Lackawanna Coal Mine

www.lackawannacounty.org

1 Bald Mountain Rd
Scranton, PA 18504
(570) 963-6463

To the children who suffered

Richard DiMaggio

The Lackawanna Coal Mine in Lackawanna, Pennsylvania remains one of the most incredibly interesting, yet incredibly sad, places I have ever visited. This is a trip you must do, combining adventure with history, and a museum with the memories of what happened.

This story is about a trip into a coal mine—a dark, cold, wet coal mine some 300 feet below the surface of the earth, at a time when children were expendable and treated like chattel..

Your mind will scramble in several directions: You will think of the misery coal miners lived through. You will recall collapses you’ve read about in newspapers, and find yourself wondering, “What if.”

You will think of the 8 year old “Nippers” who were forced into slave labor at the hands of the coal industry, and whose lives were sacrificed for maybe a dollar a day.

There is something exciting about being lowered on a cable car to 300 feet below the surface of the earth. With our lakes and streams and mountains and birds and nature so incredibly inviting, you get not only a peak of the dark side of humanity, but you catch a glimpse of the dark side of planet earth, too.

Your guide:  a well-versed, ex coal miner who can answer any question you have.

Your lesson: On child labor, up front and personal.

It is difficult to intersperse “a great weekend getaway” with such a sordid tale in American history.

Basically, children as young as 8 years old worked the mines.

Fill less than three in the twelve hours, and wages: Nothing. And what you did fill did not carry over to the next day. The next day started the count all over.

Railroad tracks carry you in a cage down the 300 feet to the mine. The mine has several layers, but most of them are under water.

But that’s not all: The wages had to be spent at the company store, and they had to live in the company housing.

The cycle was such that it created a pattern of slavery. Debts were created that could never be paid back.

If the father was killed in the coal mine, the child worker inherited the father’s debts.

Average temperature is about 50 degrees, so they give you jackets in the museum shop.

There were three ways to tell if the mine was going to collapse. As our guide said, think

these poles are really keeping the ceiling held up? Heck, no. When they break, RUN.

But also, miners used canaries and rats. When they keeled over, that was a sign poisonous gas was building up.

Rats were the miners best indicators of when something was about to go awry.

The smaller ones were sent into the tighter spots, and had to load the coal on the conveyor

belt.

This was an absolutely wonderful experience. It is cold down there, so do take a jacket.

The conditions were appalling, and no doubt children in the world still suffer similar fates in similar sweatshops.

This will make you stop and think of them.

The dampness gave me bronchitis for several weeks and I was on meds after this trip. I guess I wouldn’t have made a very good Nipper.

From the site:

“Descend slowly into the earth in a mine car as you enter the old Slope #190.  Watch the sky slowly disappear. Soon you’ve reached “the foot”.  Then explore 300 feet beneath the earth through an anthracite coal mine originally opened in 1860.  Accompany a miner in the winding underground gangways and rock tunnel past three different veins of hard coal, past the mule boy and the nipper, past the monkey vein and the dead chute. Listen as he explains the fascinating methods used, and the heroic efforts involved, in deep mining’s history.

The Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour is open from April 1^st through November 30^th and is closed only on Thanksgiving Day.  The box office opens at 10:00 AM and tours are scheduled by demand.  There is at least one tour within each hour (on busy days tours can depart every 10-20 minutes).

Just ask at the box office for the next available tour.  The last tour starts at 3:30 p.m., so we recommend you arrive by 3:00 p.m. to purchase your ticket(s) and watch the introductory video in our gift shop.”