Eckhart Mines: America's First Coal Company Town

Coal was discovered here in eighteen fourteen during the construction of the National Road, when road builders struck the seam while cutting through the Alleghenies. The land had been purchased back in seventeen eighty by George Eckhardt, a German immigrant, and the community that grew up around the mine became the first coal company town in Maryland. The Maryland Mining Company ran operations for decades before merging into what eventually became the Consolidation Coal Company, now one of the largest coal producers in the country.

By nineteen forty the village still had ten stores serving the miners and their families, but the seams eventually thinned and the workforce scattered. The name endures on maps of Allegany County, a footnote to the industry that powered the American industrial age.