Earth Conservancy, Industrial Archives & Library Announce Landmark Agreement To Preserve, Provide Access To Key Piece Of America’s Anthracite Coal History - Glen Alden Coal's Records

In a significant joint effort to conserve and preserve the historic records of the former Glen Alden Corporation for research purposes, on March 13 the Earth Conservancy of Ashley, Pennsylvania, and the Industrial Archives & Library of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, announced they had reached an Agreement between the two organizations in which IAL will assume ownership of the coal companies’ records for the purpose of preparing them and making them accessible for research by historians, scholars and the public.

The Glen Alden Coal Company, once the largest anthracite coal producer and employer in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, was one of the key players in Northeast Pennsylvania’s storied anthracite coal industry, long the mainstay of the region’s economy. 

In 1930 at its peak, Glen Alden operated 26 collieries, employed 34,000, and produced 13 million tons of coal. 

Later, Glen Alden began dyeing its coal an iconic blue color, and in 1966 sold off its mining wing as the Blue Coal Corporation. 

Totaling over 20,000 linear feet, the records housed at Earth Conservancy go back over a century and represent virtually an intact history of Glen Alden, Blue Coal, and their predecessors and subsidiaries.

Blue Coal was forced into bankruptcy in 1976, leaving the company’s records to languish in a lengthy bankruptcy proceeding. 

Meanwhile in 1992, Earth Conservancy was founded to put the former anthracite land back into productive use. 

Then, in 1994, then-U.S. Congressman Paul Kanjorski secured a $20 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, $14 million of which was to purchase all the corporation’s property, including its offices in Ashley and the company records, greatly facilitating the work of Earth Conservancy and serving as an important resource for EC as it pursued its mission. 

However, as the Conservancy began to contemplate and plan for the ultimate conclusion of its work, it began to search for another suitable organization that could be the final custodian of the records.

“For many years, we at Earth Conservancy were concerned with finding an organization interested in the history of these great coal companies and capable of handling this immense task of organizing and properly storing a project of this magnitude”, said Terry Ostrowski, President & CEO of EC. “Fortunately, several years ago, the IAL was brought to our attention and our joint efforts since then have been dedicated to setting the stage for today’s action.”

“We share a deep concern with EC and others that the history of industrial America was being lost with the rapidly changing industrial landscape, and it is our mission to collect and preserve for this and future generations those historical records of the great companies which had played a vital role in the growth of America”, stated Steve Donches, President & CEO of the Industrial Archives & Library.

 “Our staff has been developing and implementing a work plan that will assure the safekeeping of this enormous treasure of the anthracite industry,” he added.

“The Earth Conservancy Collection is a truly unique, one-of-a-kind collection because it is so complete,” said Nick Zmijewski, Archivist at IAL.

“In some respects, it’s as if the employees walked out at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday and just never came back. So many records that otherwise would have been purged have survived through to today, allowing us to put together a full picture of the operations, from sales to mining to legal to personnel to real estate to engineering,” he said. 

“It will take years, if not decades, to fully process this collection and make it fully accessible for research,” said Zmijewski. “But the collection will greatly improve our understanding of mining in the Northern Field and be a showpiece of not only one company but also an entire industry. I hope the public finds it as exciting as we do, and I look forward to IAL providing access to these materials on a regular basis.”

Reflecting on the significance of the agreement, Steve Donches stated, “In essence, by making this amazing collection open for public access, we are restoring access to the community’s history—and that’s exciting.”

Visit the Earth Conservancy and the Industrial Archives & Library website for more information.

Resource Link:

-- Glen Alden Coal Pumping Leads To Disaster Killing 300,000 Fish Along 50 Miles Of The Susquehanna River In 1961  [Prompting an amendment to state Clean Streams Law requiring treatment of mine water before discharge and contributed to the adoption of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment, both by Franklin Kury]

[Posted: March 13, 2024]  PA Environment Digest