Many families in Pennsylvania have a similar story: a father, grandfather or great-grandfather who worked in the coal mines. It should come as no surprise, as coal mining was the primary industry in many of the commonwealth’s counties through much of its history.

Starting in the Colonial era, coal was heating homes, powering basic trades and fueling industry across the entire country. And most of that coal was mined here in Pennsylvania.

In the 19th century, coal fueled industrialization, immigration, technology and trade. By the Gilded Age, it employed thousands of working-class men and boys, especially immigrants — and yet it presented dangerous conditions that placed those very workers in peril as surging demand stimulated production and pushed workers farther and deeper.

All told, the black rock was well-deserving of its moniker, King Coal.

Of all the nation’s coal-producing states, Pennsylvania has always been king.

Vast fields of anthracite and bituminous coal — the richest in the world — fueled the young nation’s growth in industry, infrastructure and geography.

The first known coal mining operation in Pennsylvania was running by 1760 on Coal Hill, today’s Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, to supply energy to the British garrison at Fort Pitt.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, anthracite coal, a harder substance producing a more intense heat, was mined as early as 1775 near Pittston in Luzerne County. The first commercial anthracite mine — known in those days as a “colliery” — was operating by 1791 at Sharp Mountain in Carbon County, Pennsylvania.

Coal operations and railroads drove development — not to mention the appearance and naming of communities — across the state.

By the late 19th century, Pennsylvania led the nation in the number of mines, the tonnage of production, the number of laborers and ultimately the number of mining accidents and deaths. The development of the commonwealth’s coal industry in tandem with westward expansion, and the strategic position of western Pennsylvania’s flagship city, Pittsburgh, at the head of the Ohio River, extended this role and its impact.

By the early 20th century, the Keystone State alone accounted for nearly half of all U.S. coal production and approximately one-quarter of global production, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

Like mining operations around the world, however, Pennsylvania’s mines presented grim working conditions. Many worked 10 to as many as 16 hours a day, six days a week, from a young age.

Moreover, the mine environment was conducive to a regular dose of gruesome accidents and disasters.

Newspapers reported miner injuries or deaths from fire, explosions and floods; poisonous gases and suffocation; the collapse of a wall or roof; and the failure of machinery, such as cage falls and haulage accidents.

Firedamp was “the most deadly enemy” of the miners, according to an unnamed correspondent for the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, in 1856. “Scarcely a day passes but some are burned with it, often fatally,” he wrote after a tour of a mine, relaying a conversation with his talkative guide.

“Damp” comes from the German Dampf, meaning “vapor.” The term was used widely to refer to highly combustible and poisonous gases, typically methane gas, released from the earth through the mining process. The colorless, odorless firedamp could kill the miner through inhalation or by an explosion when ignited by a spark or flame.

And with candles affixed to a miner’s helmet or a pick-axe striking rocks, there were plenty of sparks and flames.

Some gases could be so toxic that mere exposure of the skin to the gas could result in serious burns, so miners were trained to “drop like a dead man and grovel in the mud and water — drop instantly and thrust his head, feet and hands in the mire as far as strength will serve” in the hope that the scorching gas would dissipate, according to the reporter.

Another lethal gas, known to miners and the press as the “black damp,” was a combination of carbon dioxide and other gases that could lead to poisoning and asphyxiation. In the presence of such gases, “death,” the Evening Post reporter clarified, “is inevitable.”

Accidents — and especially fatal accidents — and especially fatal accidents with a long list of casualties — were bad for business. Such events prompted a shutdown of the mine, general unrest of the population, clean up and repairs, lost production, investigations and sometimes reputational damage.

Larger disasters drew crowds of onlookers and members of the press. People from surrounding communities often arrived to support rescue efforts, assist with cleanup or gawk. Employers sometimes covered the cost of the coffins.

Pennsylvania’s first mine disaster — an event with five or more deaths, as defined by the CDC — took place in Carbondale, Lackawanna County, where 14 men and boys were killed in an 1846 cave-in.

But a rising number of tragedies during the Civil War and Gilded Age would draw attention if not solutions to the dangers of coal mining.

While most coal mine accidents had a small death toll, an 1869 fire at the Avondale Colliery in Luzerne County killed 110 men and boys, awakening the broader public to what Pennsylvania residents already knew about the dangers of coal mines.

Although Avondale prompted some safety reforms, hazardous conditions persisted.

As just a few examples, Pennsylvania would lose 20 miners in an 1871 smoke incident in West Pittston; 19 in an 1884 explosion in West Leisenring; 13 in an 1896 explosion in Dubois; 19 in an 1899 explosion in Brownsville; 10 each in an 1893 fire in Shamokin, an 1892 mine flood in Minersville, an 1889 mine car fall in Middleport and an 1885 roof collapse in Raven Run; 26 in an 1890 explosion in Ashley; 10 in an 1873 fire in Shamokin; 58 in an 1896 roof collapse in Pittston; and 31 in an 1890 fire in Dunbar.

In fact, Pennsylvania accounted for roughly 61% of the nation’s coal mine fatalities from 1860 through World War I, according to the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

And the situation would only get worse.

Despite mounting calls for reform and regulations, the decade of 1900-1909 would be the deadliest in the nation’s coal mines.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Mines, more than 21,000 miners died in the nation between 1900 and 1909, with about 13,000 (≈ 62%) in Pennsylvania alone. Some of the deadliest in the Keystone State were in Johnstown (1902, 112 killed), Cheswick (1904, 179 killed) and Marianna (1908, 154 killed).

The deadliest single year was 1907, with about 3,200 deaths nationally and 2,100 (≈ 66%) in the Keystone State.

During December 1907 alone, Pennsylvania lost 34 miners in a suspected gas explosion in the Naomi Mine in Fayette City and 239 in the state’s worst coal mine disaster: an explosion at the Darr Mine in Westmoreland County. Some of those killed at the Darr Mine had survived the explosion at Naomi two and a half weeks earlier.

Additional disasters that month — in Alabama, where 57 were killed in an explosion; New Mexico, where 10 were killed in an explosion; and West Virginia, where 362 were killed in the single deadliest coal mine disaster ever — made it the nation’s deadliest on record.

While reformers continued their demands for safety legislation, Pennsylvania’s coal miners continued to dig farther and deeper, while disasters continued to take place in communities such as Wilkes-Barre, Portage and Clymer.

Conditions did improve, though slowly. Pennsylvania’s recent coal mine disasters were in 1977, when nine were killed by a flood in Schuylkill County, Pa., and in 1966, when five were killed by suffocation at the Dora Mine near Punxsutawney, according to the CDC.

Pennsylvania’s coal legacy continues. As of 2023, the PA DEP reported the production of nearly 50 million tons of mostly bituminous coal by more than 4,000 employees.

Portions of this article were presented at the 2023 and 2024 Sachsman Symposium on the 19th Century Press, in Augusta, Ga.

Katrina Jesick Quinn is a faculty member at Slippery Rock University with coal mining ancestors on both sides of the family.