The Lackawanna Coal Mine is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

and retired coal mine located in

McDade Park McDade Park is a community park located in Scranton in Lackawanna County, in northeastern Pennsylvania. It is named after former U.S. Representative Joseph M. McDade. The park is located on of land, containing an outdoor pool, a fishing pond a ...

in Scranton,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

History

The Lackawanna Coal Mine was opened by Continental Coal Company in 1903. Lackawanna County, including Scranton, is part of the Northern Field of the

coal region The Coal Region is a region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is known for being home to the largest known deposits of anthracite, anthracite coal in the world with an estimated reserve of seven billion short tons. The region is typically define ...

of Pennsylvania and many Europeans immigrated to the area to work in the mines. The mine was closed in 1966 and lay abandoned until 1978 when the mine was converted to a museum, supported by $2.5 million in federal money. Restoration included removal of debris, laying track for a mine car to carry visitors into the mine, installation of electricity for lights, and reinforcing of the shafts with steel buttresses. The museum opened in 1985. In 1987, Lackawanna County received a $300,000 state grant to build a museum building to house exhibits and artifacts. The addition is called the Shifting Shanty, a name used to describe the area where miners showered after a shift. Adjacent to the mine tour is the

Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum The Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum preserves the heritage of anthracite coal mining in the U.S. State of Pennsylvania and is located in McDade Park in Scranton. It features exhibits detailing the industrial history of northeastern Penn ...

with exhibits on Northeastern Pennsylvania's mining and industrial history. The museum is run by Lackawanna County.

Museum tour

The purpose of the mine is to give visitors a feeling for what it was like to work in an underground mine. The tours are led by former miners, or children of miners. Visitors board a mine car and descend the #190 slope, about below ground, into the Clark Vein of coal. The tour proceeds, on foot, through several twisting veins of the abandoned mine. During the tour, the tour guides describe various aspects of the

anthracite Anthracite, also known as hard coal, and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic luster. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the hig ...

mining industry in Pennsylvania including the file of the

fire boss A fire boss is a person employed at a mine or state certified official, responsible for examining a mine for dangers, particularly explosive, poisonous or suffocating gases. Usually the fire boss is the first person to enter a mine, to verify its sa ...

, air doors and their role in ventilation, door boys or nippers, second means of exit from the mine, and the company store. The temperatures within the mine are around a constant of .

In popular culture

The Lackawanna Coal Mine is featured in seasons 3 and 4 of the television adaptation of '' The Man in the High Castle'' where is it is depicted as having an artificial portal to parallel worlds. In season 1 of ''

The Office ''The Office'' is a mockumentary sitcom created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, first made in the United Kingdom, then Germany, and subsequently the United States. It has since been remade in ten other countries. The original series of ...

'' Michael Scott is seen attempting to organize a field trip for his office to the museum under the assumption that the elevator that takes visitors down into the mine is a ride analogous to a roller-coaster drop instead of the slow and prolonged descent into an industrial coal mining facility that it actually was.

References

External links

Museums in Scranton, Pennsylvania Mining museums in Pennsylvania Coal mines in the United States Mines in Pennsylvania Former mines in the United States Former coal mines Coal museums in the United States {{Pennsylvania-museum-stub