The Independent Miners of Pennsylvania

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In Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the era of anthracite is fading fast: from dozens of operations to just four mines and a single processing facility remaining in 2026, the industry that once defined this landscape is nearly gone. Pennsylvania holds almost all of the nation’s remaining anthracite, the rarest and hardest form of coal. During its peak in World War I the state produced 100 million tons in a single year, employing 180,000 workers, with Schuylkill at the heart of the boom.

 

When the collieries shuttered during the Depression, miners cut illegal “bootleg” holes into the southern fields to survive, organizing mass meetings by 1941 under the banner of the Independent Miners’ Association in towns like Donaldson. Mines continued to close, membership dwindled, and the workforce thinned, from twelve mines in 1983 to nine in 2019, until today only a handful remain, marking the final chapter of Pennsylvania’s independent miners.