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| Continental No. 3 Mine & Coke Works
(ca.1900- ? ), Located on a branch line off the Coal Lick Run Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, north of PA Rt SR 3009, about 2 1/2 miles southwest of Uniontown, Continental No. 3, Newcomer, Georges Twp., Fayette Co., PA. [Continental No. 3 Coke Works contained 300 coke ovens ca.1910.] Owners: (ca.1900-1903), Continental Coke Company, (ca.1903- ? ), H.C. Frick Coke Company, Scottdale, PA |
| DESCRIPTION: This description was written ca.1990 for the Industrial Heritage Survey and some of the details may have changed since then. Approximately forty-five coal company houses are still extant in the coal company patch town of Continental No. 3, currently called Newcomer. Laid out along three parallel and two intersecting streets, the patch is about one mile west of Continental No. 2. With the exception of two houses most likely built for the coal company superintendents, which are three-bay, two-story clapboard covered, single-family dwellings with gable roofs and intersecting roof pediments. On the west end of the town, all extant company housing in Continental No. 3 is the standard two-family type. Continental No. 3's wood-frame semi-detached houses are gable-ended, have the typical four-bay second floor plan, with two interior brick chimneys, and full front shed-roof porches. The Union Supply Company Store in Continental No. 3 remains as well, facing PA Rt SR 3009 and located in about the middle of the town. Built ca.1901, the building is in good condition and is essentially a mirror image of the company store that stood in Continental No. 2. The structure is two stories high and the exterior material is clapboard. Rectangular in plan, it has a gable roof, an offset single-bay first floor entrance and a seven-bay second story on its main facade; all windows are double-hung wood sash. A large, one-story, coursed-ashlar mine building, possibly the stable building, stands south of PA Rt SR 3009 about 100 yards west of the company store. (Heald,1990:66) |
| HISTORY: Continental No. 3 Mine & Coke Works and the town of Continental No. 3 was built by the Continental Coke Company ca.1900. To house the miners and coke workers that worked at the Continental No. 3 Mine & Coke Works, typical coal company housing was built. The mine facility was placed into operation ca.l900. In ca.1901 the Continental Coke Company had sixty-two double houses built. In ca.1903, the H.C. Frick Coke Company acquired the Continental No. 3 Mine & Coke Works through a merger of several coal companies. In ca.1903 the Continental No. 3 Mine and Coke Works employed 297 men and boys, with 65 of the men employed at the coke works. Continental No. 3 Mine had 974 acres of assigned coal, the mine was a slope-entry mine, with a 250 feet long slope entry to the coal seam.
From the Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania,
1905:
From the Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania,
1917: In 1918 the H.C. Frick Coke Company added twenty dwellings to the town, and by 1928 coal production was 1,000 tons per day. The Continental No. 3 Coke Works had two batteries of bank type bee-hive coke ovens and two batteries of block type beehive coke ovens. At full production, Continental No. 3 Coke Works had 300 coke ovens available. |
| (History and description of Continental No. 3, adapted with additional data from "Fayette County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1990," 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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| Continental No. 3 Patch House No. 66,
ca.1912 1st. Prize Garden, ca.1912, the Garden at House No. 66, Continental No. 3 Patch (Newcomer), of the H.C. Frick Coke Company's Continental No. 3 Mine. (Photo courtesy of the USX Resource Managment Division, Uniontown, PA, & John K. Gates' book, "The Beehive Coke Years.") |
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| Continental No. 3 Patch,
ca.1912 The coal companies had annual contests for the best lawn and gardens in each of their coal patch towns, with prizes awarded the winners. This house and garden was in Continental No. 3 patch, on July 31, 1912, of the H.C. Frick Coke Company. First Prize was usually a twenty dollar gold piece, second prize, a ten dollar gold piece, and thrid prize, a five dollar piece. (Photo courtesy of the USX Resource Managment Division, Uniontown, PA, & John K. Gates' book, "The Beehive Coke Years.") |
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| Union Supply Company Store at Continental
No. 3, ca.1990. (Photo by Tom Paull, courtesy of the HABS/HAER, Historic American Building Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) |
| "Coal Miners
Memorial, Continental No. 3 Mine & Coke Works, Continental No. 3, Newcomer, Georges Twp., Fayette County, Pennsylvania" |
| Support the Coal & Coke Heritage
Center, a non-profit research center and museum. Want to know more about the women who lived in the coal patch towns? You need this book. One of the few studies done on the women of the coal & coke era. Common lives of Uncommon Strength: The Women of the Coal & Coke Era of Southwestern Pennsylvania 1880-1970 Complied, written and edited by: Evelyn A. Hovanec, PhD Voices of the women tell unique stores of the coal and coke era, plus vintage photographs, documents, maps, and newspaper articles. Hardcover $35.00 Soft cover $25.00 Add $5.00 shipping / handling. Send Check or money order to: Coal & Coke Heritage Center, Penn State University Fayette Campus P.O. Box 519, Uniontown, PA 15401 |
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