Eckley Miners’ Village, Jim Thorpe, Pa., Delaware Watershed Tour 2017, 4th stop
Eckley feels remote even in the 21st century, but the village was planted where there was coal, which is northeast of Hazelton and near the small town of Freeland. It’s not far from Jim Thorpe, another historical town that has connections to coal mining and the Molly Maguires, a fascinating secret organization in the coal mining towns of northeast Pennsylvania. More here.
Eckley was a company town, controlled by whatever company owned the mines. There were different companies and the mines were sometimes money-makers for the owners and sometimes much less profitable. Operation of the mines ceased in the 1950s and 60s.
When I think of a miners’ village, I think of the grime of the coal dust covering everything — including all the residents, the houses and the landscape, not just the miners.
Eckley Miners’ Village is surprisingly tidy. Granted, it’s been a while since there were mining operations nearby but the village is essentially one long street, with more well-off homes on one end and less well-off at the other end. This isn’t a replica, but an actual village from the 19th century.
There’s a giant coal breaker looming in the back of the houses, but it turns out that it’s “only pretend,” built for the filming of The Molly Maguires in the 1970s starring Sean Connery.
And why is a coal mining village an important stop on this tour of the watershed? Well, according to the USGS:
Drainage from thousands of abandoned coal mines has contaminated more than 3,000 miles of streams and associated ground waters in Pennsylvania and is the most extensive water-pollution problem affecting the four major river basins in Pennsylvania.
And the Delaware is one of those basins.
I started to think about coal mining and its relationship to fracking. Jobs are important but we need to balance that with a likelihood of problems associated with fracking for decades in the future.
If you want to visit Eckley, make sure you check times for the short movie that introduces the tour. The tour follows. www.eckleyminersvillage.com.
