Windber: A Company Coal Town

Windber was founded in eighteen ninety-seven by the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company and was unusual among bituminous coal towns. Rather than a single sprawling camp, it had a substantial independent commercial center surrounded by thirteen smaller patch towns where miners and their families lived. Berwind-White built civic landmarks here including the Wilmore Building in nineteen fourteen and the Arcadia Theatre in nineteen nineteen.

Thousands of immigrants came from across Europe to work the mines, and the largest single operation was Eureka Mine Number Forty, two miles to the northwest. The company ceased mining operations in nineteen sixty-two. The town survived, but the industry that built it did not.