Export No. 2 Mine
(New Side Mine) (ca.1904-1952),
Located on the south side of the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Export, Franklin Twp. (Presentday Municipality of Murrysville), Westmoreland Co., PA
Owners: (ca.1904-1952), Westmoreland Coal Company, Irwin, PA

North of the mine stands about twenty company-built houses.  Divided by a small gulley, these houses line four streets.  One-story single-family houses were built on the east side of the gulley and two-story double houses were built on the west side. The single-family houses are wood-framed buildings, having hipped roofs, double brick chimneys, and hollow clay-tile foundations.The double houses are also wood-frame buildings and have gable roofs, brick chimneys, and concrete-block foundations.

Westmoreland Coal Company, Export Mine Tipple (Old Side Mine), ca.1890. This was the first coal tipple constructed at the Export Mine. Note, the coal being loaded into wooden railroad hooper cars on the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the line of wooden box cars used for hauling supplies for the mine and building material for the company town being built.  The mule drivers and their mules are lined up on the trestle on the near side of the tipple.  The stake and rider fence on the Ament Farm in the foreground.
(Photo courtesy of The Karl Koch Coal Mining Archives of the Westmoreland County Historical Society, Greensburg, PA)

Westmoreland Coal Company, Export Mine tipple, with the town of Export in the background, and the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the foreground.
(Photo courtesy of The Karl Koch Coal Mining Archives of the Westmoreland County Historical Society, Greensburg, PA)

THE COMPANY STORE:
The company store is located at the corner of Washington and Lincoln Avenues.  It is a two-and-a-half-story building with red vinyl siding over original clapboard siding, a multiple gable roof, and an ashlar stone foundation.  It measures 60ft. x 40ft. and features double brick chimneys, and six-over-six-light double-hung sash windows.  The building's storefront once faced Lincoln Avenue, but has been boarded over.  The new entrance to the building is on Washington Avenue;  the interior was remodeled for a retailer named Master Automobile Supplies, ca.1994.

Above is "Greer's Corner," Westmoreland Street: (from the left) the Westmoreland Coal Company Store, Millberg boarding house, First National Bank (presentday borough building), and the Pauletich house (behind the Bank).  The later, a four-story house, having on its first floor level a tunnel into the rear hillside, extending about a thousand feet under the road into another county bank drift mine.
(Photo courtesy of Helen Smith's book "Export, A Patch of Tapestry out of Coal Country America.")

Westmoreland Coal Company Export Company Store was constructed ca.1891, by Osmyn Grable, during a period of reform of mine company stores in the coal fields.  J.C. Greer, was the first of the merchants to whom Westmoreland Coal Company leased their company store properties.

J.C. Greer also managed the company stores in other Westmoreland Coal Company towns, Claridge, Hutchinson, Rillton, McCullough, Larimer, and Lowber.  After Greer died ca.1937, Tom Baughman and Walt Jordan took over the business.

A railroad car used to be spotted beside the Company Store in Export, and from it one-hundred-pound sacks of grain, flour and other large items were unloaded by dolly, and stored in an adjacent storage structure.  Years ago a serious fire in Export threatened the explosives stored in the storage structure, they had to be removed to another location during the middle of the night, and later brought back to the storage shed.

The Company Store was the hub of town, where miners and townsfolk learned the local gossip and happenings. It was said, that if a family wanted a chicken for dinner, they could buy it at the company store, as well as the pot to cook it in, the stove to cook on, dishes and utensils for eating it, and the soap for washing the dishes.

It was said That "More coal was loaded on the company store porch than in the mines,"  during the brag sessions of the miners.

Westmoreland Coal Company, Export Mine Tipple, in its later years, with the town of Export in the background.  Note, the wooden mine props stacked in the left foreground.
(Photo courtesy of The Karl Koch Coal Mining Archives of the Westmoreland County Historical Society, Greensburg, PA)

By ca.1904 there were two drift-entry mines operating at Export, Export No. 1 Mine (Old Side Mine) and Export No. 2 Mine (New Side Mine), and they constituted the largest single mining operation in Westmoreland County at the time.  The mines together employed 647 men and boys in ca.1904.  Miners at Export extracted nearly 734,000 tons of coal that year, topping the country's second largest mine, H.C. Frick Coke Company's Standard Shaft Mine, near Mt. Pleasant, PA, which produced about 485,000 tons of coal.

In ca.1910 the Westmoreland Coal Company employed 608 men and boys at the Export Mines, many of whom were becoming increasingly restive over the coal company's refusal to recognize the United Mine Workers of America as their union.  Workers at Export and other mines in northern Westmoreland County began a long and arduous coal strike in the spring of 1910.  The Westmoreland Coal Company evicted many of the families from their houses and brought in the dreaded "Coal and Iron Police", a private police force, to maintain control of company property and to safeguard the replacement workers "scabs," that the coal company imported from the south to work in the mines during the miners strike.  More than a year later the strike ended in defeat for the weary coal miners.

In 1919 the Export No. 1 & No. 2 Mines produced 651,163 tons of coal, the mines worked 274 days and employed 501 men, the mines had 9 non-fatal accidents.

In 1922 the coal miners at Export Mines participated in another larger coal strike that included most of the coal operators in the bituminous coal region.  Again the Westmoreland Coal Company prevailed and broke the strike, using it's strong armed tactics and it's "Coal & Iron Police" to bully the miners and a importing a work force of "Scabs."  Following this strike, production at the Export Mines returned to its pre-World War I levels.

The 1920's witnessed something of a boom in the town of Export, with its population expanding to about 2,500 persons. The Great Depression in the 1930's had a negative impact on the Westmoreland Coal Company and other bituminous coal producers.  The town began to lose some of its residents, though the Export Mines remained opened throughout much of the decade.

The Westmoreland Coal Company operated the Export Mines through the 1940's and into the early 1950's. It finally closed the Export Mines in 1952 and abandoned the plant.

(History and description of the Export Mines, 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.)

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