GreeneScene of the Past

GreeneScene of the Past

by Colleen Nelson

A jumble of brick walls, steel girders, broken windows and remnants of the old tipple that still jut above the river’s edge near Grays Landing reminds us that the Alicia 2 mine harbor was once a busy workplace. SWPA Rural Exploration member Evan Williams II of Carmichaels took this photo in 2013 while documenting the old site for the group’s historic website and Facebook page.

The black and white photograph from the Coal and Coke Heritage Center, Penn State Fayette, Eberly campus, shows what Alicia 2 looked like in 1930 when coal fueled America’s economy even as the Great Depression loomed. At some point during the lean years that followed, Alicia 2 stopped producing, but other mines weathered the storm and got production back when World War II demanded steel for tanks and bullets and shifts were filled for the war effort.

Alicia 2 production records are preserved in G. Wayne Smith’s history of Greene County. Those tonnages are a snapshot of the boom and bust economy cycles that affected the lives of the workers and the communities that grew up around the mines.

When William Henry Brown of Fayette County opened Alicia 2 mine in 1912, its entrance went straight into the Pittsburgh Coal seam that lay exposed on the riverbank near Grays Landing. Dams helped control the river to allow barge traffic from Morgantown to Pittsburgh and the 20th century was full of promise. Alicia 2 went from being a single owner business to a “captive” mine, bought by Pittsburgh Steel to produce coal and coke exclusively for its steel mills in Pittsburgh. World War I was brewing and the need for steel would drive mill owners to secure the mines they needed.

When retired Post Gazette editor and unabashed train buff Pete Zapadka and I rode the coal train as guests of Rodney Grimes in 2017, we had an hour to kill before Rodney was ready to roll, so harbor worker Frank Craig took us on a tour. As his four-wheel drive

truck made its way up a steep stretch of gravel road leading to the tipple he stopped so I could photograph a bit of history. There on the hillside cement pillars rose and were capped with slabs of natural rock. In between was a wall of concrete blocks. It was the entrance of an old mine, sealed for safety but still overlooking the river.

I called Frank for this story and ask him if that old entrance is Alicia 2. That’s what they say, Frank tells me. I’ll take that as a yes!

You can find a link to the You Tube video Pete made of our train ride with Rodney at Greenescene Magazine on Facebook .