Coketon Mine & Coke Works (ca.1877- ? ),
Located just below the mouth of McGee Run on the Conemaugh River, Derry Twp., Westmoreland Co., PA
Owners:
(ca.1877-  ?  ) Coketon Coal & Coke Company

Isabella Furnace Mine & Coke Works
(Cokeville Mine & Coke Works)
(Hotham Mine) (ca.1872-1903),
Located across the Conemaugh River from Blairsville, below the mouth of McGee Run, on a spur of the Indiana Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Cokeville, Derry Twp., Westmoreland Co., PA
[The Mine was first called Hotham Mine and later Isabella Furnace Mine.]
Owners: (ca.1872-1900), Isabella Furnace Company, Pittsburgh, PA
             (ca.1900-1901), American Steel Hoop Company, Etna, PA
             (ca.1901-1903), H.C. Frick Coke Company, Scottdale, PA
                                       Company Store: Union Supply Company

At the Isabella Coke Plant each of the bee-hive coke ovens measured 13-1/2ft. in diameter with a height of 7ft, dimensions fairly typical of the region's bee-hive coke ovens.  The coke works produced coke for the company's Isabella Blast Furnace located in the Etna Section of Pittsburgh, PA.  Water for quenching the coke ovens was pumped from the Conemaugh River to the top of the hill above the town, where a large brick lined reservoir, holding 62,000 gallons of water, had been constructed.

Two hundred bee-hive type coke ovens were built at the Isabella Coke Plant. One hundred sixty of these ovens were placed along the side of an adjacent bend in the Conamaugh River and the other 40 were placed on the further hill across McGee Run. The coke track came across the ravine upon wooden trestles located in front of the coke ovens. A  spur track of the Pennsylvania Railroad was run along the hillside to service the Isabella Coke Works.  A wood trestle and a 36 inch gauge, narrrow-gauge railroad was constructed from the Hotham Mine entries, located east of the coke works across McGee Run.  This narrow gauge railroad delivered the coal to the coke works, a distance of about one mile.  The area in which the mines were located was called Miners Hill. The mine cars holding about 30 bushels of coal, pulled by a narrow-gauge steam locomotive called a dinkey, hauled coal from the mines to the coke works.  The coke company built a large coal crusher between Minerstown Hill and McGee Run, which was used to prepare the coal for the coke ovens.

In 1880, the Isabella Furnace Company's mine at Cokeville produced 96,000 tons of coal.   The company town of Cokeville was incorporated in 1887, providing housing for 300 miners, coke workers, and other personnel.  The company built several other structures including a school house and a post office.

"The extensive coke-works belonging to this company are situated near the eastern terminus of the Western Pennsylvania Railroad, in Westmoreland County, just across the Conemaugh River from Blairsville, Indiana Co., at a distance of sixty miles from the blast furnaces.  At this point over six hundred acres of coal have been purchased, and a considerable extent of surface property.  The number of ovens at present built is two hundred, which are of the ordinary 'bee-hive' type, thirteen and one-half feet in dismeter, and seven feet from hearth to crown, built of fire-brick laid in loam.  One hundred and sixty of these are disposed in a line along the side of anb ancient bank of the river, and are bound together by a stone wall three feet thick, laid in mortar, with openings for the working doors, the sides of which are protected by iron-frames.  The upper surface of this wall is on a level with the top of the ovens.  The side of the hill, which has been cut down vertically in order to prepare the foundation-bed for the ovens, forms this back wall, and all the space around and between them is filled with earth.  When the ovens are working the door is closed with a temporary brick wall.

"The yard in front of the ovens falls two feet in its width of forty feet.  Its lower side is sustained by a retaining-wall two and one-half feet thick, in front of which, and eight feet below its upper surface, run 'the broad-gauge coke tracks, two in number, which connect with the main road.

"An immense amount of excavation and embankment was required in constructing the oven-yard and the roadway for the coke tracks.  It was endeavored, as far as possible, so to locate the line that the former should furnish sufficient material for the latter, and so successfully was this accomplished that no barrow-pits were found necessary.

"Owing to the intersection of the side hill by a ravine it became necessary to separate the remaining forty ovens from the others.  They were therefore placed in a line on the farther side.  The coke track being brought across the ravine upon trestle-work,was continued along in front of the ovens, and to some distance beyond them as a 'spur' track.

"On a terrace above the ovens, at nearly the summit of the bank, is a line of trestle-work, between the consecutive bents of which coal-bins are constructed capabale of holding about one hundred and fifty bushels of coal.  The coal is brought from the mines, about a mile distant, in small mine-cars, holding about thirty bushels apiece, hauled by a light locomotive over a narrow-gauge (thirty-six inches) track, which is continued out over the trestle-work.  the cars discharge their loads at the bottom into the bins, which are provided with doors at the side opposite to the centre of the ovens, from which the coal is let into the opening at the top of the ovens as disired by means of iron chutes.  In this way all unnecessary handling of material is avoided.  The narrow-guage railroad is a model of neatness in construction, and on its way to the mines passes over a bridge and trestle-work nearly forty feet from the ground.

"Upon the top of the hill, above the ovens, is a reservoir built of brick, forty-two feet in diameter and six feet deep, capable of holding sixty-twothousand gallons, which is fille with water from the river by a large Cameron pump.  On the bottom land below the ovens a number of blocks of houses and a large store have been erected for the use of the miners and coke-burners, and already quite a respectable village is springing up in the vicinity.

"The coal seam now worked is the Pittsburgh or Connellsville, which is here over six feet thick, quite pure, and exceedingly soft and bituminous in its nature, containing thirty per cent, of colatile matter and sixty per cent of fixed carbon.  Ot is intersected by two distanct planes of cleavage at right angles to each other, technically termed the line of 'butts' and the line of the 'face.'  The bearing of the latter is here N 72 degrees W, or nearly perpendicular to the line of the upheaval of the Allegheny chain.  It has the same bearing at Connellsville, and at Innis' Station, at the mines of the Pennsylvania Gas Coal Company, bore N. 62 degrees W.

"Each oven is charged with one hundred and twenty-five bushels of coal, and yeilds one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty bushels of coke, the operation lasting thirty-six hours, one hundred ovens, or half the number, being discharged and recharged everyday.  The coke produced is very hard and compact, and steel-gray in color, containing from teo to fifteen percent of ash, and very closely resembling the Connellsville coke, which has been proved to contain as equal amount of ash.

"About fifteen thousand bushels of coke can be produced per day.  this is brought to the furnace in cars of plate iron and of wood, holding from six hundred to six hundred and fifty bushels apiece.

"Car-loads of this coke have been sent to Omaha and Salt Lake City for use in smelting-works."
(Alberts,1882:413-414) (From the "History of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania," by George Dallas Albert)

In 1890, the Isabella Mine produced 165,000 tons of coal and the coke works, containing 251 bee-hive coke ovens, produced 99,000 tons of coke.  The company employed 211 miners at Cokeville, 100 of which were miners, and forty-one men worked in the coke yards.   W. C. Grist of Blairsville served as superintendent at the company's Cokeville operations through the 1890's.

March 25, 1898.  John O'Rouke, an employee of Isabella Coke Works at Cokeville, met with a fatal accident on Friday afternoon which resulted in his death Saturday evening at 8 o'clock.  The unfortunate man was assisting in building a trestle between two lines of coke ovens and in some manner lost his balance and fell to the road below, a distance of about 20 feet, landing on his head and shoulders.  He was picked up and carried to a neighboring house and Drs. Klingensmith and Rutledge of Blairsville were summoned.  Mr. O'Rouke was conscious from the time of the accident and seemed to realize the fact that he was fatally injured. The deceased is survived by two sons and a daughter.
(From the Blairsville Newspaper)

August 4, 1898.  While at work driving a Coke Company team at Cokeville yesterday morning, William Kyle fell from the wagon and received a number of severe bruises on the head and body.  Dr. J.I. Harding attended the injured man and he is getting along as well as could be expected.
(From a Blairsville Newspaper)

In the Bureau of mines report for 1900 the following description of the Isabella Mine is given: Isabella Mine.  This mine was in fairly good condition throughout the year.  A sudden cave-in occurred on December 1st, about 1:30 P.M.  An area of about forty acres, principally old workings, was affected.  Small stumps of coal had been left in this part of the mine to support the surface and prevent a cave-in which proved to be insufficient, but no accident to human life or serious injury to property resulted therefrom.  Explosive gas was discovered in this mine during the year.  

Soon after the formation of the United States Steel Corporation in ca.1901, the American Steel Hoop Company property was acquired by the giant steel concern.  The Cokeville Mine & Coke Works came under the control of the H.C. Frick Coke Company in ca.1901, a U.S. Steel Corporation subsidiary.

In ca.1903, in it's last year of operation, the Isabella Furnace Mine was run only twenty-five days.   The mine produced a scant 14,700 tons of coal and the coke works produced 6,900 tons of coke.  The H.C. Frick Coke Company abandoned the Cokeville Mine & Coke Works in 1903 and its 220 employees were forced to find work elsewhere.  Private owners subsequently purchased the coal company houses in Cokeville.

Because it was located on the Conemaugh River flood plain, Cokeville was periodically inundated by flood waters.  The town of Cokeville was especially hard-hit by the 1936 flood.  The remaining houses that survived the 1936 flood were demolished or moved to Cokeville Heights during the late 1940's or early 1950's, in the course of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Conemaugh River flood control project that created the Conemaugh River Lake.  The flood control project was one of several built to protect the down river towns and the City of Pittsburgh from future floods.  

The town of Cokeville became another ghost town, created by the Corps of Engineers.  The only remaining town features are a few of the paved streets, and a few of the old coke ovens on the hillside above the former town. 

(History and description of the Cokeville Mines & Coke Works, with additional data and pictures adapted from "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1994,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

or
Go to Top of Page