Two shafts have been sunk to the coal two hundred and five feet apart.  The main shaft is twenty two feet, six inches by eleven feet,  three inches over all, giving in the clear three compartments, each six feet, six inches by nine feet, seven inches.

The air shaft is eighteen feet, ten inches by eleven feet, three inches over all, with provisions for one compartment seven feet, one inch by nine feet, seven inches in the clear for an upcast air way.  Another compartment six feet, six inches by nine feet, seven inches in the clear for a hoist way for the men, and a third compartment nine feet, seven inches by two feet, three inches, to be used exclusively for pipes.  This compartment will be cut off from all communication with the return air way, in order to avaid any danger from gas. Some gas has been encountered in this coal, and as the coal is one hundred and ninty feet below the surface, it is expected that considerable gas will be found.

The shaft sinking has been carried on by electric light and the mining with safety lamps of the Wolf pattern.  A fixed rule has been laid down that no open lights shall be used in this mine for any purpose.  The coal will be mined by air and a thirty by thirty inch Norwalk compressor and two two hundred and fifty horse power return tubular boilers have been installed on their permanent foundations and used in the shaft sinking.

The ventilation will be taken care of by a thirteen foot, six inch double inlet Capell fan.  There will not likely by any shipment of coal from this plant before the spring of 1904, as the railroad has not yet been extended from the West Penn Railroad at Harmaville, a distance of three miles.
(From the "Report of the Dept. of Mines of Pennsylvania for 1903.")

[The Indianola Mine was never opened in 1903 and lay idle for many years after the Harwick Mine disaster.]

In 1919 the town of Indianola was built as the "Last word in coal producing and miner;'s home development."  The houses featured running water and electric lights, although many houses did not have electricity till much later.  Pre-cut houses were shipped from Michigan to Harmarville by railroad and loaded on one ton horse drawn wagons and driven on a dirt road to Indianola.

Indianola was a coal mining town owned by Republic Steel and Inland Steel, Inland Colliers Company, a subsidiary of Inland Steel, had a 26 year old Lehigh University graduate, Thomas T. G. Fear, as it superintendent of Mines.  It was Mr.Fear who laid out the town with bungalows and double row houses.  He also designed a big boarding house where individual miners coal stay.  Fear had built towns in Tennessee and Alabama before arriving in Indianola about 1916, to reopen the Indianola No. 1 Mine.

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