The Westmoreland Coal Company opened the Export Mine east of Murrysville in 1892 on land in the upper Turtle Creek region of Franklin Township, Westmoreland County that had largely been cultivated in the late nineteenth century, including property purchased from the Ament family. By 1900 the mine employed 494 men and boys and produced more than 513,000 tons of coal, much of it shipped by the Pennsylvania Railroad. By 1904 Export No. 1 Mine and Export No. 2 Mine together formed the largest single mining operation in Westmoreland County, employing 647 men and boys and producing nearly 734,000 tons of coal, more than the H.C. Frick Coke Company's Standard Shaft Mine near Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. In 1910 many workers at the Export Mines grew increasingly restive when the company refused to recognize the United Mine Workers of America, and miners at Export and other northern Westmoreland County mines began a long strike that ended in defeat more than a year later after Export Borough was incorporated in 1911. Export boomed in the 1920s to about 2,500 people, then the Great Depression hurt the coal industry in the 1930s and the town began to lose residents, though the mines stayed open through much of that decade. The Westmoreland Coal Company continued operating the Export Mines through the 1940s and into the early 1950s before closing them in 1952 and abandoning the plant. Mining there depended heavily on immigrant labor from across Europe and was dangerous work before mechanization, with men and boys laboring in narrow seams, handling crude tools and explosives, driving horses or mules, regulating mine ventilation, and sorting coal, while accidents and deaths were a recurring part of life at the Export mines.