Ashland (Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania)

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Ashland
The Mothers' Memorial in Ashland
The Mothers' Memorial in Ashland
Location in Pennsylvania
Ashland, Pennsylvania
Ashland
Ashland
Basic data
Foundation : 1857
State : United States
State : Pennsylvania
County : Schuylkill County
Coordinates : 40 ° 47 ′  N , 76 ° 21 ′  W Coordinates: 40 ° 47 ′  N , 76 ° 21 ′  W
Time zone : Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 )
Residents : 2,678 (as of 2018)
Population density : 628.6 inhabitants per km 2
Area : 4.26 km 2  (approx. 2 mi 2 ) of
which 4.26 km 2  (approx. 2 mi 2 ) is land
Height : 300 m
Postal code : 17921
Area code : +1 570
FIPS : 42-03264
GNIS ID : 1215543
Website : www.ashlandborough.com

Ashland is a small town ( borough ) in Schuylkill County in the east of the US state Pennsylvania . The place was first settled in 1846 and incorporated as a self-governing borough in 1857. It owes its emergence to anthracite coal and its decline after the Great Depression and especially after the Second World War to the dwindling importance of underground coal mining.

geography

The place is located in a narrow, northeast to southwest running valley in the middle of the anthracite coal field - more precisely in the so-called Western Middle Anthracite Coal Field - of eastern Pennsylvania in the Valley and Ridge Zone of the Appalachians , in the extreme north of Schuylkill County; a small portion, less than 1 percent, to the northwest of the parish mark is Columbia County . About 25 km to the southeast is Pottsville , the county seat of Schuylkill County.

The area around the community is mountainous and largely forested, but also interspersed with the remains of former anthracite mines and especially with the wounds of the landscape of abandoned and barely recultivated open-cast mines. The city itself is traversed in the east by Mahanoy Creek , a 83 km long and orographic left tributary of the Susquehanna .

Ashland is crossed by two state highways, Pennsylvania Route 54, which runs in the valley in an east-west direction, and Pennsylvania Route 61 , which crosses the mountain ranges from north to south and connects to Interstate 81 between Harrisburg in the southwest , about 10 km further east and Wilkes-Barre to the northeast. In the village, the two run together for about 1.5 km along Center Street, Ashland's main street. Just north of the town perform rerouting of Route 61 to the since 1962 smoldering by the discontinued place Byrne Ville coal fire in coal seams in the virtually deserted town Centralia .

history

On a toll road from Reading to Sunbury , the so-called Center Turnpike, built in 1808–1814 , Jacob Rotenberger built a simple inn with stables at the site where Ashland is today. It stayed that way for a quarter of a century until 1845, when three investors bought about 320 hectares in the then uninhabited area because they were convinced they would find coal there. In 1846 the first mining tunnels were created and in 1847 the first road and development plan for Ashland was laid out. After a slow start, from 1850, when only 224 inhabitants were counted, a brisk influx of people looking for work began, mostly new immigrants from Ireland , Germany and Eastern Europe . Two new mines were opened in 1852 and 1853, and in 1854 the first cargo of coal was loaded by rail. A post office was built as early as 1853, the first school in 1854, the first church in 1855. In 1857 the place already had 3,500 inhabitants and was spun off from Butler Township and incorporated as a self-governing borough.

With the rapidly increasing demand for coal, especially after the Civil War of 1861–1865, coal production in the anthracite district of Pennsylvania also increased. In Ashland, this was reflected in the growing number of small and medium-sized mines and the rapidly growing population, but soon also in the takeover of many of these companies by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company, a subsidiary of Philadelphia & Reading founded in 1871 Railroad , which was the largest producer of anthracite coal in the United States from 1871 through the 1920s.

The almost total dependence on coal also caused a long depression in the 1870s ( Great Depression (1873-1896) ) and again after the panic triggered by the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad in February 1893 and in the following up to 1897 lasting depression. The loss of jobs caused in particular from 1893 by the closure of many of the mines dependent on the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company led to a drastic decline in the population of Ashland from around 8,900 in 1893 to only 6,438 in 1900. Increasing competition from coke and petroleum also contributed to the decline in the demand and production of anthracite coal, and after a brief boom in World War I , the Great Depression finally brought the end of coal mining in Ashland - apart from the unlicensed " Wildcat " or " Wildcat " which was subsequently operated by laid-off miners. Bootleg ”mines. In 1931 work in the Pioneer Tunnel Colliery of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Corporation on the 475 m high Mahanoy Mountain in the south of Ashland was stopped. The population of the place, which had increased again in 1930 to 7,164, continued to decline, to only 5237 in 1960, 3283 at the turn of the millennium and only 2678 in 2018.

Population development

year Residents
1850 224
1860 3880
1870 5714
1880 6052
1890 7346
1893 ~ 8900
1900 6438
year Residents
1910 6855
1920 6686
1930 7164
1940 7045
1950 6192
1960 5237
year Residents
1970 4737
1980 4235
1990 3859
2000 3283
2010 2817
2018 2678

today

Today, next to an open-cast mine that was abandoned a long time ago, a visitor mine , a museum railway and a small museum remind of the mining history of the city.

  • The Pioneer Tunnel Mine, which was closed in 1931, was reopened as a show mine in the summer of 1963, as it was hoped that it would stimulate the local economy. There (19th and Oak Streets) you can drive into the tunnel on a former mine train and find out about the working conditions of the miners on a half-hour tour.
The Henry Clay steam locomotive
  • Next to the entrance to the mine is the departure point of the steam locomotive "Henry Clay 1", built in 1927 , which pulls a small narrow-gauge train of four converted former coal wagons and a caboose around 1.2 km around the north and east sides of the Mahanoy Mountains; At the end of the 10-minute drive, visitors can see a 50 m high rock and coal wall that seems to extend endlessly to the west and was left behind by the long-abandoned Mammoth Vein Stripping opencast mine.
  • About 200 meters northeast of the visitor mine is the small "Museum of Anthracite Mining" in the village (18th and Pine Streets), in which the history of anthracite mining in the area is explained and tools and equipment used by the miners are shown.
The Mothers' Memorial

Another attraction in Ashland is the Mothers' Memorial, inaugurated on September 4, 1938, at the northern end of Hoffmann Boulevard in the eastern part of the city. The approximately 2.20 m high bronze statue , affectionately also called "Mom-ument", is from the famous painting "An Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 ” , commonly known as“ Whistler's Mother ”(German:“ Whistler's mother ”), modeled on James Abbott McNeill Whistler . Commissioned in 1936 by the Ashland Boys Association, the association of Ashland men and women who have moved away in search of work, it honors all mothers in the United States. The 3-ton granite platform , the stairs and the small park were built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The 820 kg statue itself was designed by the German-American sculptor Emil Siebern and executed by the Austrian-American sculptor Julius C. Loester .

Personalities

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Today's state highways Pennsylvania Route 61 and Pennsylvania Route 54 follow the general route of the former Center Turnpike for long stretches. The last toll on the route was raised in 1855.
  2. ↑ Borough of Ashland, official website
  3. ^ Living Places: Ashland Borough
  4. ↑ James L. Holton: The Reading Railroad: History of a Coal Age Empire, Volume 1: The Nineteenth Century. Garrigues House Publ., Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1990, ISBN 0-9620-8441-7
  5. ↑ The Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, had in 1923 after a divestiture judgment of the Supreme Court of 1920, its coal interests of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company transferred to the formed specifically for this purpose Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Corporation ( National Museum of American History : Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company Records, 1866-1927 ).
  6. ↑ https://pennsylvania.hometownlocator.com/pa/schuylkill/ashland.cfm
  7. ↑ https://uncoveringpa.com/pioneer-tunnel-coal-mine-tour-ashland
  8. ↑ Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine & Steam Train: Scenic Train Ride
  9. ↑ https://www.innatturkeyhill.com/blog/2017/08/pas-pioneer-tunnel-coal-mine-and-steam-train-tour.html
  10. ↑ https://museum-of-anthracite-mining.business.site/
  11. ^ Charles J. Adams III: A day away: Mom-ument links Schuylkill town to City of Lights , in: Reading Eagle , May 7, 2009

Web links