MINING CONDITIONS UNDER CITY OP SCRANTON, PA.
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In 1841 the first furnace of the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Co. was filled and fired, and though this effort to manufacture iron from local ores proved a total failure, it nevertheless gave a decided impetus to the coal-mining industry of this locality. Subsequently iron ore and limestone were brought from a distance, and anthracite was successfully used for smelting iron. Since this beginning the coal industry of Scranton has continuously flourished until the present.
The mines worked by the iron company in 1841 were on both sides of Roaring Brook. The Clark bed was worked near the viaduct; later the Dunmore beds were worked near the site of the present Laurel Line power house by what were known as the Rolling Mill drifts. For several years these were the principal mines in Scranton.
In 1851 the Lackawanna & Western Railroad was built from Scranton to connect with the Erie road at Great Bend. The Delaware & Cobbs Gap road (chartered in 1849) was merged with the Lackawanna, and in 1856, under the name of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, was built through from Scranton to the Delaware River. In 1858 the Lackawanna & Bloomsburg road was built. Equipped thus with new and permanent outlets for its resources, the mining industry of the valley and the city advanced with rapid strides.
About 1852 the Diamond mines were opened. In 1854 the Rockwell mine at Leggetts Gap, and the Bellevue colliery were opened. The opening of numerous other coal operations followed in rapid succession.
MINING METHODS.
The room and pillar system of mining was adopted in these old mines, and has been continued in all the mining of the region to the present time. This method consists, briefly, in driving an airway and a gangway about 15 feet apart and parallel in the coal bed. On the high side—that is, to the rise—chambers or rooms are driven parallel to each other and at right angles to the gangways. The rooms are about 30 feet wide and are separated by partitions about 15 feet in thickness called pillars. The coal production of the mine is mainly taken from the contents of the rooms; the pillars, which comprise approximately one-third of the coal, are left to support the surface. This practice of leaving one-third of the coal for surface support was adopted at the start, and was found sufficient for the comparatively light overburden to be sustained in the mining of the beds near the surface. It has been continued as an empirical rule with little variation, in the deeper mining under the city, without reference to the weight on the pillars or the strength of the coal.
In the past the several beds of each mine were worked independently of each other and no attempt was made to regulate the size,