1907 Topographic Map of the Wehrum area of Buffington Twp., Indiana County.  Map is a section of the 15 min. Topographic Map Johnstown Quad, Pennsylvania.
(Map from the 15 min. Johnstown, PA Quad. map, courtesy of the U.S.G.S., Washington, D.C.)

The surviving Wehrum house has been substantially altered.  The two-story weatherboarded frame structure was built on a stone foundation and topped by a side-gable slate roof.  The two bay front had a one-story shed porch supported by chamfered posts with brackets at the center of the front, and a smaller shed porch at the rear.  Windows were double-hung with 4/4 lights.  A simple brick flue pierced the roof ridge at the center.

In the woods north of the house is a small, two-person jail building.  This brick structure has a concrete front-gable roof, small high windows with iron bars, and a replacement single-leaf metal door at the front.  Also in the woods, across the highway, which was once called broadway, in the concrete vault from the old town bank.  Numerous stone foundations and celler holes from many of the other houses are scattered in the woods, and the arrangement of the original streets can still be discerned throughout the wooded area.

On the hill, overlooking the Wehrum town site is the Sts. Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church Cemetery.  The cemetery, which had become overgrown was recently, ca.2004, cleared of brush and trees.

Lackawanna No. 4 Mine, a shaft mine,  was opened in ca.1902, at the site of the new coal company patch town of Wehrum.  Lackawanna No. 3 Mine was opened a short distance east of Wehrum, at the small settlement of Lackawanna No. 3.

Jan. 19, 1903. Ebensburg & Black Lick Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad was extended from Vintondale to Wehrum, Pa., with passenger service.

The Lackawanna No. 3 & No. 4 Mines used steam for haulage, and were ventilated by a Capell fan.  The coal mined at the Lackawanna No. 3 & No. 4 Mines was intended for use in making coke for use at Lackawanna Steel's plant in Buffalo, New York.  The coal proved to be too dirty for use untreated, so the company planned a huge coal washer plant at Wehrum.  The company invested more than a million dollars in the Wehrum operation, and the town quickly boomed, with two mines operating in the town.

No sooner than the two mines began operations than setbacks begun.  A gas explosion in ca.1904 killed four miners in the mines.  In the spring of 1906, the mines were only operating two or three days a week, and the coal washer plant of Lackawanna No. 4 Mine at Wehrum burned in August of 1906.  The decreased activity was associated with a slump in steel making at the Lackawanna Steel plants, the primary user of the coal mined at the Lackawanna No. 3 & No. 4 Mines.

A new coal washer plant, with a daily capacity of 2,000 tons was built at the Lackawanna No. 4 Mine ar Wehrum in 1907, and mining operations continued.

A big year at the Lackawanna No. 3 & No. 4 Mines was 1907, with over 262,000 tons of coal being mined by 364 men and boys.

Mining activity dropped off in ca.1908, with the Lackawanna No. 4 Mine producing only 61,000 tons of coal.  The mine worked only ninety-five days in 1908, and only 153 men and boys were employed.

(History and description of Lackawanna Mines, adapted from "Indiana County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1993,"  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.)

From the Federal Geological Survey Report, by J.W. Paul, 1909.
The explosion occurred about 7:40 A.M. resulting in the deaths of 21 men and the injury of 12 others.  Seven died from burns or injuries and 14 from afterdamp.  The explosion area was limited due to the wet conditions in other sections.  All bodies were recovered by 7:30 P.M.

On the previous night a charge of powder in the bottom coal at the face of an air course blew out.  The following morning the miner put two sticks of dynamite in the same hole and fired them without using any tamping.  The shot ignited the coal dust in the working place. The miner who fired the shot survived the explosion.
(Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. & The U.S. Bureau of Mines Report, Beaver, WV)

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