Magee Mine

The Westmoreland Coal Company opened the slope-entry Magee Mine in 1908 in Sewickley Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on the north bank of Sewickley Creek alongside the Pennsylvania Railroad. ³ The company named it for James Magee, a member of its original board of directors. Coal came from the Pittsburgh seam, 81 inches thick at that location, and a branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad carried nearly all of the output to market.

Unlike the red-brick and wood-frame collieries typical of the region, Magee’s surface plant was built largely of ashlar sandstone. ³ The powerhouse, the largest structure on site, stood along the railroad right-of-way and measured 150 by 50 feet. Its boiler room occupied a tall one-story section with arched windows at both floor and upper levels, a concrete-and-earth floor, and riveted steel trusses carrying a hipped roof and monitor. Two iron chimney stacks rose along the north side. The engine room adjoined it to the west, a one-story building with a brick floor, gable roof, and arched windows.

East of the powerhouse, on the bank of Sewickley Creek, stood the hoist house, a tall one-story ashlar sandstone building of 48 by 44 feet with a full basement, a slate roof with a frame monitor, riveted steel Fink trusses, tall arched windows, and a circular window at the gable end. ³ A stone marker there reads WCCO 1908. A one-story red-brick building next door housed the electrical equipment serving the electric-powered hoist. A large wood-frame tramway and tipple ran between the powerhouse and the hoist house and crossed over the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.

West of the machine shop, ashlar sandstone retaining walls led to a double-portal mine entrance, each opening spanned by a massive ashlar sandstone lintel. ³ The one-story office and supply building, 27 by 17 feet, stood roughly 50 feet south of the machine shop. A 12-by-12-foot common-bond brick cap house and a small board-and-batten frame building stood nearby, and a brick lamphouse with a hipped slate roof and cupola stood near the powerhouse. A preparation plant served the mine, with water for the coal washer drawn from a reservoir near Lower Whyel.

For its workers, the company built about 30 houses and a store in the village of Yukon, South Huntingdon Township, arranged in four curved rows along First through Fourth streets. ³ Roughly half were double houses and half single-family dwellings, all of wood-frame construction and one or two stories; the single-family houses had hipped roofs, brick chimneys, and multi-light windows. Superintendent E. G. Smith lived in one of the larger houses. A separate group of 16 company houses stood northwest of Yukon in Sewickley Township, west of Lower Whyel, single-family wood dwellings with gable roofs and hollow clay-tile foundations.

By 1910, the company employed 443 people at Magee, producing nearly 429,000 tons of coal annually. ³ The roster included 80 miners and 235 machine loaders, with 32 mules and horses hauling coal from the workings. By 1914, Magee had the largest output of any mine in the Ninth Bituminous Coal District, which covered Allegheny, Fayette, and Westmoreland counties; 500 men produced 700,000 tons that year.

By 1940, the workforce had fallen to 275 and annual production to about 328,000 tons. ³ Eleven trolley locomotives then hauled coal from the mine, though the company still kept about 29 horses and mules. A 1949 report recorded output of 1,000 tons per day ¹ and a workforce of 164 men. ³

Westmoreland closed the mine in 1954, and the site was converted to an automobile repair shop and junkyard. ³ The tramway and tipple were demolished after the closure, the company store burned, and the lamphouse was razed. When the Historic American Engineering Record documented the complex in 1987 as part of a Westmoreland County inventory conducted with America’s Industrial Heritage Project, the stone buildings stood abandoned and deteriorating with no machinery remaining. Fire had gutted the office and supply building, the hoist house roof had partially collapsed, and a battery-powered locomotive from the 1950s sat near the mine entrance.