Mahanoy City: Anthracite and the Molly Maguires

Mahanoy City was born from coal. Settled in eighteen fifty-nine and incorporated as a borough on December sixteenth, eighteen sixty-three, the town exploded alongside the Mahanoy Tunnel, a railroad engineering feat that helped carry hard anthracite toward Philadelphia. By eighteen seventy its population had swelled to fifty-five hundred, fed by wave after wave of Irish, Welsh, and Eastern European immigrant miners.

The conditions in those mines bred fury. The Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish miners resisting brutal company control over wages, safety, and housing, were especially active in the Mahanoy area through the eighteen sixties and seventies. Their campaign ended with a series of controversial trials and executions in eighteen seventy-seven and eighteen seventy-eight. Today Mahanoy City is a quiet borough of a few thousand, its rows of brick company housing still etching the hillsides above the long-silent collieries.