Marguerite is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

coal town A coal town, also known as a coal camp or patch, is a type of company town or mining community established by the employer, a mining company, which imports workers to the site to work the mineral find. The company develops it and provides reside ...

in Unity Township, Westmoreland County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. It was also known as Klondike. According to a 1994 study by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Marguerite was established in 1897, when The Standard Connellsville Coke Company began developing a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

and coke works nearby and built houses for the employees. A second mine followed in 1900. The H.C. Frick Coke Company took over operations in 1903 and built more houses. At one point nearly 1,000 people reportedly lived in the area. Mining and coking ceased in Marguerite in the 1940s. The 1994 study found some traces of prior industrial activity, primarily disused coke ovens. In December 2024 Marguerite was the site of an intensive search and rescue operation for Elizabeth Pollard, a Marguerite resident who was believed to have fallen into the abandoned mine through a

sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are also known as shakeholes, and to openings where surface water ...

which formed near her home. Pollard's body was found on December 6, 2024, by a construction crew brought in to help find her.

Pennsylvania State Police The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) is the state police, state police agency of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, responsible for statewide law enforcement. The Pennsylvania State Police is a full service law enforcement agency which handles both ...

trooper Steve Limani told Pittsburgh television station

WTAE-TV WTAE-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, affiliated with ABC. It has been owned by Hearst Television since the station's inception, making this one of two stations that have been built and signe ...

"Pollard was found around 30 feet from where the mine would have sat and 12 feet from where the original sinkhole occurred."

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania Coal towns in Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania