A coalhole, or "independent mine". When large scale coal operation became inefficient, sometimes the coal company shut down. There were many places in the Coal Region where coal outcropped to the surface. Sometimes a group of unemployed but expertly experienced miners took over working these on a small scale, building their own lifting structures and employing their own pick, shovel and dynamite blasting labor. This picture (above) and the slope at right may be Gene Pinter's independent mine between McAdoo, PA and Tresckow.

It is obvious that this was backbreaking and brutally dangerous work for a small group of men without heavy, mechanized excavation equipment and fulltime safety inspectors.

Often these independent mines were worked in defiance of the coal company, especially as such companies were haphazardly operated and prone to strikes, intermittent shutdowns and equipment failures. This was especially true during the Depression and strikes of the 1930s .Then the independent (sometimes called bootleg) coalholes were the only source of livelihood for the unemployed men.

The companies periodically had their Coal and Iron Cops dynamite the holes ... and in equal return had their own operations and machinery dynamited by the unemployed experts. Usually these affairs were settled by the independents paying a royalty to the major operators after varying periods of hostility. Sometimes they were never settled.