A photograph from around 1890 of a mule-drawn dump cart filled with coal with the old wooden East Bear Ridge Breaker in the background.
From a series of articles that appeared in the Pottsville Republican and Herald in 1997:
The East Bear Ridge Colliery was at Mahanoy Plane in West Mahanoy Township on the lands of the Girard Estates and on the north side of the Mahanoy Creek.
The colliery was originally opened in 1834 by a water-level tunnel 1,050 feet in length by the Pottsville & Danville Railroad Company for the Girard Estate. The tunnel started on the south side of Bear Ridge Mountain, passing through the Buck Mountain and Little Buck Mountain veins of the Mahanoy Basin and then, in order, cutting the Top and Bottom Splits of the Mammoth, Skidmore, Seven-Foot, Buck Mountain, and Little Buck Mountain veins in the Ellangowan Basin.
The tunnel was abandoned when the railroad ceased operations in 1837. It remained idle until 1863, when W. H. Sheafer reopened it and shipped 7,239 tons of coal in 1864. He was succeeded by the Tunnel Coal Company in 1869 and Sheafer, Hartz & Company, who continued mining to 1872 after extending the tunnel 240 feet to the South Dip Mammoth Vein. They were succeeded by A. L. Mumper & Company, which drove gangways 5,500 feet eastward and 3,700 feet west to the boundaries in 1879, connecting with the Colorado Colliery.
A slope was sunk 300 feet long on the Mammoth Vein 100 feet west of the tunnel and another slope was sunk 1,184 feet on the Top Split.
On January 1, 1880, Myers, McCreary & Company acquired the lease and continued operating until November 1, 1883, when the colliery and lease were purchased by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company. Its lease was terminated December 31, 1913. However, no coal had been shipped since August 23, 1910, when the breaker was destroyed by fire. The total amount of coal removed to that date was 4,500,000 tons.
On June 1, 1914, a lease was granted to David R. James of Shenandoah and William J. James and Benjamin F. James of Pottsville, who on April 1, 1915, transferred it to the East Bear Ridge Company. It reopened all the gangways that had recoverable coal and drove a tunnel 950 feet long on the 1,334 feet level, cutting the Top and Bottom Split of the Mammoth Vein and extended the Skidmore Gangway east 400 feet.
The company also erected a new breaker of 1,500 ton capacity daily and a boiler plant of 1,350 horsepower, installed a substation to furnish electric haulage motors and lighting purposes, and erected carpenter, blacksmith and machine shops and a stable, pump and engine house. It constructed a surface track 7,500 feet in length to bring coal from the eastern end of the colliery to the new breaker.
The shipment of coal from the East Bear Ridge Colliery was 6,093,317 tons as of 1928.
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Article by Frank Blase, Historian, Reading Anthracite Company Historical Library, Pottsville Republican & Herald, September 6, 1997. Obtained from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.