Scranton, PA 1959 - mine tunnel collapse

[Bob Eisenman]

Here is why the anthracite coal mine (shaft mine not strip mine) era ended in about 1959 in the Scranton Wilkes-Barre area.

 

Multiple layer coal beds and interconnected underground mines across miles of subterranean area extending all the way across the valley

 

 

Tunnels near to and including under a large river existed.

Following the epic mine flood various industries were enticed to invest in industrial park developments in an effort to rebuild an economy. I moved to the coal mining region when I was in 2nd grade (about 1963) when my Dad's industry opened a new facility in a new industrial park located 50 miles away from Scranton. The economy was in dire straits. My Dad told us that certain local individuals would go so far as to offer money if he would hire their relatives.

I took the mine tour down to an upper layer mine once years ago (after 1999 or so).

http://www.lackawannacounty.org/index.php/attractions/coal-mine

Hard hat on we went down the slope  in a mining car on one side of the valley and leveled out about three hundred feet below ground in one of the chamber mined upper levels (lower levels were flooded). In its day kids worked in the coal mines and donkeys that pulled loaded carts on rails lived year round below. The tour guide explained that a real miner would use a metal rod to tap the 'stone roof' above. A good roof sounds different than a bad roof when tapped.

Strip mining was still sort of in full swing but less productive due to vast amounts of 'overburden' and dwindling coal deposits. 

1960s scan of a 35 mm film slide:

And fifty years later

 

The last two pictures (large dragline shovels) were taken (from folder #42 about 2003 (May ?) with a new Kodak DC40 (purchased about 1997). The camera cost well over $100 at the time. I have over 50 folders of offloads from the camera which took about 50 shots before it needed to be offloaded (by a serial port since USB wasn't invented yet) and cleared for another round of photography endeavors. The cameras native file format was *.kdc which (years later the camera software became more or less Windows incompatible) needed to be converted to *.jpg with a third party software like Irfanview.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DC_Series