The bath house is a common-bond red-brick building painted white.  The one-story structure has a gable roof of asphalt, arched windows with triple brick voussoirs and stone sills, and brick corbelling and dentils above the windows. The building retains some of its original six-over-six double-hung sash windows; however, the north wall has been removed and replaced with concrete block and a large garage door.

The mule barn is also a common-bond red-brick building resting on a concrete foundation.  A new roof has replaced the original gable roof.  The sand house is in ruins and consists of brick and concrete walls.

Another brick building that may have served as a repair shop is located at the end of 3rd. Street.  This stretcher-bond red-brick building probably dates from the 1920's or 1930's.  This tall one-story building has a gable roof, arched windows with brick voussoirs and concrete sills;  it rests on a coursed rubble stone foundation.  The building was remodeled for resident use.  These altered brick mining buildings are now privately owned and all of the mine machinery has been removed.  The tipple that once stood south of the engine house has since collapsed.

In 1903 the Westmoreland Coal Company sank a 350 foot mine shaft at Rillton, a village named for Mrs. Rilla Fritchman Gaunt, whose husband Charles Gaunt owned a farm west of the mine site in Sewickley Township.  Westmoreland Coal Company named the mine the Criterion Mine, because the company used samples of coal from this mine to demonstrate to new propective customers the quality of its product.  The Criterion Mine opened on December 17, 1904 and included a steel head frame (Tipple), 68 ft. tall, a brick power house and boiler house, measuring 74 ft. x 44 ft. and of brick construction, a second boiler house measuring 72 ft. x 20 ft., also of brick construction.  The Criterion Mine shaft was 320 feet deep.  Three Rand Imperial air compressors with a total of 400 horsepower, and a hoisting engine house with a Vulcan link reversible engine.

The electricity for the Criterion Mine and the company housing blocks was made at the Adams Mine in Hahntown, and transmitted to Rillton, and then on to Lowber.

The Charles E. Parr store, the company store, was built in 1905 by the J. Greer Company. It was called the Parr Store, because Mt. Parr owned 1/3 interest in the Greer Company.

In 1910 six miner were killed in mining accidents during the year, an unusually high number of fatalities at a single mine.  Most of these fatalities involved cave-ins in various sections of the mine.  Despite these deaths, no legal action was taken against the company, which was usually the case then.

Condition of Criterion Mine of the Westmoreland Coal Company during the state inspection of the mine in 1914: Criterion Mine - Ventilation and drainage very good.

In 1919 the Criterion Mine produced 397,909 tons of coal, the mine was in operation 294 days, and employed 307 men, there were three non-fatal accidents in 1919.

By 1925 the Westmoreland Coal Company employed 295 men at the Criterion Mine.  They produced nearly 362,000 tons of coal that year.

In August, 1930 the Criterion Mine was renamed the Riley Mine, in honor of Louis A. Riley, a director of the Westmoreland Coal Company.  The work force in 1930 dropped to 125 men, with a daily production of 500 tons.

The Riley Mine (Criterion Mine)  (Rillton Mine) was closed on June 30, 1938 and abandoned in 1939.  The Criterion Mine (Riley Mine) produced 12,176,670 tons of coal during its time.

Like other coal mining patches, Rillton had to depend on drilled wells and cisterns to catch rain water for their water supply.  The Westmoreland Coal Company had a dam in the vicinity of Indian Lake, for use at the mine.  Much money was spent by the people digging cisterns, lining them with brick, making a filter across the middle with brick and filling this middle partition with charcoal and sand so as to filter the water from one side of the cistern to the other.  There being no inside bathrooms and few electric washers, the demand for water was low.  In ca.1940 Rillton, with the permission of the township supervisors, contracted with the  North Huntingdon Water Authority to supply them with water.  Lines were laid from Chambers Station.  Later this authority was taken over by the Westmoreland County Municipal Authority.

(History and description of the Criterion Mine, 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. &  John J. Wilson's "History of Sewickley Township," ca.1962)

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