Connellsville Coke Region

The ground beneath Fayette and Westmoreland Counties holds some of the highest-quality coking coal ever mined in America, known as Pittsburgh vein coal. From the mid-eighteen hundreds well into the twentieth century, workers loaded that coal into dome-shaped beehive ovens and burned it slowly until only pure carbon remained. The result was coke, the essential fuel for smelting iron and steel.

Tens of thousands of immigrant workers flooded into this valley after the Civil War to feed the booming ovens. The Connellsville region became known as the Coke Capital of the World, powering the steel mills that built American cities. Byproduct recovery ovens built near the mills eventually made the old beehive design obsolete, and the old ovens gradually went cold.