Twin Shaft Disaster: Fifty-Eight Men Lost
Near Scranton, Pennsylvania
On June twenty-eighth, eighteen ninety-six, the ground beneath this spot gave way. Fifty-eight men died in a massive cave-in of rock and coal at the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Colliery, one of the deadliest mining disasters in Pennsylvania history. The governor appointed an investigative commission, which reported its findings that September.
Its safety recommendations were largely ignored. But the scale of the tragedy, and the fury it sparked in the coalfields, helped accelerate the unionization of the region. After nineteen hundred, labor organizer John Mitchell built the United Mine Workers into a powerful force across northeastern Pennsylvania, drawing strength from disasters like this one and the grievances they left behind.
