A view of Locustdale from the top of the Primrose Vein Slope of the Potts Colliery. The Keystone Colliery was located on the right side of the mountain cut along the road to Lavelle, center. The Potts Colliery boiler house stacks are in the foreground.
From a series of articles that appeared in the Pottsville Republican and Herald in 1997:
The Keystone Colliery was located southwest of Locustdale on Big Run Creek.
It was operated by a drift driven west on the North Dip Mammoth Vein at water level, and a counter level at a higher elevation. The length in the water level increased from 300 to 600 feet and became too long to be worked from this level. It was then divided into upper and lower drift levels.
These drifts were opened by John Donaldson & Company, in 1859. The first shipment of coal was 30,210 tons, made in 1869. The company continued to mine the drift levels until 1864, when the colliery was sold to the Union Coal Company, whose officers and directors were E. A. Quintard, president; William McFarlin, secretary; and S. L. Crosly, treasurer. The directors were E. A. Quintard, Francis Skiddy, George W. Elder, H. T. Divingston, Joseph R. Skidmore, Edward L. Baker and N. C. McCready.
The Union Coal Company mined the west water-level drifts to the boundary line. The upper level was driven 4,950 feet and the lower level 4,800 feet in 1869. The east water-level drift was driven from the Pioneer Colliery to the Keystone Colliery.
In 1869, Kendrick, Dovey, Glenwright and Thomas leased the colliery and in 1870 sank the coal and pump slope 435 feet on the North Dip Mammoth Vein and opened the West Primrose Drift. That company operated the colliery until 1871, when it sold out to Johnstone Newell, who probably purchased the colliery for the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, which took possession in 1872.
The Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company made many improvements and continued mining the first level until 1878, when the east gangway was driven 4,400 feet to the Pioneer barrier pillar, where the breasts were driven into the Pioneer Colliery water level gangway and westward the same distance to the barrier pillar.
In 1883, miners extended the slope to the second-level gangways east and west to the Pioneer barrier pillar in 1888 and west to the pillar line in 1889.
The colliery was abandoned in 1894. The total shipment from the Keystone colliery was 1,264,000 tons.
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Article by Frank Blase, Historian, Reading Anthracite Company Historical Library, Pottsville Republican & Herald, March 1-2, 1997. Obtained from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.