Port Clinton, Where Anthracite Came Down the Mountain
Near Reading, Pennsylvania
The tiny borough of Port Clinton at the base of Blue Mountain exists because of coal. When Pennsylvania's anthracite fields opened in the eighteen twenties, someone had to get the coal from the mines around Tamaqua down to the Schuylkill Canal, and Port Clinton was the natural junction point. The Little Schuylkill Railroad was chartered in eighteen twenty-six and opened in eighteen thirty-one, one of the earliest coal railroads in the country.
It initially ran on horsepower, and steam locomotives followed in the early eighteen thirties, hauling anthracite into Port Clinton for canal transfer south. The railroad that made Port Clinton matter eventually became part of the Reading Railroad empire, and when coal traffic faded so did the town. Today barely a few hundred people live there.
