This mine was part of the Klondike Coalfield.
"In 1923 Bethlehem Mining, a coal mining subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel, had acquired the mine and renamed it Mine No. 58." [CoalCampUSA]
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| CoalCampUSA (source: James Torgeson's comment on his post) Pittsburg (sic) & Buffalo Company image via Google Books An artistic depiction, circa 1910, of the Marianna mine, coke ovens, and company town. [It appears that part of it was built on top of the dam. A below shows it did have a water wheel.] |
The distinctive yellow brick color allows us to determine what was original to the company town homes. When built starting in 1903, these homes were better than the typical wood framed duplex in other company towns. The company made their own bricks and sewer pipes in their company town at Johnetta, PA. The mine survived disasters in 1907 and 1957, but a fire on the main underground conveyor belt in 1988 caused Bethlehem to close the doors. In 2004, three years after Bethlehem went bankrupt, the buildings were torn down even though the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Now it is just more brownland. Maybe they could at least put solar panels over it. [CoalCampUSA]
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| Street View |
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| Street View |
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| Street View |
It was easy to spot the original company town on a satellite image because of the uniform size of the houses and lots and because CoalCamp USA said "the patch" was up on a hill.
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| Satellite |
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| 1954 Ellsworth Quadrangle @ 1:24,000 |
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| Nov 2002 photo by Chris DellaMea via his CoalCampUSA website The company also had beehive ovens to make coke from the slack coal. Some of them still exist. [The web page has several more photos of this mine that Chris was able to take before it was torn down.] |
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| Pittsburg & Buffalo Company image via Google Books via CoalCampUSA Rail sidings, ventilation fan, and tipple at Marianna as they looked over 100 years ago. When the tipple/washing plant were built it was allegedly the largest facility of this type in the world. [The water wheel explains the dam we see to this day. I'm surprised that water power was still used in new construction in the 20th Century. I would have expected it to use steam power since the place was surrounded by coal. Unfortunately, CoalCampUSA did not provide a URL for the Google Book. I found this one, but after paging through the whole thing, I did not find this and the other photos that CoalCampUSA found.] |
Others concur that it was the world's largest tipple when constructed.
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| AngleFire |
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| AngleFire View of Tipple, Washer, Boiler House, Coke Ovens and Power Plant at the Rachel Mine. From 1912 postcard. [CoalCampUSA has the photo that this colorized postcard probably used as the source. This illustration shows that the style in the late 1800s of showing plenty of black smoke coming out of the smokestacks had come to an end. In the 1800s, coal smoke represented prosperity. In the 1900s, coal smoke represented breathing problems.] |
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| MariannaPA "Marianna is a coal mining town situated on a hillside which rises 240 feet above the banks of Ten Mile Creek.It was built as a mining town for the Pittsburg Buffalo Company in 1907 and was incorporated in 1910. At the time of its construction, the Marianna Mine was among the most modern and well equipped in the world. The town's brick homes were designed to offer indoor bathrooms, fenced yards and other amenities making living conditions very attractive for the time. Marianna is the best preserved example in Washington County of a company-built coal-mining town." The mine had an explosion on Nov 28,1908, that killed about 200 workers. |
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