Southeast Kansas Coal Mining

Coal mining in southeast Kansas developed through three phases in the Cherokee-Crawford coal field, where the coal fields of Cherokee and Crawford Counties covered more than 300 square miles and early settlers in the 1800's found coal seams outcropping at the surface. In the pioneer mining phase, shallow coal was gathered by hand and removed with picks and shovels, mule-drawn wagons, and scrapers through crude strip mining and ravine mining, in which miners dug "gopher holes" at right angles to outcroppings to reach the coal bed. This gave way to underground shaft mining, with the first shaft in Cherokee County sunk in 1894 outside present-day Scammon and the first in Crawford County sunk three years later on the town-site of Pittsburg. Shaft mining, the distinctive method from the late 1870's until the early 1930's, allowed deeper extraction and supported more than 290 important or fairly important mines, nearly all shaft mines, in the Weir-Pittsburg coal field; coal was hoisted by a tipple, screened by size, and loaded into railroad cars. Mechanized mining later became preferred because the Weir-Pittsburg coal vein lay close to the surface, and large electric draglines and shovels stripped long sections of land by removing overburden, creating huge piles and later filling exhausted strips with spoil from new ones. Many deep pits left by strip mining in Cherokee and Crawford counties are now filled with water and used for recreation such as boating and fishing. The Weir-Pittsburg coal seam, shown in an 1898 University of Kansas Geological Survey diagram, was about 3-4 feet thick and larger than most nearby veins, helping make coal mining especially successful in Cherokee and Crawford counties.

Pittsburg, Kansas · United States