The Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company was a bituminous coal mining company based in Pittsburgh and controlled by the Mellon family. [1] It operated mines in the Pittsburgh Coalfield, including mines in Becks Run and Horning, Pennsylvania. Unusually for that time in Pennsylvania, it hired African-American miners for some of its work. [2] [3]
The Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company was a trust incorporated in New Jersey in 1899 by leading Pittsburgh industrialists, including Andrew W. Mellon, Henry W. Oliver, and Henry Clay Frick. Although a New Jersey corporation, it operated only in the Pittsburgh area. At its inception, the company took control of over 80 coal businesses and 80,000 acres (32,000 ha) of land on both sides of the Monongahela River. [4]
Pittsburgh Terminal Coal ran numerous coal mines in Allegheny County during the early 20th century.
It operated the Darr Mine in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
In 1915, it merged with the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company. In 1945 it merged with Consolidation Coal Company, controlled by the Rockefeller family.[ citation needed ]
Near its beginning, the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company owned six collector railroads. [4] The company operated the Coal Hill Coal Railroad, a 1.5-mile (2.4 km), 3 ft 4 in (1,016 mm) narrow gauge railroad until 1871, when it was sold to the Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Railroad, which lengthened the line. [5] The company assumed control of the Montour Railroad in 1901.
Pittsburgh Terminal Coal paid compensation in the 1929 death of their union employee John Barcoski due to a beating by three officers of the Coal and Iron Police. [6]
The company was involved in labor disputes with John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers. [7] [8]
Bethel Park is a borough with home rule status in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is a suburb within the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, located approximately 7 miles (11 km) south of Pittsburgh. The population was 33,577 as of the 2020 census.
Rivesville is a town and former coal town in Marion County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 830 at the 2020 census.
The Monongahela Railway was a coal-hauling Class II railroad in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the United States. It was jointly controlled originally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central subsidiary Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, with NYC and PRR later succeeded by Penn Central Transportation. The company operated its own line until it was merged into Conrail on May 1, 1993.
The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, also known as the "Little Giant", was formed on May 11, 1875. Company headquarters were located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The line connected Pittsburgh in the east with Youngstown, Ohio, in the Haselton neighborhood in the west and Connellsville, Pennsylvania, to the east. It did not reach Lake Erie until the formation of Conrail in 1976. The P&LE was known as the "Little Giant" since the tonnage that it moved was out of proportion to its route mileage. While it operated around one tenth of one percent of the nation's railroad miles, it hauled around one percent of its tonnage. This was largely because the P&LE served the steel mills of the greater Pittsburgh area, which consumed and shipped vast amounts of materials. It was a specialized railroad, deriving much of its revenue from coal, coke, iron ore, limestone, and steel. The eventual closure of the steel mills led to the end of the P&LE as an independent line in 1992.
The Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, also known as J&L Steel or simply as J&L, was an American steel and iron manufacturer that operated from 1852 until 1968. The enterprise began as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and Benjamin Franklin Jones, about 2.5 mi (4.0 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in 1854 by James Laughlin. The first firm to bear the name of Jones and Laughlin was organized in 1861, and headquartered at Third & Ross in downtown Pittsburgh.
Consol Energy Inc. is an American energy company with interests in coal headquartered in the suburb of Cecil Township, in the Southpointe complex, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2017, Consol formed two separate entities: CNX Resources Corporation and CONSOL Energy Inc. While CNX Resources Corp. focuses on natural gas, spin-off Consol Mining Corporation, now Consol Energy Inc. focuses on coal. In 2010, Consol was the leading producer of high-BTU bituminous coal in the United States and the U.S.'s largest underground coal mining company. The company employs more than 1,600 people.
The Pittsburgh Light Rail is a 26.2-mile (42.2 km) light rail system in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and surrounding suburbs. It operates as a deep-level subway in Downtown Pittsburgh, but runs mostly at-grade in the suburbs south of the city. The system is largely linear in a north-south direction, with one terminus near Pittsburgh's central business district and two termini in the South Hills. The system is owned and operated by Pittsburgh Regional Transit. The T is one of the surviving first-generation streetcar systems in North America, with the oldest portions of the network dating back to 1903 and the Pittsburgh Railways. It is also one of only three light rail systems in the United States that continues to use the broad 5 ft 2+1⁄2 in Pennsylvania Trolley Gauge on its lines instead of the 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 3,417,100.
Turtle Creek is a 21.1-mile-long (34.0 km) tributary of the Monongahela River that is located in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Situated at its juncture with the Monongahela is Braddock, Pennsylvania, where the Battle of the Monongahela was fought in 1755.
The Whitehall Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The line ran from Monongahela Branch near the 30th Street yard to a connection with the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad and the Allegheny and South Side Railway at the 21st Street Yard in the South Side of Pittsburgh. The line was abandoned by Conrail and has been removed.
Whitsett is an unincorporated community in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, approximately 30 miles (50 km) south of Pittsburgh. The population is estimated at 200. It was founded in 1845 by Ralph C. Whitsett Sr. He and his family built a large red brick house in 1873, which still stands today. The community is made up of mostly “company” houses that were built for workers who worked in a large coal mine located nearby; the mine was Banning #21. Most of the houses were semi-detached "twins" built to accommodate two families. The mine has been closed since 1954 and most of the houses have been renovated and turned into single-family dwellings.
The Keeling Coal Company (1861–1878) was a 19th-century coal mining company in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Its mines were located in the Pittsburgh Coalfield of western Pennsylvania.
Streets Run is a 5.2-mile-long (8.4 km) tributary of the Monongahela River in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. This urban stream drains portions of the communities of Pittsburgh, Baldwin, Brentwood, West Mifflin and Whitehall, an area of about ten square miles.
Samuel Diescher was a prominent Hungarian-American civil and mechanical engineer who had his career in the United States. After being educated at universities in Karlsruhe and Zurich in Europe, he immigrated to the United States in 1866 and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. There he supervised construction of his first inclined plane. He later moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked with John Endres on the Monongahela Incline (1870), the first passenger incline in the city.
The Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Tunnel, also known as the Mount Washington Coal Tunnel, was a 3 ft 4 in narrow-gauge railway tunnel under Mt. Washington.
The Pittsburgh coal seam is the thickest and most extensive coal bed in the Appalachian Basin; hence, it is the most economically important coal bed in the eastern United States. The Upper Pennsylvanian Pittsburgh coal bed of the Monongahela Group is extensive and continuous, extending over 11,000 mi2 through 53 counties. It extends from Allegany County, Maryland to Belmont County, Ohio and from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania southwest to Putnam County, West Virginia.
Mine 3 was a station on the Port Authority of Allegheny County's light rail network, located in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The small station was located directly adjacent to an industrial park and was designed mainly to provide access for workers at the associated businesses.
The Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Plane was a 3 ft 4 in narrow gauge incline railway that ran from the northern end of the Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Tunnel to Carson Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company was a railroad and coal transportation company, founded in 1899 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was formed by merging more than 80 independent coal mines and river transportation businesses, both in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Initially, it had an agreement with the Pittsburgh Coal Company to ship its coal only by water, and not to compete with it by using rail transport, but the agreement was ended in 1902. It merged with the Pittsburgh Coal Company on 24 December 1915.
Horning is a neighborhood in the borough of Baldwin in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It was the residence of miners of the Pittsburgh Terminal Railroad and Coal Company #4 Mine, which had a racially integrated workforce, unusual in that era.