Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum 50

Posted by on Dec 1, 2025 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum 50   Anthracite, the highest rank of coal, is almost pure carbon. It has few impurities and burns hot with little smoke. In the 19th century, anthracite, also known as hard coal, powered America’s industrial revolution in ironmaking, manufacturing and steam production and created the need for its transportation to market by canals and gravity and steam railroads. Anthracite was welcomed by...
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St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Shenandoah

Posted by on Aug 9, 2024 in | Comments Off on St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Shenandoah Since 1884 the onion domes of St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church on West Oak Street in Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, as seen in this circa 1914 postcard, have marked the presence of Eastern Europeans in this anthracite coal mining community. St. Michael the Archangel in Shenandoah was the first Greek Orthodox Catholic church built in the United States. Ukrainian families raised money to...
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Little Lithuania USA

Posted by on Aug 9, 2024 in | Comments Off on Little Lithuania USA Shenandoah is a prime example of a “coal rush” boomtown where immigrants flocked in the second half of the 19th century to find jobs and a better way of life. The first wave of immgrants in this Schuylkill County borough were mostly Welsh, Irish, Scottish and German. They were soon followed by Eastern and Southern Europeans, including a large influx of Lithuanians. The first wave of Lithuanian...
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Quecreek: Remembering the Remarkable Mining Rescue 20 Years Later

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Quecreek: Remembering the Remarkable Mining Rescue 20 Years Later The site of a massive multigovernment rescue effort to save nine miners trapped hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface is today a placid meadow with a memorial park and a museum dedicated to telling the story of four desperate days in July 2002. “It’s been a life-changing 20 years,” says Bill Arnold, executive director of the Quecreek Mine Rescue Foundation, located at the rescue site, part...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter With this edition of Pennsylvania Heritage, we mark the anniversaries of two events that not only sent shock waves across Pennsylvania but also awakened communities to concerns about public and worker safety. Fifty years ago, in June 1972, a tropical cyclone made its way from the Yucatán Peninsula, up the Atlantic Seaboard of the U.S., shifting its strength as it advanced over land and sea....
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Cambria City

Posted by on Nov 29, 2021 in | Comments Off on Cambria City Nestled between a bend in the Conemaugh River and a steep bluff, Cambria City is a distinctive, dense neighborhood that tells the story of hundreds of immigrants who came to work in Pennsylvania’s steel mills and coal mines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the founding of the Cambria Iron Works in 1852, investors purchased land across the river from the mill, subdivided it,...
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Sydney Ware, Eastern State Penitentiary Artist

Posted by on Dec 17, 2019 in | Comments Off on Sydney Ware, Eastern State Penitentiary Artist Built in the 1820s as part of a new type of prison system, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was founded on the belief that prisoners could be rehabilitated during incarceration through separate confinement and industrious labor. During the penitentiary’s span of operation, 1829–1971, numerous records were compiled about the inmates and maintained at the prison, including statistics on...
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Hotel Lykens

Posted by on Oct 29, 2019 in | Comments Off on Hotel Lykens For many years, anthracite coal mining was the main source of livelihood for the residents of Lykens, a borough in northern Dauphin County. By the early 1920s, the industry was in decline, causing the community’s population and economy to waver. Meanwhile across the country, as automobile ownership was increasing, community leaders noticed that hotels and other services associated with travel...
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Anthracite Mining and the Slavic Immigration

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Anthracite Mining and the Slavic Immigration Those unfamiliar with Pennsylvania’s ethnic geography might be surprised to see a 1918 postcard penned in Russian like this one sent from Hazleton, Luzerne County, which translates as, “Tomorrow we are moving to a different place. Here is the address…. Greetings and kisses.” Following earlier immigration waves of primarily Northern and Western Europeans, the United States experienced an...
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Jim Popso’s Lokie

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Jim Popso’s Lokie   James “Jim” Popso (1922-98) documented the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region of the 20th century in folk art assemblages he made from scrap wood, found objects, glue, household supplies and bargain paints. For more than 20 years until his death, he handcrafted scenes of collieries, breakers, mining machinery and patch towns, most of them supplemented with his models of real...
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