 1987, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) began a multi-year historical and architectural documentation project in southwestern Pennsylvania. Carried out in conjunction with America's Industrial Heritage Project (AIHP), HAER undertook comprehensive inventories of Fayette and Westmoreland Counties to identify the region's surviving historic engineering works and industrial resources. (Sarah Heald, ed., Favette County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1990; Edward K. Muller and Ronald G. Carlisle, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1994.) Archives for HAER/AIHP projects are located at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. CONNELLSVILLE COAL & COKE REGION HAER No. PA-283 (Page 2) HISTORY Pittsburgh Coal and Connellsville Coke Under most of western Pennsylvania are the bituminous coal seams comprising the northeastern segment of the Appalachian coal region. Through the roughly 2,800 vertical feet of coal measures (the coal seams and the intervening rock strata of sandstone, shale, clay, and limestone) are 42 distinct coal beds.1 The most important to the economic and cultural development of the region is the Pittsburgh seam. Limited in Pennsylvania to the southwestern quarter of the state, the seam crops at Pittsburgh and thereby derives its name. The Pittsburgh coal extends from the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania into Maryland, Ohio, and West Virginia. Because of its thickness, nearness to surface, structure, and chemical attributes, including low contents of ash, phosphorous, and sulfur, the Pittsburgh seam has attracted miners and mine developers across its entire area. The coal in a particular segment of the seam was of such a quality that it spawned a boom in coke manufacture unique in the history of American industry; the area that lies over that segment is known as the Connellsville coke region.2 The Pittsburgh seam lay in waves with axes running southwest to northeast. Two anticlines, the Chestnut Ridge and the Fayette, eroded long ago, but the synclines between them survive. The two synclines are known as the Uniontown and the Latrobe. They are separated by a secondary or cross anticline which runs roughly perpendicular to the Chestnut Ridge and Fayette anticlines. 1 John N. Hoffman, "Pennsylvania's Bituminous Coal Industry: An Industry Review," Pennsylvania History: Quarterly Journal of the Pennsylvania Historical Association 45 (October 1978): 351-352. 2The Pittsburgh seam has yielded so much mineral wealth that at the end of the 1930s, more value had been extracted from it than from any other single mineral deposit in the world. Howard N. Eavenson, The Pittsburgh Coal Bed—Its Early History and Development (New York: The American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1938), 1. This paper was also printed in the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers 130 (1938). Eavenson goes on to say that, "While this distinction may in a few years pass to the gold reef of the Witwatersrand, it is possible that eventually, owing to the tremendous reserves still remaining, the ultimate yield of the Pittsburgh bed will be greater than that of any other known single deposit." CONNELLSVILLE COAL & COKE REGION HAER No. PA-283 (Page 3) Between the ends of both synclines, the coal dips as much as 500 feet. Along the sides and ends of the synclines, erosion has taken the Pittsburgh coal away so that a map of the two surviving beds looks like two elongated islands nearly on axis with each other.3 The total Connellsville coke region (the Uniontown syncline and the southwestern end of the Latrobe syncline) is 42 miles long, and an average of 3.5 miles wide, covering 147 square miles.4 The Pittsburgh seam has a very consistent thickness, allowing mine developers to confidently predict that they could produce at least 10,000 tons of coal and perhaps as much as 13,500 tons of coal per acre in the Connellsville region. Owners of tracts of coal land could then determine a suitable size for the coke plant, knowing that 100 beehive ovens consumed about nine acres of Pittsburgh coal per year. In 1922, 98% of all the coal ever mined in Fayette County and 9 6% of that mined in Westmoreland County had been from the Pittsburgh bed, and virtually all of it was charged into coke ovens.5 Another attribute of the Pittsburgh coal which was attractive to coke producers was the clean quality of the seam. Of the its two divisions, the lower is almost pure coal. Generally seven or eight feet thick in the Connellsville region, the lower division has one or two slate partings, depending on the area, but these partings usually have a sum thickness of no more than an inch. Such a small percentage of impurity meant that coal from the 3 This discussion is derived from John Aubrey Enman, "The Relationship of Coal Mining and Coke Making to the Distribution of Population Agglomerations in the Connellsville (Pennsylvania) Beehive Coke Region," (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1962), 18-48. In terms understandable to the lay reader, Enman provides an excellent, well-illustrated, and much more detailed description of the interrelationship between the geology and the topography of the Connellsville region. 4 Ibid.; H.C. Frick Coke Co., Connellsville Coke (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Printing and Publishing Co., 1893), n.p. 5 Enman, 48-52; John F. Reese, "Coal Reserves in Fayette County, Pa., Contained in Seven Beds," Coal Age 22 (2 November 1922): 718; and "Coal Reserves in Westmoreland County, Pa.," Coal Age 21 (11 May 1922): 778; "Tons of Coking Coal to Acre," The Weekly Courier 1914 Special Number, 26. The amount recovered per acre depended, of course, on how much of the seam was left in the roof in general and how much was left in the pillars during the last stage of extraction. CONNELLSVILLE COAL & COKE REGION HAER No. PA-283 (Page 4) lower division was considered clean enough to charge directly into the ovens without washing.6 Coke makers also liked Pittsburgh coal because of its structure. In the Connellsville region, coal is soft and friable, meaning it breaks easily. In the process of mining, loading, shipping, and unloading Connellsville coal, it became pulverized and therefore unfit for efficient combustion in most domestic or industrial uses. This characteristic, however, made it ideal for charging coke ovens, because it did not have to be crushed first as harder coals did. An added benefit of its friability was that the Pittsburgh coal in the Connellsville region was easier to mine, especially in the days when the miner's main tool was the pick.7 Finally, the chemical composition of Connellsville coal made it superior for coking. Good coking coal for any process in which combustion of the coal itself must provide the heat for coking, such as the beehive process, should be low in ash, phosphorous, and sulfur to yield a metallurgical fuel with few deleterious impurities and it should be high in volatile material so that a minimum of carbon is consumed during coking. Such aspects of chemical composition could be relatively easily measured, yet early analysts, such as John Fulton, mining engineer of the Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown, recognized that coals which otherwise seemed to be comparable chemically yielded coke of different quality. The only sure determination of whether a particular coal made good coke was to empirically try it.8 If the resulting coke was "silvery, with metallic ring, cellular, capable of bearing a heavy burden, and as free as possible from impurities," then it was deemed to be good coke.9 In this regard 6 Enman, 53-57; sections through the Pittsburgh seam showing the various strata and their dimensions at each of the early mines in the Connellsville coke region are provided in Franklin Platt, Special Report on the Coke Manufacture of the Youghiogheny River Valley in Favette and Westmoreland Counties, Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, 1875 (Harrisburg: Board of Commissioners for the Second Geological Survey, 1876), 40-60. 7 Enman, 57-60. 8 John Fulton, "On Methods of Coking Coal for Furnace Use: Its Efficiency and Economy, as Compared with Anthracite Coal in the Metallurgy of Iron," in Platt, Coke Manufacture. 118-121. 9 Platt, Coke Manufacture, 62. This visual means of identifying good coke existed prior to the rise of the Connellsville coke region as the nation's leading producer of CONNELLSVILLE COAL & COKE REGION HAER No. PA-283 (Page 5) Connellsville coke had no equal. Indeed, Connellsville coal was so valuable for the coke it could produce in beehive ovens that, rather than burning their own Connellsville coal in boilers, operators were said to have shipped other coal into the region to produce steam to drive their equipment.10 But the widespread acceptance of beehive coking technology emerged after the depletion of standing wood reserves.