Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum 50

King Coal, a painting by Jerome G. Rosen that hangs in the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum, represents the various elements of anthracite life, including the colliery, the patch town, the miner and the coal itself.
Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum

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 growing New York City and Philadelphia as an alternative fuel to diminishing, and expensive, supplies of wood and charcoal. Hard coal was used for home heating, cooking and manufacturing from the northeastern United States to southern Canada and into the Midwest.

Approximately 75 percent of all known mineable anthracite deposits in the world are found in four distinct fields in northeastern Pennsylvania. Historically, the anthracite industry divided these four neighboring fields into three trade regions: the Wyoming Region, encompassing the Northern Field of  parts of Luzerne, Wayne, Susquehanna and Lackawanna counties; the Lehigh Region, including parts of Luzerne, Carbon and Schuylkill counties in the Eastern Middle Field; and the Schuylkill Region of the Western Middle and Southern Fields that covers parts of the counties of Schuylkill, Columbia, Northumberland and Dauphin.

About three-quarters of the world’s minable anthracite lies in four fields in northeastern Pennsylvania.
PHMC

Today’s Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum began as one of four museums and historic sites of the Anthracite Museum Complex of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC). The Pennsylvania General Assembly created the complex in 1971. The then-named Scranton Anthracite Museum was built in 1975 in Lackawanna County, not far from the remains of the historic Lackawanna Iron and Coal Co. iron furnaces in downtown Scranton. Eckley Miners’ Village, a company or “patch” town dating from 1854, is located in Luzerne County, in the Lehigh Region, and the Ashland Anthracite Museum is in Schuylkill County. Together these institutions interpret the history of a unique geologic and cultural area in the United States. The complex was accredited by the American Association of Museums in 1984.

All of the sites of the complex were selected, in part, with ideas of historic preservation and enhancing cultural tourism. For example, the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum is located in Lackawanna County’s bucolic McDade Park, adjacent to the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour. McDade Park was created as a federal-state-county demonstration project to reclaim abandoned mine property that resulted in the conversion of the once-active mine into a public park, an underground educational attraction, and a museum. The Slope 190 mine, opened to the public on October 25, 1985, as a tourist venue, affords visitors the opportunity to travel 300 feet below ground on a guided tour. These sites are among those of the Lackawanna Valley National Heritage Area.

A circa 1920 mining dragline bucket in the Anthracite Heritage Museum collection.
Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission

The museum contains an extensive collection including tools, equipment, machinery, vehicles, domestic artifacts, textiles, maps, photographs, and folk, decorative and fine art, as well as a library and an archive. Since 2019, museum curator John Fielding has been working with PHMC’s Collections Management to place collections information into an online searchable database.

This strong permanent collection is the foundation on which the museum’s exhibition philosophy is formulated. Exhibitions and programs are based on research and scholarship and are intended to be informative, interesting and enjoyable for all. There have been four major exhibitions (17,000 square feet or larger) over the past 50 years: Rivers, Rails, and Roads focused on the evolution of transportation; Adding Fuel to the Fire presented a history of fuels through time; Gears and Wheels brought together themes of industry and transportation in the development of the region; and Anthracite People, still on exhibit at the museum, examines immigration and ethnicity in Pennsylvania’s Hard Coal Region.

Visitors to the museum may be surprised to find exhibitions of regional textile industries. In the mid- 1880s, local communities encouraged silk manufacturers to move into the region from areas such as Paterson, New Jersey. This offered employment to women and children. The museum exhibits a large collection of silk processing machinery and tells the story of the garment and Nottingham Lace industries.

The photography of Tamaqua native Scott Herring is currently on exhibit at the Anthracite Heritage Museum. Born into a fifth-generation coal mining family, Herring began taking pictures of mines and railroads with a used instant-snap camera around 1968. Over the years, he has traveled across the U.S. to photograph active coal mining and railroad operations.
Courtesy of Scott Herring

Smaller exhibitions (4,000 square feet or less) have permitted the museum to explore a wide variety of collections, subjects and themes. Examples include women’s history, cultural traditions, labor struggles and mine disasters. Currently, the museum is hosting an exhibition of the anthracite photography of Scott D. Herring, whose work exemplifies the finest qualities and highest standards of anthracite photography. A selection of more than 1,000 of his images is on exhibit at the museum through January 31, 2026.

In 1982 a community support group of the museum was incorporated as the Scranton Anthracite Museum Associates, known today as the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum and Iron Furnaces Associates. In addition to providing volunteers and membership fundraising for the museum, the Associates have operated the museum’s store in the lobby since 1983 and created the museum’s website in 2003.

Over the years there have been many events and educational programs at the museum for regional citizens and visitors to attend. Some of these have involved collective efforts with partner institutions, individuals and groups. An excellent example is January’s Anthracite Mining Heritage Month, led by sociologist Robert P. Wolensky. For more than 25 years, Wolensky has formed strong relationships with the public, historic sites, museums and other educational institutions to provide a full month’s calendar of lectures, tours and other opportunities to learn about and experience anthracite culture and history.

Other scholars have also continued their relationships with the museum through continuing research. Among these are geographer Richard G. Healey of the University of Portsmouth in Great Britian who collaborated with the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum to present an exhibition of 19th-century views of anthracite coal breakers. Coal breakers, or preparation plants, are multistory buildings in which underground mined anthracite is brought to the top of the building and is crushed, sized and cleaned as it moves by gravity through crushing rollers, screens and chutes. Specific to the anthracite industry, coal breakers are unique as they prepare hard coal for the consumer. The reason for this is that pieces of anthracite only burn on the surface and must be of a similar size to allow air flow. It is interesting to note that the museum building is heated by anthracite.

A circa 1890 coal cart on exhibit at the Anthracite Heritage Museum.
Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission

The Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum has benefited from major capital project investments directed and funded by PHMC and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania since the cornerstone was installed 50 years ago. Among these are exhibition enhancements in the 1990s; a complete renovation of the auditorium, the lobby, offices, all collection storage areas and the museum store in the 2000s; and replacement of the roofs and HVAC system in the 2010s. Most recently, the reconstruction of the exterior entrance to the museum overlooking the beautiful Lackawanna Valley was completed.

In 2018 the museum commemorated the 250th anniversary of anthracite mining in northeastern Pennsylvania with Leadership Lackawanna; however, given the outstanding artifacts, exhibitions, programs and publications of the museum, the primary asset is that of its people. Staff, volunteers, interns and partners have worked hard to provide a quality experience to local communities and visitors alike.

Perhaps one of the greatest compliments made to the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum has come from the late historian Harold Aurand in his 2002 guidebook for the museum: “This is truly a people’s museum; it interprets the heritage of a people through materials the people themselves [donated and] considered important reflections of their lives.”

Chester J. Kulesa is a retired historic site administrator of the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum and Scranton Iron Furnaces. He thanks historic site administrator Dr. Bode Morin and curator John Fielding for their assistance and comments.