Settled in the early 1800s, Punxsutawney remained a quiet farming and lumbering community until 1883, when the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company opened coal mines just north of town and launched an industry that transformed the region. By 1900, thousands of men and boys labored in mines around Punxsutawney, excavating coal from deposits that included one unbroken stretch from Reynoldsville to Punxsutawney and extracting an average of 25,000 tons per day from each mine. Most of this coal was shipped away to power steam-driven engines in factories, locomotives, and ships, while the rest was processed locally into coke for iron furnaces. As the commercial center of the mining region, Punxsutawney drew new industries such as foundries, a silk mill, brick factories, and glass plants, and in the early 1900s more than 70 trains a day carried goods and passengers to and from the town. By 1920, declining yields and changing economics ended the reign of deep-pit mining, causing some mining towns such as Eleanora to disappear entirely, while others such as Walston and Adrian, also called Delancey, survived in smaller form. In 1945, advances in earth-moving equipment brought strip-mining to Jefferson County, and coal production peaked in 1947 at 318 million tons annually. Regional strip mines, along with a handful of deep mines, still produce coal, most of it burned in electric power plants. The Punxsutawney region's bituminous coal burned cooler and smokier than anthracite, so coking converted it into a hotter, cleaner fuel by burning crushed coal in beehive-shaped ovens with little air, releasing noxious gas and coal tar and leaving pure carbon coke. Walston contained the world's longest string of coke ovens, stretching 1.25 miles, and smoke from its 700 ovens blackened the air and killed vegetation throughout the valley. In 1900, the region's coke ovens produced 100 train cars of coke each day.