Stone against coal country
Seventeen people on a stone plant at the edge of the hard-coal fields
Lehigh Asphalt Paving & Construction Co works crushed stone with seventeen people on the books at Mine Safety and Health Administration. The plant is about five miles off and over a county line — this village sits in Lehigh County and the quarry it is named to sits in Schuylkill County, which is why the road figures below are Schuylkill’s.
The Tamaqua Breaker lies about 7.7 miles west, Premium Fine Coal about 8.6 miles west, and Greenwood and the Tamaqua Mine about 9.5 and 10.5 miles north-west. Little Italy sits about 7.3 miles north and Nesquehoning Bank about 9.1 miles north-west.
A road network built for a heavier industry than the one left
Those workings are the reason the roads here are the way they are. The hard coal of the Southern and Western Middle fields was mined from the 1820s, and the network that carried it is denser and older than the present population supports.
It shows in the postings. Schuylkill County restricts 16 of the 60 bridges it maintains and 15 of its townships’ 76 — thirty-one restricted local structures between them. Within 10 miles of this plant the National Bridge Inventory records 151 structures, thirteen of them below legal loads, seven the county’s and five on township roads.
The nearest of those is 2.29 miles out and the lowest operating rating among them is 10.9 metric tonnes, which is under the floor at which any loaded commercial vehicle crosses at all. The lowest that clears that floor is 13.6 tonnes, about fifteen US tons.
The banks themselves are a source of stone
That old industry left more than roads behind. Pennsylvania’s noncoal mining rules cover extraction from waste or stock piles, pits or banks as well as from the ground, which is why culm banks and colliery refuse appear in this trade as aggregate rather than only as spoil.
It shows in the operator names. One of the crushed-stone operations the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists in this district is held by Summit Anthracite, a company still carrying the coal industry’s name on a stone operation.
So the demand here is remediation-led and programme-funded rather than growth-led, and the year is flatter than a subdivision market’s. The Lehighton yard about 8.8 miles north-east and the Palmerton yard about 10.0 miles north-east are where the result goes.
A truck working between here and the Tamaqua Breaker about 7.7 miles west has run a short posted route many times rather than long highway miles, and on a bank job it has worked soft ground as well. Brakes, suspension and frame show that before the engine does.
- Around the Tamaqua Mine and Nesquehoning Bank we see bank trucks regularly and we buy them.
Between the Lehighton yard about 8.8 miles north-east and Premium Fine Coal they turn up steadily.