Coal Mining History Month

A photographic essay on coal mining. Northeast Pennsylvania was known as "hard coal country."Found almost nowhere else in the world, anthracite coal for much of the 19th and 20th Centuries supplied the Eastern seaboard's fuel for heating and fuel needs. This was the fuel for the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Bootleg mining rose out of the Great Depression when workers were laid off from large coal companies. They are the independent coal miner and only a handful operate today. They were always at the hand of federal inspectors trying to shut them down for minor violations. Some were shut down for as long as eight months costing the miner tens of thousands of dollars. All they wanted was to feed their families. These bootleggers still persevere while putting themselves in dangers that we can't even imagine. Photos by Christian Abraham. He works as a full-time photojournalist at the Connecticut Post. He grew up in Wilkes-Barre, where his love for the region's mining history drew him to shoot a long term project about anthracite coal mining.