1 - RC&I Company Store (1874) A - Rockhill No. 1 2 - EBTRR Depot (ca. 1917) B - Rockhill No. 1 Tipple site 3 - Old Post Office (1915) C - Rockhill No. 5 4 - RC&I Offices (ca. 1917) D - Rockhill No. 5 Tipple site 5 - Reality Theater (1948) E - Rockhill No. 3 site 6 - School (1934) F - Rockhill No. 4 site 7 - Mule Stables site G - Rockhill No. 2 site 8 - Rockhill No. 5 Boiler House ruins 9 - Fan House
Company Store, 1996 
Company Store Site, 2004
At the center of town, the company built a large random stone structure in 1874 to house the Company Store. Long abandoned and steadily deteriorating, this building was demolished in March, 1997 after being declared a public health hazard by the local government.
EBT Station:
The EBT replaced its original Robertsdale station, a small wooden structure, with a rusticated block structure across the street from the Company Store between 1914 and 1917. The Kovalchick family, who currently own the EBT and coal company property, sold the structure in the 1980s. The Friends of the EBT, a 501.c.3 nonprofit society "dedicated to preserving and restoring the EBT," leases it from the new owner and has restored its exterior and interior. The station houses part of the FEBT's collection of RR artifacts, and the society operates it as a visitor center on weekends during the EBT's tourist season, June through mid-October.
Rockhill Iron & Coal Company Office Building 
Robertsdale Wye
On the opposite side of the tracks from the site of the Company Store stands the two-story rusticated block RI&C office building. Today, the Robertsdale Post Office occupies the ground floor. During the company's active years, however, the post office occupied the ground floor of the two-story rusticated block structure that stands across the street. Both the office building and the "old post office" date to approximately the same period as the EBT station. The EBT installed a "wye" for turning locomotives at Robertsdale, and the tracks are still in place. The detail photo shows the wye rails curving around the northwest corner of the office building.
"Old Post Office":
The Robertsdale post office occupied space in the company store until the RI&C built this structure at about the same time that it built its new office building. The post office occupied the western half of the ground floor, while the rest of the ground floor was occupied by a barber shop. The second floor served as an apartment. This structure is owned by the FEBT, which is in the process of restoring it and preparing the interior to house its collection of artifacts and research materials.
The "Company Square"
is the planned center of tourist operations should the EBT ever be restored along its entire length. About 0.2 mile east of the Company Square, at the bend of the main street, is a large wood frame building that was originally a hotel. Today, it is a Bed & Breakfast. About 0.1 mile further on, the Reality Theater stands on the west side of the street. It houses the museum and visitors center of the Broad Top Area Coal Miners Historical Society. The museum displays a large collection of documents, photographs, and implements relating to coal mining in the region.
Mine No. 5, "The Robertsdale Slope"
RI&C operated a coal preparation plant at Robertsdale during the years that the Rockhill furnaces were in blast. The plant included a crusher and a sluice-type washer that processed clean, fine coal for the coke ovens at Rockhill. In 1876 the company also made coke in "coke pits" at Robertsdale. This technology preceeded the familiar "beehive" ovens and was essentially the same process as that used in making charcoal. Although their life-span is unknown at the present time, it is possible that RI&C used the coke pits until the early 1880s when the company built beehive ovens at Rockhill to supplement -- and eventually replace -- the Belgian-style coke ovens it had originally built.
Coke PIts
The sites of the coal preparation plant and the coke pits are not known precisely, but archaeological evidence suggests that they were in the general vicinity of mine No. 5. Traces of coke have been found in shallow depressions beside the EBT's tracks near the opening of mine No. 5. Other archaeological evidence suggests that the coal preparation plant was linked to the No. 3 tipple just south of the ruins of the later No. 5 tipple. It is clear that the area around (and under) the surface structures at the No. 5 tipple hides the secrets of the early decades of the RI&C's coal production at Robertsdale.
No. 5 Tipple, ca. 1912
Robertsdale grew rapidly, from a few dwellings, a mule stable, and blacksmith shop in 1874, to 479 people and 27 houses in 1876. By 1880, there were 694 people in Robertsdale, with 119 households in 57 houses. By 1910, the number of families grew to 262, with an average family size of 5. Many miner families took in borders. The great majority of houses in the town were two-story duplexes, but white collar workers and some railroad employees occupied a few large, single-family dwellings.
In 1948 RI&C began selling its houses to the miners, who immediately began to improve them (the first improvements invariably being indoor plumbing). Over the years, the exteriors of many of the houses were altered based on the prosperity of the owners and some of the duplexes were converted to single family dwellings. Nevertheless, the street plans of both towns -- indeed, even their demographics -- have changed little.
Venilation Fan House
The town of Robertsdale and the remains of railroad and mine facilities nearby (such as the ventilation fan house pictured here) are a virtual time capsule of work and life in the Appalachian coal regions.
Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania: 1875. Special Report on the Coke Manufacture of the Youghiogheny River Valley (1876). Collection of Drake Well Museum Library.Interstate Commerce Commission Valuation Map of EBT (1917). Collection of FEBT.
Lee Rainey and Frank Kyper, East Broad Top (Golden West Books, 1984).
Lola M. Bennett, The Company Towns of Rockhill Iron and Coal Company: Robertsdale and Woodvale, Pennsylvania (U. S. Department of the Interior, 1990).