Shoaf, PA, Fayette County. Last of the Bee Hive Coke ovens to close.

Oh boy, Chip is gonna regret giving me access to his blog as now I can put out some of my earlier stuff.
About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine, Weimer and I broke out the cross bikes and headed on a little winter ride. As we rode, we passed the old Shoaf PA coke works. From what I understand, these were the last operating bee hive coke ovens in the U.S and although still profitable in 1973, they were forced to close because they couldn't comply with the pesky EPA's clean air standards. Its basically over grown now, but the oven are in remarkably good shape.
This is definitely a "return to" location as there was much more to see and we were unequipped (and cold) to explore more that day.
As always, click on the pictures to view in a larger size.




A bank of ovens.

Oven opening
The "bee hive" part


More oven banks

Dr. Weimer

This reminded me of something out of the Planet Of The Apes, not the planet, but the movie.



Tracks that the Larry cars used to ride on.

To view a nice birds eye interactive Bing map of the site, CLICK HERE.

On the path under my house to the river. Stringtown, Carmichaels, Pa. and some abandoned coal mines in the hill.

As I begun and ended Christmas shopping yesterday, and successfully put off wrapping until tomorrow, I had a little bit of time today to walk down the path under my house and snap a few pictures. My road in Stringtown, PA (a suburb of Carmichaels), is a dead end road, but after it ends, a trail begins used mainly by us locals for 4 wheeler and dirt bike access to the river. It ends up on the former railroad that terminated in the Nemacolin mines (see earlier post) and is undeveloped. Some have said that there once was a ferry at the end of this path and the stone house I live in (circa 1840 (?)) was in fact the ferry mans house. These are speculations. The pictures show a series of shallow mines that were used for coal a long while ago. Its hard to see in the picture because of the snow, but there is coal still scattered about the entrance to some of these mines. Of course, these are terribly dangerous today, so I dont plan on entering, in fact, in the one picture of the side of the hill, on the left, you can see where the hill has fallen and sealed up an entrance to one that was accessible just last year. The first few pictures were taken a few months back, before the snow and are just some old rail road features.
Old forgotten rail road marker. Most likely planted during track construction.








Ice stalagmites!



Under the snow lies coal

The author.

The SWPARE Team

The A-Team??No,much cooler.We do have a van,and we're headed your way! As of today...ETW2 will be co-captain of the blog as well as Young Danielle!Look for more posts,more adventures and more wackyness here on the blog! Follow us,book mark us....love US!!!! We're ready for our close-up Mr.De Mille...

Abandoned Nemacolin Mine. Nemacolin, PA. Part 1 of 4.

A video trip down to the abandoned Nemacolin mine in Nemacolin, Greene County, PA.  Check out the rest from this series....



To see a nice birds eye fully interactive map of this mine Click Here  For some reason, I can not embed a live map using Safari for Mac.  Use the controls on top of map to zoom and rotate.

Nemacolin Mine. Part 2 of 4.

To see a nice birds eye fully interactive map of this mine Click Here  For some reason, I can not embed a live map using Safari for Mac.  Use the controls on top of map to zoom and rotate.

Nemacolin Mine. Part 3 of 4.

To see a nice birds eye fully interactive map of this mine Click Here  For some reason, I can not embed a live map using Safari for Mac.  Use the controls on top of map to zoom and rotate.

Nemacolin Mine. Part 4 of 4. Abandoned.

Rices Landing Jail

Original location of the Rices Landing Jailhouse.It sat right inside the entrance to Pumpkin Run Park,just through the tunnel.It was moved due to erosion of the bank of Pumpkin Run creek.