Coal Mining

Bituminous coal was discovered in what is now Allegany County before the French and Indian War, and although farmers worked small individual diggings before the nineteenth century, coal did not gain much commercial importance until about 1820. In the Frostburg area at Carlos Junction, early mining was done by pick and shovel, with horses and mules pulling hand-loaded trams or wagons from the mines to the railroad for shipment east. Maryland reached a record high of 6,436 miners in 1906, and coal production rose to 5.5 million tons in 1907. Frostburg's Consolidation Coal Company ranked among the nation's largest producers of bituminous coal, and its Frostburg-area mines supplied Maryland steam coal to the Cunard Steamship Line and to the United States Navy, which preferred it for its smokeless qualities. Consolidation coal was shipped worldwide, and in 1898 Frostburg-area mines also provided blacksmithing coal for the Klondike gold fields of the Canadian Yukon.

Frostburg, Maryland · United States