Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-12-27

unexcelled; limestone in great abundance
and purity; building stones of most excel
lent quality, and inexhaustible quantity;
petroleum and natural gas, the modern fuel;
iron ores we have in considerable quantity,
and glass sands in great plenty. These,
with some manganese, and one or TWO
others OF small Importance, make up the llsS
of our available minerals.
Few realize the immense value OF the
coal fields in our State. Goal is sucn q
common and abundant mineral that most
people when thinking of valuable minerals
generally do not count it at all. But q
short time SINCE and many people supposed
that coal was soon to be thing of the past;
that natural gas would entirely supplant IL,
and render coal lands valueless. No greater
mistake could be made.
Largest Coal Field in the World.
ITO the largest and most valuable coal
field in the world, geologists have given the
name Appalachian. It covers an area OF
nearly 6O,0O0 square miles, and beginning
near the northern line of Pennsylvania, ex-
tends southwark across the State, and, TAX
ing nearly the whole of West Virginia,
and broad strip from the southern part of
Ohio, passes on through Eastern Kentucky
and Tennessee to end in Alabama, nearly
900 miles from its northern terminus. The
shape of this great field is roughly that OF
a canoe, and West Virginia lies within the
zone of its broadest and richest portion.
In only four of the fifty-four counties in
West Virginia is it impossible TO find
bituminous coal, viz: Jefferson, Berkeley,
Morgan and Monroe.
"This coal series enters West Virginia
from Pennsylvania in Monongalia and Pres
ton counties, with thickness of 250 to 300
far k,. Ia haAc
the upper Freeport and the lower Kittan-
ming, the latter locally known as the "Austin
coking" coal and the latter as the New
burg shaft" seam on the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad. These two beds are sep
arated by IN interval of shaies and sand
stones 100 to 180 feet thick, and they are
both easily accessible over very large
area
Excellence of the Product.
"The universal excellence of this coal for
all purposes of fuel, gas, coke and every
other use to which coal can be put, renders
the field in question one of the most valu-
able in the country, or in the world for that
matter, and the railroad that first opens it
up to market will have monopoly of good
things in the coal traffic for long time.
sit WAS formerly supposed that this coal
would not make merchantable coke, but
the successful working of nearly 200 ovens
at Montana, on the Fairmont, Morgantown
and Pittsburg Railroad, together with the
successful plants at Fairmont, Clsrksburg,
Tytconnell, Mononga, ETC., have set this
question happily at rest and proven that
the coal in question will make a coke but
little inferior, if any at all. to that from
the celebrated Connellsville region, of
which the Monongahela country is simply
a southwark extension. The West Virginia
coal field is one, and a halt times larger
than that of Great Britain. the production
of whose mines are now nearly two hun.
dred million tons annually"
A local Baltimore and Ohio official yes
terdsy stated that the contracts for the re-
mainder of the Morgantown-U U Uniontown
link had been let, including the bridge at
Port Marion, and that the work would be
pushed as rapidly as possible.