Coal Mining in Iowa

[Abby Brown] When you look around your town you might see a building like this one. A long time ago this was the post office here in Centerville, Iowa. Now it tells the tales and adventures of gathering and using an important energy source in our history: coal.

By the year 1870, Iowa settlers had discovered that many of the hills of central and southern Iowa had coal; a black, or dark brown rock, found underground. When this natural resource is burned, it provides heat that can be converted into energy. This map shows where coal was located in our state. You might be surprised see to that, even though we don't have active coal mines in Iowa anymore, this energy source is still in the mix. Now, we just get coal from sources out of state.

Here at Appanoose County Historical and Coal Mining Museum we can see some of the tools that coal miners would have used when the mines  were operating. We also get to explore what those coal mines would have been like! One thing is for sure, that work was difficult and very dirty. Let's go take a look! As you can imagine, coal mining took lots of manpower! But sometimes, ponies were part of the operation. They would help haul the coal. Some of the ponies stayed in the mines all winter long, which is when most of the mining was done. When they finally came out, into warmer weather, they had to shade their eyes from the bright sun.

Inside one of the rooms here at the museum, visitors can see some of the coal mining tools! And how small a coal mine in this area could be; which wasn't even as tall as the average kindergartner!

[David Kauzlarich] That's why these cars are not very tall.

[Abby] Oh sure!

[David] That way there was still enough room to get the coal onto them.

[Abby] So each worker would have their own car...

[David] And where they worked was called their "place." "This is your place," you know.

[Abby] Makes sense! Ok. And they would take their picks, and their hammers, and what other tools did they have?

[David] Yes, and you tried to get it come loose and drop down, because you dig the dirt out from underneath it.

[Abby] So you wanted to peck away little pieces of coal that you could lift into your car, but not such big pieces of coal that it would fall on you and you would get injured, right?

[David] If you were an experienced miner, when you pecked either with a bar or with your pick, you knew the sound that told you if it was going to come loose or not, or whether it was still in there hard, and how close you could get and how dangerous it was. Yes.

[Abby] And you learned something about the specific coal here in Appanoose County, right? It's softer?

[David] It's a little softer, it doesn't look soft to us, it looks rather hard.

[Abby] What does it mean that it's softer than other coal?

[David] Well when you put them side by side, the hard Anthracite is harder break with a pick.

[Abby] Ok. Is one better than the other?

[David] Oh yes! It burns hotter.

[Abby] The harder stuff burns hotter, so the soft coal of Appanoose County they found out...

[David] It emits a lot of sulfur.

[Abby] Ok. Got it! Oh that would be smelly.

[David] Yeah...

[Abby] There was something else that could happen to a town when the softer coal found in this area was burned for heat. On a real cold day when everyone was burning coal, what happened to the town?

[David] Well, let's say we had a snow just like we had recently, within a couple of days it would pretty well turn that snow black from the soot up in thve air.

[Abby] Because the chimneys, it would fall onto the snow and turn it black.

[David] Yes.

[Abby] You've probably seen old movies of trains with the same black cloud puffing out of the chimneys. Coal was a huge part of the railroad industry. Railroad companies would often own coal mines so they could get fuel easily. The Iowa coal miners came from all over the world to dig out this natural resource. But the jobs here couldn't last forever. These men, mostly, were already doing this type of work in Europe, and they would come here and do this work too.

[David] Yes.

[Abby] So why did the coal mining stop and when did it stop?

[David] Well, there were several reasons. Trains began to burn diesel fuel and changed over.

[Abby] Why is diesel fuel better?

[David] It was easier to come by, the maintenance on the engine was tremendously less than the steam engine.

[Abby] Ok.

[David] And, uh, it also... Heating oil, which was a version of kerosene, that started to come into houses. And in the '50s there was a conversion over to natural or propane gas,

[Abby] Ok. and that ran the coal out of business.

As we start to use new types of energy in our homes and vehicles, how can we use what we learned from coal mining to get the energy we need in better ways? Thanks for traveling along with me, as we have fun investigating new discoveries in Iowa.

[Announcer] Funding for FIND Iowa has been provided by the following supporters.

(text on screen Find Iowa, Coons Foundation, Pella, Gilchrist Foundation)

(text on screen Iowa PBS Education)