1 - Truck Dumps (ca.1941) A - St. Michael's Church 2 - Site of Mine Repair Shop B - St. Michael's Social Hall 3 - Rockhill No. 6 Power House C - Methodist Church 4 - Site of Mule Barn D - Woodvale Post Office
No. 6 Surface Buildings
During World War II, RI&C re-opened all of the underground mines in and around Woodvale and began extensive strip mining operations to the south and east. Two wooden truck dumps were built on either side of the tracks near the repair shop. Today, embankments of mine boney (waste) and a few rotten timbers mark their locations.
Repair Shop:
The coal company built a red block repair shop across the road from the No. 6 mine head. Mine cars and other equipment were repaired in the small machine shop, which was a miniature example of the extensive belt-driven shop run by the EBT in Rockhill. This building stood abandoned for years, but finally succumbed to arson in 1993. It is pictured, below, as it appeared in 1990.
Mule Barn:
Mules provided the motive power in the underground galleries of Rockhill No. 6. They were stabled in a large wooden barn to the south of the mine head. This building survived until recently, used as a storage building by the furniture factory in the old power house. It, too, was lost to arson at the same time as the repair shop was burned.
Mine Power House:
The block and brick power house for Rockhill No. 6 still stands. For a period during the late 20th Century it was occupied by a furniture factory, but it has been vacant for several years.
Faced with acute manpower shortages in the rapidly expanding coal industry around the Turn of the Century, coal companies imported thousands of Eastern European immigrants and their families to work the new mines. Among the immigrants brought to Woodvale by the RI&C was a contingent of Carpatho-Russians. This community still thrives in its isolated mountaintop village.
St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Church
Their distinctive onion domed Russian Orthodox Church, St. Michael's, is a prominent landmark. It and the nearby social hall were built in 1935 after fire destroyed the original 1917 church. Next door to St. Michael's, the Woodvale Methodist Church gives testimony to the ethnic diversity of the coal company towns.
Together with Robertsdale and the surrounding mined-out landscape, Woodvale is part of a truly priceless piece of America's industrial history. But Woodvale also bears stark witness to the fragility of historical structures. While politicians and preservationists talk, arson and apathy stalk the shrinking remnants of an increasingly tenuous link to the past.
Sources:
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).