Robertsdale, Pennsylvania | |
|---|---|
  Robertsdale  Robertsdale | |
| Coordinates: 40°11′03″N78°06′55″W / 40.18417°N 78.11528°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Pennsylvania |
| County | Huntingdon |
| Township | Wood |
| Founded | 1872 |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| Zip code | 16674 |
| Area code | 814 |
| Local phone exchanges: 635 | |
Robertsdale is an unincorporated community in Wood Township in southern Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is situated on Broad Top Mountain near the eastern slope.
The community was founded in 1872 as part of the construction of the East Broad Top Railroad and Coal Company as the original terminus and mining location. The town was created by the EBT's parent company, the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company, which operated most of the mines on the east side of the Broad Top Coal field. The initial focus of mining was the Houck Mine (renamed Rockhill Iron and Coal Mine #1) which antedated the town, though as a much smaller producer. Later, RI&C #5 became a large producer. Mines #2, #3 and #4 were in Robertsdale but were not large producers and operated only briefly. Later, the EBT was extended to Woodvale, Alvan and new Alvan as the focus of mining moved along the coal seams, though Robertsdale remained the mining headquarters. Robertsdale was a typical coal mining town, complete with company owned miner houses, a company store, a company owned water and power system and other company owned facilities. Coal mining and its support industries were the principal employers.
As coal demand declined after World War II, the deep mines began to close in favor or more economical strip mining. The last of the deep coal mines closed in the early 1950s. Mine #1 closed in 1951. As the demand for coal continued to slacken, RI&C shut down in 1956 along with the EBT and both were sold to the Kovalchick Salvage Company of Indiana, Pennsylvania. Limited deep mining resumed under contractors and contract surface mining continued into the 1990s. Limited surface mining resumed in the late 2000s.
Although the EBT ceased operations in 1956, the track and structures are still in place through Robertsdale. The station building is currently the museum for Friends of the East Broad Top, who also own the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company post office building but not the general offices. The Reality theater, which was built in 1948, just as the decline in coal demand started, and the former United Methodist Church, are now owned by the Broad Top Coal Miners Historical Society as their Broad Top Coal Miners Museum and Entertainment Center. In the wake of the RI&C sale and the end of large scale mining, most miner homes were sold off by their occupants. The EBT continued to operate and maintain the ancient water system until it was replaced by a new municipal system in the 1990s.
The Robertsdale Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. [1]
Map Of The Coal Mines In Robertsdale
Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a laboratory or factory. Ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. The ore must be a rock or mineral that contains valuable constituent, can be extracted or mined and sold for profit. Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water.
Rockhill or Rockhill Furnace is a borough in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 371 at the 2010 census, down from 414 at the 2000 census. It is the site of the East Broad Top Railroad and the Rockhill Trolley Museum.
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
Briceville is an unincorporated community in Anderson County, Tennessee. It is included in the Knoxville, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area. The community is named for railroad tycoon and one-term Democratic U.S. Senator Calvin S. Brice of Ohio, who was instrumental in bringing railroad service to the town.
The history of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today, but has begun to decline due to the strong contribution coal plays in global warming and environmental issues, which result in decreasing demand and in some geographies, peak coal.
Georges Creek Valley is located in Allegany County, Maryland along the Georges Creek. The valley is rich in wide veins of coal, known historically as "The Big Vein." Coal was once extracted by deep mines but is only mined today through surface mining. The Georges Creek Valley was once a major center for the US coal industry.
The East Broad Top Railroad (EBT) is a 3 ft narrow gauge historic and heritage railroad headquartered in Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania.
Leyden, Colorado, elevation 5,656 feet (1,724 m) is a small unincorporated community in Jefferson County, Colorado west of Arvada at the junction of West 82nd Avenue and Quaker Street. It is a historic company town established by the Leyden Coal Company in 1902 to house the miners of the Leyden Coal Mine nearby to the west.
The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel conglomerate founded by the merger of previous business interests in 1892. By 1903 it was mainly owned and controlled by John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould's financial heirs. While it came to control many plants throughout the country, its main plant was a steel mill on the south side of Pueblo, Colorado, and was the city's main industry for most of its history. From 1901 to 1912, Colorado Fuel and Iron was one of the Dow Jones Industrials. The steel-market crash of 1982 led to the decline of the company. After going through several bankruptcies, the company was acquired by Oregon Steel Mills in 1993, and changed its name to Rocky Mountain Steel Mills. In January 2007, Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, along with the rest of Oregon Steel's holdings, were acquired by EVRAZ Group, a Russian steel corporation, for $2.3 billion.
Butcher Hollow is a coal-mining community located in Johnson County, Kentucky, United States.
UK Coal Production Ltd, formerly UK Coal plc, was the largest coal mining business in the United Kingdom. The company was based in Harworth, in Nottinghamshire. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The successor company that contains the former property division, Harworth Group, is still listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Mining in Australia has long been a significant primary sector industry and contributor to the Australian economy by providing export income, royalty payments and employment. Historically, mining booms have also encouraged population growth via immigration to Australia, particularly the gold rushes of the 1850s. Many different ores, gems and minerals have been mined in the past and a wide variety are still mined throughout the country.
Mining in South Africa was once the main driving force behind the history and development of Africa's most advanced and richest economy. Large-scale and profitable mining started with the discovery of a diamond on the banks of the Orange River in 1867 by Erasmus Jacobs and the subsequent discovery of the Kimberley pipes a few years later. Gold rushes to Pilgrim's Rest and Barberton were precursors to the biggest discovery of all, the Main Reef/Main Reef Leader on Gerhardus Oosthuizen's farm Langlaagte, Portion C, in 1886, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the subsequent rapid development of the gold field there, the biggest of them all.
Chatterley Whitfield Colliery is a disused coal mine on the outskirts of Chell, Staffordshire in Stoke on Trent, England. It was the largest mine working the North Staffordshire Coalfield and was the first colliery in the UK to produce one million tons of saleable coal in a year.
The Minnie Pit disaster was a coal mining accident that took place on 12 January 1918 in Halmer End, Staffordshire, in which 155 men and boys died. The disaster, which was caused by an explosion due to firedamp, is the worst ever recorded in the North Staffordshire Coalfield. An official investigation never established what caused the ignition of flammable gases in the pit.
The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system.
The Broad Top Area Coal Miners Museum is a museum documenting the history of the isolated Broad Top Coal Field in south central Pennsylvania with Ron Morgan as its curator. The museum is operated by the Broad Top Area Coal Miners Historical Society. The Museum and entertainment center was originally housed in the Reality theater in Robertsdale, Pennsylvania. which the group purchased in 1991 and opened in 1992. In 2008 the museum moved to the former Methodist church in Robertsdale, Pennsylvania while the entertainment center remained in the theater.
The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.
The Robertsdale Historic District is a national historic district that is located in Robertsdale in Wood Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.
The East Broad Top Railroad owns six three-foot gauge Mikado locomotives built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. These engines original to the railroad have survived from their construction to the present day, with various members of the fleet having run in steam for excursion train service on the preserved route.
Municipalities and communities of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, United States | ||
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| Boroughs |  | |
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| Unincorporated communities | ||
| Ghost town | ||
| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |
40°11′03″N78°06′55″W / 40.18417°N 78.11528°W
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| National | |
