NEPA Has Always Been at the Center of America's Innovation

 

April 28, 2026 - It all started with a wrought iron grate at a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania tavern in 1808.

It was there on the corner of East Northampton and South Washington streets that the tavern’s owner, Jesse Fell, used that open grate to successfully burn anthracite coal without a forced draft for the first time.

Fell didn’t discover coal itself, but he did discover its domestic use as a viable fuel source to heat homes at less expense than burning wood, which revolutionized home heating in the 19th century.

“That single-handedly started the coal mining industry in this area, which, and it’s not an exaggeration to say, started the Industrial Revolution in America,” said Mark J. Riccetti Jr., director of operations and programs for the Luzerne County Historical Society.

The Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania encompasses six counties and contains the largest known deposits of anthracite coal in the world.

Luzerne County is part of the Northern Coal Field, which is shaped like a canoe and stretches from Forest City in Susquehanna County all the way down to Shickshinny.

Coal mining kick-started the Industrial Revolution, enabling innovation across the country and altering the U.S. economy and the landscape of our region forever.

It remains the defining feature of this region, for better or worse, and its impact is still felt today, long after the last of the collieries have closed.

As Riccetti said while showing the Times Leader around the historical society one afternoon in April, “Everyone’s got a mining story. I mean, my great-grandparents were in the mines. You know, everybody has a relative, everybody has a friend, everybody has somebody that was involved in mines.”

Anthracite coal is special. It’s harder and shinier than bituminous coal. It has a high carbon content and few impurities, which allows it to burn hotter and produce cleaner energy than other forms of coal.

How the Wyoming Valley ended up with all this anthracite coal was pure luck — an environmental goof.

As Executive Director of the Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR) Robert “Bobby” Hughes explained, coal was formed from old seabeds millions of years ago, when the ocean levels were much higher than they are today.

In the anthracite region, when that material got pushed from the Atlantic Ocean, everything folded inward, and the seabed material was deposited in layers.

“It didn’t do that in Western Pennsylvania and Central PA, because there’s an Appalachian plateau there. It sits really high. They didn’t get the uplift from the mountains that were being built and pushed when the ocean and the sort of continental shelf starts sliding and moving in and pushing things up, “Hughes explained. “That’s why it’s really unique that it’s found in these ridges and the valleys, because every time, you know, rock was being pushed from these plate movements.”

Just as the unique features of the Wyoming Valley allowed for the formation of anthracite coal itself, the subsequent mining of that coal allowed for increased immigration to the area, creating the diverse cultural identity we have today.

In the 19th century, immigrants came here from the modern-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, Russia, Italy, Ireland, Germany, and more.

The Welsh did too. In fact, collier is a Welsh term to describe all of the buildings made up a coal breaker.

“The Welsh, when they came, they had much more experience in mining coal in Wales that they became the engineers of the region,” Hughes said. “They kind of ran the operations when they were here for the coal operators.”

The dangerous work of anthracite mining led to organized labor efforts, and Pennsylvania was one of the pioneers in that movement. In Schuylkill County, miners organized the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association in 1868.

The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 was the first labor dispute in which the U.S. federal government intervened. It also led to the creation of the Pennsylvania State Police.

The anthracite mining industry dominated the region for decades, peaking in 1917. From there, production steadily declined, picking back up slightly during World War II.

The Knox Mine Disaster in 1959 was a huge turning point — the beginning of the end, as Riccetti said.

“There’s actually still mining in Luzerne County today. It’s almost all strip mining, but there is still anthracite mining today. There’s some deep surface —very little — but it was well into the seventies that you still had coal mining the way we think of it,” he said.

As the decline of anthracite mining ramped up, several different industries moved in to take its place.

“We had a lot of silk mills, lace mills, dress factories, bra factories, garment factories,” Riccetti explained. “My great-grandparents worked in the mines. And then my grandparents worked in a dress factory. That was the next good job.”

There was a brief rise in electronic production in the 1970s and 1980s , but that didn’t last long.

In recent years, our region has perhaps found its niche again. The rise of e-commerce and our highway infrastructure has made the state a hub of warehouses and distribution centers.

In 2023, according to data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, warehouse and storage jobs were 1.66 times more concentrated in Pennsylvania than the rest of the nation.

“It took them, what, 60-some years, but they just realized that, ‘Hey, we’re right by [interstate] 80 and 81 and you can get almost anywhere from here,” Riccetti said. “That sort of now is filling the niche that the garment industry tried to fill, that the electronics industry tried to fill, that was basically still left over from the Anthracite Industry.”

While mine scarred land is being reclaimed left and right by developers, environmental groups are coming up with innovative ways to lessen the negative impacts of acid mine drainage.

Hughes explained how the EPCAMR takes the iron extracted from polluted water and turns it into a pigment that can be used for crafts like painting, pottery and t-shirt dyeing.

“We call it from pollution to pigment,” Hughes said.

Even though King Coal was kicked off his throne decades ago, coal mining continues to play a role in Pennsylvania’s innovation.

Our rich reserves of coal and natural gas, and available land, have made Pennsylvania the center of a data center boom that has caused controversy in local communities.

Still, Riccetti remained optimistic about the future of the region.

“Depending on how everything goes with the data centers, in five years, 10 years’ time, that could be the next chapter.”