A newspaper photograph of a 1900 birds-eye view of Tower City and the collieries on the mountain. The photo appeared in the West Schuylkill Herald, November 22, 1967, under the category, “Old Time Photos.”
The above photograph was taken in the winter of 1900 from the hill south of Tower City by the late William C. Bachman. It shows Wiconisco Creek, which at that time was quite wide, frozen over, a pleasure spot for boating, fishing, and swimming in summer, and a delightful ice skating dam in winter.
When frozen over it was a source of ice to be harvested and stored in ice houses to supply refrigeration in summer. Ice six to ten inches in thickness was not uncommon in those winters.
North of Wiconisco Creek are the houses of Tower City borough, and on the mountain can be seen the two anthracite coal preparation breakers, the large mud dam and the rock and slate banks below. These banks, after the closing of the Brookside mines, have been run through a washery along the Reading Company Railroad above Sheridan to recover the fine coal for which later use has been developed. It is estimated that close to a million tons of usable coal has been recovered from these banks. The washery is no longer in operation.
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Photo and story from Newspapers.com.
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