Note: ca. 1999- 2000 The mine buildings and slate dump of the McCullough Mine are being reclaimed, the site of the mine buildings and slate dump has been leveled and a shopping center and parking lot has been constructed on the site of the old mine.  Work is continuing on this new construction in ca.2001.

The extant coal company structures, ca.1994, at coal company patch town of McCullough include the coal company store, school, and about seventy miners' houses.   The store is a three-and-a-half-story wood-frame building with a full basement.  The basement wall and foundation are coursed rubble stone and the original clapboard siding has been replaced with new aluminum siding.  The building is privately owned and has been completely remodeled.  

The remaining school building is a one-story stretcher-bond red-brick building with a full basement.  It contains a flat roof, a brick chimney, and a recessed portico with emgraved stone proclaiming "TP, McCullough School."  The building has been remodled with a new addition and new windows.  

The residential buildings include single-family and double houses.  The single-family houses are one-story and two-story wood-frame buildings with hipped roofs.  The double houses are two-story wood-frame buildings with hipped roofs, brick chimneys, and hollow clay-tile foundations.  Some have a modified L-plan.

Mr. Carpenter, the oldest member of the board of directors of Westmoreland Coal Company at the time, removed the first shovelful of earth from the mine shaft opening.  The coal plant had a modern tipple, equipped with Marcus screens for the purpose of cleaning and classifying the output of the mine into various sizes of coal to meet the demand of the trade.

The shaft operation at McCullough Mine utilized a vertical system of elevators, or "cages", as they were termed in the industry. As one cage descended to the mine bottom carrying an empty car, the other cage with its loaded pit wagon was raised to the tipple level by a steel cable driven and operated from the engine house adjacent to the tipple.  Cylindrical steel drums were used for the process of winding and unwinding the steel hoisting cable.

The McCullough Mine shaft operation differed from that at Penn Manor No. 1 Mine, only in respect to the refinement brought by technological progress.  The mine shaft at McCullough was a three compartment opening eighteen feet wide and thirty feet long.  Two compartment were used for hoisting coal, the other for venterlating the mine.  The fan house was located immediatiately adjacent to the shaft.  The McCullough Mine shaft itself was concrete lined.  McCullough Mine employed a cylindrical drum of seven and nine foot diameters.  The drum rotated at 61 revolutions per minute and gave a maximum cable speed of 1,700 feet per minute for hoisting coal to the tipple.  In contrast to Penn Manor No. 1 Mine's use of steam power, McCullough Mine utilized electric power.  The control operation was direct, using 220 volts.  The brake for control of the drum was operated by compressed air.  The power used to drive the hoisting machinery at McCullough was generated at the Biddle Mine at Westmoreland City, four miles away.  The power was stepped up in transmission from the Biddle Mine and then down again at the McCullough Mine.  An effective signal system covering the tipple, mine bottom, and the engine house governed the entire operation.

The tipple built at McCullough when the mine opened there in 1918 represented the acme in modern tipple construction.

The coal tipple was the place where the pit wagons were "tipped" or dumped.  The dumped coal then passed down over a set of screens that regulated the various sizes of coal for themarket.  Before being loaded into the railroad cars beneath the tipple, the coal was weighed by a company employee called the "weighboss" or "weighmaster".  Generally, in local mines the coal was weighed after it was screened and had passed into a steel bucket.  Through manual operation the bucket was then tipped and the coal emptied into the railroad car beneath. Later, at McCullough Mine the coal was weighted before it passed over a continuously moving shaker screen that deposited the various sizes of coal into the proper railroad hopper car below.  During the final two decades of operation at McCullough Mine the newly unionized miners employed their own checkweighman to check the work of the coal company weighboss as the pit car loads were being weighed.  The pay of the union checkweighman was derived from the miners pay through a "Check-off" levy collected by the coal company.

When McCullough Mine opened in February, 1918, a facility for stabling animals, the mine mules, was built within the mine.  Only in time of mine idleness due to slack work or extended holiday periods were the animals brought to the surface via the slope entry to graze on the company farm pasturage adjoining the mine.  In ca.1924 the Westmoreland Coal Company employed 24 mules to haul the coal from the working faces and rooms to the hoisting shaft of the McCullough Mine.

By ca.1925 the McCullough Mine employed 294 persons. That year its miners extracted 471,300 tons of coal. The daily capacity in 1925 was 2,000 tons of coal.  The McCullough Mine had exhausted 48 acres of its coal reserve by ca.1915, and had 1845 acres of coal reserve left.

By 1940 the mine employed 400 workers, used two electric-battery locomotives, sixteen trolley locomotives running on a 40" track gauge, mechanical coal loaders, and eleven electric coal cutting machines, to mine over 410,000 tons of coal. The mine's preparation equipment included mechanical screens, picking tables, and loading booms. The mine reached its maximun production in 1942, when it produced more than 600,000 tons of coal, employing 424 miners, working 303 days. During its thirty-eight years of operation nineteen miners were killed in various mining accidents. In 1952 the Westmoreland Coal Company was pumping over thirty-one tons of water for each ton of coal produced; because of this situation the company operated the mine only three more years, abandoning it in 1955.

(History and description of the McCullough Mine, 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. and "History of Penn Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania"  by John W. Mochnick, 1982, Greensburg, PA: South Greensburg Printing Co. )

The photo of Louis was taken when he left work at the McCullough Mine at age 62.  Mr. Labor retired at the age of 65 and died two days later from a stroke.
(Photo courtesy of Annamae Labor. Recieved from Charles Butcher.)

A past resident of McCullough, Sylvia Duncan gives us this information on McCullough.

Of course when I was a kid in McCullough you could sit on your front porch and name every house in town. In fact to get the list of miners together I mentally went up and down the streets. Hope this helps. Let me know if I can do anything else. My mother has told me that during the depression and when things were so bad and food was scarce that the company gave a field to use to grow crops for food. My grandfather, P.A. Raymaley, had been a farmer and taught many of the townspeople how to grow vegetables for food. Regards.
Sylvia Duncan.

My Dad, Loran Kepple worked at the Mc Cullough mine for 38 years, he worked up to the time the mine shut-down taking slag to the slate dump. I also had a paternal Grandfather and Uncles who worked at the McCullough mine.

I was born in one of the McCullough bunglow houses, attended and graduated from Penn Township High School in 1959.

As a kid I can still see the horses being brought up from the mine shaft to be released in the pasture on the mine property. I remember a beautiful, huge, white horse and several sleek black ones that us kids would stand by the fence to watch as they grazed in the pasture.

I also remember as a kid, that no matter where we were playing, we had better be home when that 2 o'clock whistle blew or you were in deep trouble when your Dad arrived home from the mine.

While reading the story of Mc Cullough, there was a pond behind the company store, which was operated by Mr. & Mrs. Mike DeSavage, I would always get in trouble because I loved the pond that was located down over the hill in back of the company store. I got it with my Dad's pit-belt one day. No matter what you did as a kid, the neighbors always saw you if you were doing something you shouldn't.

I like to refer McCullough as a community not as a town.

One last note: My Grandfather, Andrew Sobula was killed in the Pleasant Valley Mine.

Fond Memories of McCullough, Penna.
Shirley Kepple Holub

There were two school buildings in McCullough, one elementary school, grades 1 to 4 and the high school grades 7-12. Grade 5 was in Boquet and grade 6 was in Claridge.

Bert Kepple-was my Dad's father and my grandfather.

Clarence Kepple was the son of Bert, brother of my Dad (Loran) and was my Uncle.

There was another younger Brother, Ralph Kepple, but I don't think he worked at the mine. After the mine closed all three brothers worked for the McCullough school. Clarence and Ralph were school bus drivers and my Dad was a janitor.

Loran of coarse, was my Dad. He was married to Nellie Sobula, whose father was killed in the Pleasant Valley mine. His death was due to a cave-in. I remember Mother telling us, when we were kids, that her Mother was standing by the mine shaft along with other wives watching as they were bringing the miners up and my Grandfather was one of the miners that didn't make it.

The only proof of the year Mr. Sobula died would be on an old wooden tombstone in Claridge cemetary. I visited the gravesite as a kid and remember it was wooden. I also know it was the early 1900's but can't remember the exact date.

I would like to expand on the structures in McCullough. In the story, it only mentions one school, there were two schools. One elementary, grades 1 to 4 and the high school grades 7-12. Grade 5 was in Boquet and grade 6 was in Claridge.

On the homes in McCullough, there were 80 some homes because my home was #82.

There were only 4 bungalow style homes in a row, which as I mentioned in my message, I was born in one of them as were my 2 other sisters. The rest of the homes were 2-story, and a single story and a half. All were constructed of wood, the foundation being of stone-looking block. The walls were real plaster on lath boards, not drywall like today. Dad use to fuss at us for driving nails in the walls.

Now the best part is yet to come, those outhouses were not the best to visit in the wintertime. And everyone had to take the slop-jars out there to empty them from the night.

It wasn't until the company sold the homes to the residents did aluminum siding appear and residents added bathrooms to their homes. The residents also dug-out the dirt from the cellars, some being made into a garage. I remember the big coal trucks dumping the coal and watching them shovel it in through the small window of the foundation to the cellar coal bin for the winter. And all that black dust, Mother disliked that!

The only water source we had were pumps with handles in the yards. Then one year, the water company installed pipes in the roads so we could have better water. It was amazing to see water coming out of a faucet.

Gosh we use to rake up the leaves in the fall, put them in a pile along the road in front of the house to roast weenies and potatoes on a stick we made from a tree. The blacker the peels were on those potatoes and skin on the weenies the better they tasted. Mother use to give it to us for taking her long-handeled fork to dig out the potatoes that fell of the stick into the fire. Can you imagine kids doing that today, why the fire marshal would be giving you a citation faster than you could blink an eye.

Back to McCullough. The company store that was run by Mike DeSavage, his wife's name was Agnes. Found this information in my yearbook. It's hard to think sometime when you haven't lived there since 67. But looking through old books and pictures seems to bring back a lot of memories. Just like when I was reviewing every miners name on the website. Gosh I know 3/4 or more of them.

I was just amazed to see the name McCullough and everyone's name including my Dad, his Dad and Brother in the listing. What a great tribute to those men. I'm sure if they were alive today, they would be very proud to know the dedication you created for them.

Take care,

Shirley Holub

P.S. One more thing that I don't think I saw in the story of the mine, there was another building called the bathhouse, that I remember very well. At least the mine had a facility for the miners to clean-up after working in the coal dust all day before going home.

Joanne Connor McIlhattan

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