History of anthracite coal mining in Pennsylvania information

There are two types of coal found in Pennsylvania: anthracite, the hard coal found in Northeastern Pennsylvania below the Allegheny Ridge southwest to Harrisburg, and bituminous, the soft coal found west of the Allegheny Front escarpment). Anthracite coal is a natural mineral with a high carbon and energy content that gives off light and heat produced energy when burned, making it useful as a fuel. It was possibly first used in Pennsylvania as a fuel in 1769,^{[citation needed]} but its history begins with a documented discovery near Summit Hill and the founding of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company in 1792 to periodically send expeditions to the wilderness atop Pisgah Ridge to mine the deposits, mostly with notable lack of great success, over the next 22 years.

The owners of this company were absentee managers who were reliant on teams of workers sent under a foreman to fell timber to build so called 'arks' (high-sided punts), then mine coal around nine miles in present-day Summit Hill, Pennsylvania from the right bank of the Lehigh River terminus at Mauch Chunk), then trek with mule loads to fill the boats for the trip down the rapid-strewn Lehigh River,^[1] and then more than 60 miles (97 km) to the Lehigh Valley docks on the unimproved, often log-choked river.^[2][a]

Around 1790, the nation's first energy crisis became evident even in smaller towns: the forests needed for charcoal for smelting and other manufacturing, and stands of wood for heating fire wood were quickly vanishing, farther and farther from population centers. Transport of wood or an alternative fuel became very important to people, and bituminous was cheaper to import from England than 'chancy, unreliable' anthracite was to buy in Philadelphia. Suffering through British navy blockades during the war, industrialist Josiah White set his mill supervisors the task of experimenting with anthracite to get to ignite^[b] and burn in a useful way. Draft control and reflected heat proved to be the key to using anthracite for all processes. With sufficient heat, which excess air flow retards and cools, the fuel ignited and burned well. Soon other measures were found that within a decade made it the preferred home heating fuel in all the developed and settled East coast.^{[citation needed]}

In 1813, the first mining actually begun at Beaver Meadows, however, because of the various struggles getting it the 130 miles (210 km) to Philadelphia and because it is far more difficult to ignite anthracite with its sporadic and unreliable supply, it did not come to be generally used regularly until after the War of 1812. Industrialists Hazard and White showed the way. The developments of the canal and then railroad system made transporting the anthracite exponentially easier, and by the 1860s anthracite coal was regularly supplying urban centers like Philadelphia and New York City and was helping to fuel the American Industrial Revolution.

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