Philip Ginter and the Discovery of Anthracite

In seventeen ninety-one, a hunter named Philip Ginter was working the slopes of Sharp Mountain when he stumbled across a heavy black rock. He showed it to Colonel Jacob Weiss, a prominent local settler, who recognized it as anthracite coal. The following year, Weiss and partners formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, an early anthracite company in the United States and the forerunner of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.

That chance discovery on this Pennsylvania mountain helped ignite the industrial transformation of America. Anthracite burns hotter and cleaner than bituminous coal, making it ideal for iron smelting and home heating. Within decades, the region around here would become one of the most heavily mined landscapes on earth, and the hard-coal industry would shape the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers across northeastern Pennsylvania.