A photograph taken in June 1956 of the dynamiting of the Westwood Colliery Breaker, near Good Spring, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
The photo caption reads:
This scene in June 1956 symbolized the end of the anthracite deep mine era. After surviving countless ups and downs in the coal market for the better part of a century, the deep mine industry breathed its final gasp in the mid-1950s when big companies like the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company switched to strip mining, leaving thousands of mineworkers jobless. Over the succeeding decades the collieries and breaker structures disappeared gradually, but it was an abrupt end for the old wooden Westwood Breaker above in Southwestern Schuylkill County near Good Spring, when dynamite brought it down with a crash and a cloud of dust.
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From the Pottsville Republican and Herald, series entitled “Glimpses Into Yesteryear,” 18 December 1880, via Newspapers.com.
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