Ashland Coal and Coke

Ashland Coal and Coke. . Like so many of the mining companies in the Pocahontas field, Ashland Coal and Coke Company was organized by men from the Pennsylvania anthracite region. Several of the original stockholders were from Ashland, Pennsylvania, and for this reason, the company, mine, settlement, and post office were given its name, Most of Ashland’s leading stockholders and officers retained their interests and residences in Pennsylvania and operated the mines at Ashland as absentees. The leading stockholder and first president of the company, W.J. Richards, remained in Schuylkill County, where he served as President of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company. , Ashland Coal and Coke was incorporated in 1892. A lease was obtained from the Flat Top Land Association on March 18, 1893, and the mine was opened with a wooden gravity-feed tipple to load the coal into hopper cars of the Norfolk and Western Railway. The mine was a simple drift, since the coal seam, Pocahontas No. 3, outcropped along the hillside at five feet, ten inches thick. The mine produced more than 30,000 tons of semi bituminous “smokeless” coal in 1894, its first full year of production. By 1935, total tonnage from the mine hit four million tons , all of it hand loaded. The coal seam played out by the late 1970s and the company ceased operations in 1980. , (sidebar) , Coal companies developed mines in the most practical way to extract the coal. When a coal seam was exposed along a hillside, a simple drift mine was created, this type of mine has a horizontal entry into the coal seam. As the coal was brought out of the mine, each car was weighed and dumped. From this point it was moved, usually by conveyor belt to a processing building (preparation plant), where it was sorted and sized, then transported to the tipple and loaded into railroad cars.