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Coal mines...(Continued from page 14)employed at times The huge stock comprised dry goods, clothing, groceries, hardware,notions, ladies' and gents furnishings, farm wares, household furnishings, miners' supplies and a meat market Thirty thousand square feet of space were utilized. And to give it the city touch and knowhow of management D K Scott, of the Levy Dry Goods Company of Terre Haute was put in charge. The financiers of the Island City mines had brought to Linton for the second time, prosperity. By1901, seven additional plats had to be added to the townIn 1895, John A Templeton sank a mine near Linton and named it the Bon Ton Later, with others he sank the Allas and Twin mines In 1913, Mr Templeton took over what had been the New Summit Coal Company. About the time thatthe Island City complex beganto wane, Elmer Neal and T J O’Gara began the New Summit operationThe New Summit mines were equipped with the bestmachinery that money could buy The coal brought to the surface was of excellent quality, but the production lagged The average was 359 tons daily But Neal and O'Gara had a tailor-made market waiting for their quality product; Mr O'Gara being of the Chicago firm of O’Gara and King, the largest jobbers of coalin the city of Chicago, and one of the largest jobbers in the United States.The last of the “giants of the coal industry, Elmer Neal; C.W Adams; E H. Tripp; and J W Yakey, moved their investments to land leases northwest of Linton; where the Squire Orchard is now located and north almost to where Midland now is. To that organization they gave the name; The Hoosier I oal Company Others soon followed the industrial giants to the north of 1 inton, hut by then supply was more than meeting the demand and the mines were working but part time orseasonal Because it was impossible tocontact each miner to notify him when he should be on the job, the eompanys set up their own system. At eight o’clock, the evening before the work day, each mine would blow its whistle for an extended period of time No two whistles sounded the same. The residents of Midland could count as many as twenty-eight whistles going at one time during the busy season It was when the whistles didn’t blow that gloom settled over the entire mining community.The six mainline railroads, had from the beginning, built their lines so that they would service the vast coal region of Greene County The side-tracks were long and as many as four were in use at the mines up to World War I Long strings ofThis 1975 crop of tobacco, on Newark Road, a short distance from Solsberry, is on the Leonard Corbin farm. Tobacco was an early crop inGreene County.few family operated mines hung on for years and supplied the neighborhood with coal, but by 1950 these too were gone The Comet, coal and clay mine, east of Switz City, and the new shaft mine opened in 1973, at Jasonville continue in business. The Comet, a strip mine, the Jasonville mine a “sunk’’ mine-both fine examples of what has passed for in 1912, Island City gave to Greene County its first surface coal mine And in the ninety-one . irs ot Greene County miningthere was not a major disaster with a large number of lives lost, though Little Betty mine, south of Linton, in Sullivan County, claimed the lives of twenty-eight men on Wednesday. January 28, 1931 most of whom were residents of Linton and Jasonville and had worked in or grown up within sight of Tater Hill, Bogle 3. and Bogle 4, Golden Knob, Green Valley, Bon Ayr. P Fry. Lattis Creek, Island Valley 3, Gilmore and other coal mines along the western edge of Greene County.empty coal hoppers stood idle, waiting to be filled and long trains, of nothing but hoppers filled to the brim, left the mines. Then in 1919, the huge P I mine, near the Midland Monon rail yards closed down per manently, after a productive twenty years. Other mines followed the P 1 pattern in rapid succession And Jason-ville’s short-lived boom, that began in 1901, joined Midland, Linton and a score of smaller towns west of White River in the closing of their coal mines. A
Newspaper Details
Linton Daily Citizen
Linton, Indiana, US
Fri, Oct 31, 1975
Page 45
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 11 Jul 2020
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Linton Daily Citizen
