When I was researching the history of coal mining in Bridgeville a year ago, I came across a video of a recent talk on Bethel Park’s mining history by a gentleman named Warren Merritt. I immediately contacted him and asked if he would be interested in presenting a similar program for our Historical Society. This month my efforts were rewarded when he did precisely that. Mr. Merritt, a mining engineer, is a graduate of Michigan Tech, retired from a long, productive career with CONSOL Energy Inc., currently dividing his time between consulting and researching the rich heritage of bituminous coal mining in southwestern Pennsylvania.
He exploited a wide variety of resources to develop a large body of relevant information on his subject. Of great value were maps – coal company mine maps, USGS (United States Geological Survey) maps, Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) coal mine maps produced during the Depression. Other valuable resources included the series of “Penn Pilot” aerial photographs archived in the PASDA (Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access) website, historical photographs in the Bridgeville Area Historical Society files, detailed Mine Inspection reports, and historical newspaper clippings. All these were integrated together in a GIS (Geographic Information System) model and superimposed on a recent Google satellite image. With the help of his son, he visited each appropriate location and attempted to identify surviving artifacts of the mines.
The speaker began his presentation with a description of the Pittsburgh Seam of bituminous coal, at one time considered the most valuable natural resource in the world. It extends southwesterly from Pittsburgh to Charleston, West Virginia, one hundred and fifty miles long, seventy-five miles wide, and three to six feet thick. The Seam began as a massive peat bed deposited three hundred million years ago at a time when this area was covered by a lush forest, at a tropical latitude. During the ensuing epochs, the bed was metamorphosed into a solid stratum, then uplifted and folded numerous times.
Geologically, the Seam is a massive stratum with its main axis in a north-northeast/south-southwest orientation, folded transversely. The folds produce a series of parallel ridges (anticlines) and valleys (synclines) paralleling the main axis. Of special interest to us is the Nineveh Syncline which roughly follows the Chartiers Valley. This syncline is responsible for the current topography of Chartiers Creek. Its axis rises about 250 feet from Morganza to Pittsburgh (about fourteen miles), a slope of about eighteen feet per mile. Transversely the anticlines are at elevations about 150 feet higher than the syncline. One of Mr. Merritt’s slides was a map showing the places where outcrops of the Seam could be seen on the hillsides bordering Chartiers Creek and its tributaries.
Most significant in this area, of course, was the Bridgeville Mine, opened by A. J. Schulte in 1884. Its initial mine entry was in Cook’s Hill below Union Street; mining was concentrated in that area. By 1890 Mr. Shulte’s son-in-law, C. P. Mayer, was superintendent, and the mine had been extended to Fryer’s Hill via an opening in Cook’s Hill under Bower Hill Road and a short “daylighted” mine railway leading to an entry under Mill Street. In 1898 the firm of Shulte and Mayer sold the mine to the Hosack brothers, only to be acquired by Pittsburgh Coal Company in their massive consolidation of local mines in 1900. By this time most of the Fryer’s Hill coal had been removed; an entry was opened on the McLaughlin Run side of the hill and the mine railway extended across the valley to a new opening on the other side. Pittsburgh Coal then proceeded to mine the coal east of Chestnut Street in Bridgeville, all the way to St. Clair Country Club.
Mr. Merritt’s discussion of this mine began with a superposition of Sanford map information on a recent satellite photograph. The tipple was clearly shown, straddling the Chartiers Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad adjacent to the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department, the venue in which the presentation was being made. The Chartiers Room, where the audience was seated, had been the location of the “gob” (waste) pile from the mining operation, in 1895. He then traced the mine railroad through Cook’s Hill to daylight, then into Fryer’s Hill. He showed current photographs of this location; no artifacts have survived. This was not the case on the McLaughlin Run side of Fryer’s Hill, in the vicinity of McLaughlin Park. There he and his son located abutments for the bridge that carried the railway over the creek, the concreted closed mine entry on the east side of the valley, and the ventilation vent on the hillside above it.
This mine was a major operation, producing over five million tons of coal in its lifetime (1884 to 1923) with peak production occurring in 1919 when 381,519 tons of coal were mined. Maximum production during the Schulte/Mayer years was 97,179 annual tons in 1896, a vivid example of the difference between their operation and that of the Pittsburgh Coal Company. The Schulte/Mayer mine was seriously affected by the Miners’ Riot in 1894, when their tipple was destroyed by fire. Mr. Merritt pointed out that what appears to be a tipple in a (circa) 1920 photograph is probably an early fine-coal cleaning tower with a rail loading capability on its bottom level.
Mr. Merritt then discussed twenty-six other local mines; they will be covered in future columns. He has generously given the Society the files for the massive research he did. They will form the basis for a valuable collection of information on the subject of local coal mining; the scholarship they represent is remarkable.
The next program in the Historical Society series is scheduled for 7:30 pm, Tuesday, March 26, 2024, in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville VolunteerFire Department, when local historian Barry Crytzer will discuss “The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis”.