Mammoth Mine portal to history opens in Mt. Pleasant Township

One can almost hear the echoes of the footsteps of generations of miners at the Mammoth No. 2 portal behind the Mt. Pleasant Township municipal building.

Closed for 60 years, the entry would have been covered over by the earth and forgotten if not for the efforts of township Secretary/Treasurer Raymond Zimmerman and township supervisors who invested $15,000 to save the entry.

After several years of work, 40 feet of the refurbished entry will be dedicated at 10 a.m. Friday. "It's something that is going to be a historic site that's going to be maintained an awful long time," said Zimmerman.

The portal had a role in one of the great early mine disasters, the explosion at Mammoth No. 1, the morning of Jan. 27, 1891, in which 109 miners perished. Miners entered Mammoth No. 1 through a 107-foot-deep shaft entry on the other side of a hill from the Mammoth No. 2 slope entry. Although there were some injuries at the interconnected mine from the explosion, the Mammoth No. 2 miners escaped.

The devastation was evident, however, when the ventilation fans were reversed to clear Mammoth No. 1 of the smoke and deadly gasses.

Zimmerman has highlighted a section of the 1892 book, "Adventures In the Mines or Perils Underground," by T.T. O'Malley that describes the scene: "Out of the sloping entrance to the No. 2 mine, halfway on the other side of the hill, but connected by underground working with No. 1, could be seen a thin streak of dark vapor emerging. Soon it began to come faster until at a late hour Wednesday it was pouring out in big volumes."

The book also includes poignant passages on the losses suffered by the miners' families, many of whom were immigrants from such Central European countries as Hungary.

"When the news of the explosion came to the miners' families in the little houses that doted on the hillsides, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and sweethearts rushed to the shaft," one passage states.

Despite the horrific loss of life, Mammoth No.1 was reopened within 10 days. Nothing remains of the mine, and there are only a few concrete slabs marking the company houses where the mine families lived.

Zimmerman said "the first time anyone in this new era had seen (the Mammoth No. 2 portal)" was in the mid-1980s when a coal company opened the portal to pull the pillars (coal supports) of the mine.

In 1997, another coal company came in to strip away the overburden and mine the remaining coal, and the municipal administration stepped up to ensure that the portal was protected. "We decided we didn't want it destroyed," Zimmerman said.

He said the supervisors have always supported the preservation effort, including the current board made up of Duane Hutter, Don Scott and Regis Adamrovich.

The effort started long before the dramatic rescue of the Quecreek miners in Somerset County gave coal miners a new cachet, Zimmerman, noted. His late grandfather Bradford Jones was a coal miner in Seward, and Zimmerman said he remembered him carrying his lunch to work and returning home with his face covered with coal dust.

There are also a few elderly township residents who worked in the coke yards adjacent to the Mammoth mines. Once numbering nearly 500 coke ovens, they stayed in operation a little longer than the mines.

A number of residents are also descendants of those who worked at Mammoth, or who died in the mine that terrible day in 1891.

Township workers did the reclamation of the hillside. Zimmerman said, however, that "the property was a real mess" and the landscaping took several years. The archway that continues into the hillside for 40 feet is the original brick entrance touched up with a little whitewash. A block wall was added at the end of the tunnel where the strip mining started.

A red brick front was also added to set off the entrance. A wall on one side leading to the portal, which had collapsed, was rebuilt using stone from a house from the same period. Zimmerman retrieved the last few bits of coal from the mine and mounted them as commemorative plaques.

The tunnel is safe to enter, according to Zimmerman, unlike the dangerous passage into an unstable abandoned mine it had once been. Zimmerman said the restoration was designed to require little maintenance.

Future plans call for a granite memorial to the 109 miners who perished at Mammoth to be placed on the hillside above the entry.

There will be a dedication program Friday featuring state and local dignitaries, historians and representatives of the United Mine Workers. Area residents are encouraged to attend the dedication service Friday. Signs showing the way will be placed along Route 982, close to Mammoth.

Everyone is also welcome, during regular business hours, to walk through the mine portal and into the area's history.