004Beaver Brook Bank- Winter

Mine Scenery / Beaver Brook Bank - Winter

sfp
2/2/2004

The Beaver Brook, PA coalbank* seen from Upper Street in town.View is toward the west. February, 2002. Beaver Brook has the distinction of being one old patchtown with an impressive coalbank right in the middle of it.

*Coalbank is a misnomer, but that's what we called 'em locally. The pile is mainly composed of rock and slate removed from the old-time mines. But there's some coal in it which may someday be reclaimed to fire steam/electric cogeneration plants.

Beaver Brook bank after the big snow of February, 2003. This view looks north along the McAdoo - Hazleton highway, Rte. 309, from near the Audenreid Methodist Church. The almost hidden road into Beaver Brook meets the highway near the utility poles at left center. The house at the foot of the hill used to be Puza's garage and filling station when we kids sailed kites from the peak of the bank.

Mount Shasta in the Cascades? No, it's the Beaver Brook bank seen from Jackson Street at the north end of McAdoo, PA. This coalbank has a uniquely conical symmetry mimicking the volcanoes of the western Pacific ranges. Along with the much larger Jeanesville bank close by, it dominates the landscape here near the southern front of the Spring Mountain plateau.

Seventy five years ago (counting back from 2004) the patchtown of Yorktown would have appeared in the middle distance. Now the place is very rough going, full of half reforested strip mines and piles of unsmoothed overburden (hills of slate and rock removed to create the strip mines).