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The ghosts of southwestern Pennsylvania's coal communities are evident in the mine ruins, the rows of company houses and the memories of area residents who grew up in the tight-knit, diversified communities.

The hundreds of coal mines opened in the region at the turn of the 20th century created a corresponding number of new company towns known as patches.

In Fayette County alone, more than 140 coal communities were created, although the exact number is conjecture.

"We don't know how many there were," said Evelyn Hovanec, retired English professor at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, and cofounder of the school's Coal and Coke Heritage Center. She said on any given day, a visitor comes into the center, located on the lower floor of the library, inquiring about an unfamiliar patch.

"We go to the maps," said Pam Seighman, special collections librarian at the center. She said old coal company records often have to be reconciled with contemporary PennDOT maps because the lay of the land has changed, with modern highways -- such as Route 119 -- splitting some old patches in two.

Evidence of a community's existence is often difficult to find. Hovanec remembers scouring the countryside for Nellie, once a community near Dawson, with little luck.

By the turn of the 20th century, tens of thousands of coke ovens illuminated the night sky in the Connellsville Coke Region that extended from Latrobe in Westmoreland County to Fairchance in Fayette County. More were erected in the Klondike Region that was developed later in southern Fayette County. Most have collapsed into piles of rubble, the fine stone work carted off or covered over.

Gob mountains of waste coal and founts of mine drainage are all too common in southwestern Pennsylvania and a continuing challenge to clean up.

The buildings and tipples of former mines have largely disappeared from the landscape, but patch houses remain even in locations where there is no other sign of the mine or coke works. Many patches have thrived with former miners and their descendants remodeling homes, often converting cramped double houses into more spacious single units.

Many of the company towns were built by the H.C. Frick Coke Co. subsidiary of U.S. Steel. Others were founded by forgotten titans of the early mining era, such as the Rainey Coal Co.

The Frick patches were built on a common plan. Although they often lacked amenities, such as indoor plumbing -- outhouses are an oft-cited memory of former patch residents -- the double houses were solid homes. Most are more than 100 years old, and they crop up in the most unexpected places.

The yard of the former Continental Number 1 mine along Mount Vernon Avenue, in South Union Township, Fayette County, is occupied by the Greater Uniontown YMCA. However, some patch homes still stand in the neighborhood, a testament to the history of the large mine.

Other patch buildings can be found throughout the region.

Made infamous by the Tennessee Ernie Ford song "Sixteen Tons," company stores such as Frick's Union Supply Co. were, nonetheless, community meeting places and remembered fondly by many former patch residents.

Surviving company store buildings have been used for everything from municipal offices to homes. The one at Smock holds a post office, a community center and a town museum.

The former company store at Leisenring No. 1, a still viable patch near Connellsville, is one of the few left where items can still be purchased, even though the selection is limited and the store is open only in the afternoon. It stands along Store Street next to a bustling little post office built in 1918 by Frick.

GONE OVERNIGHT

Even coal patches that have disappeared, seemingly without a trace, continue to exert a strong pull on former residents.

York Run, a coal community of about 170 homes, was opened in 1904 in southern Fayette County. The mine played out and many of York Run's young men followed a familiar trend in migrating to the Cleveland area after returning from service in World War II. Nonetheless, York Run remained a viable community.

Then, in 1952, the patch was gone ... almost overnight. H.C. Frick officials felt there was a lot of coal underneath the community and demolished the homes to strip for it.

"People were heartbroken," former resident Joanne Boni Bello said.

On a recent day, Bello pointed to a tree at Hilltop that towers over others in what appears to be an overgrown field that had never been developed.

"It's in my yard," she said.

Hilltop was one section of York Run; Brick Road was another. Bello can still picture it running by where Albert Gallatin Area High School now stands on a township road.

The old company store held the Georges Township municipal offices until it was replaced in recent years with a modern metal building.

Bello's sister, Elizabeth Santicchia, who lived along Club York Road just outside York Run's borders, talked about how clean the patch was, how everybody in the community took care of their property.

Minnie Stalanker, whose family operated a store that served York Run, remembered that there was a white picket fence in front of each of the homes.

Most of the homes along Club York Road weren't part of the company town but were identified with it. Club York, a hotel-turned-nightclub, was a popular spot into the 1960s. It later was destroyed by fire.

More than 50 years after all the patch houses were torn down, Frank Murin still finds shelter behind H.C. Frick walls.

When coal companies decided to divest themselves of their company towns, they often sold the houses to the miners or coke workers. Generations have continued to live in such former coal communities as Smock and Lemont Furnace.

In the case of York Run, H.C. Frick offered residents the opportunity to buy the houses for $100 each, under the condition they move them off the property. A number of residents took the company up on the offer and used the wood and other materials from the H.C. Frick houses to build new homes nearby.

Murin said he was fortunate because he got the material from a six-room supervisor's house to build his home along Club York Run.

Much of what York Run was can still be seen in the nearby village of Shoaf. The coke yards burned in Shoaf until 1972 and remain largely intact, along with the patch houses.

SITES OF TRAGEDIES

Scores of coal patches that also sprang up in Westmoreland County subsequently faded into history. Morewood, the site of a violent labor confrontation in 1891, known as the Morewood Massacre, in which 11 miners were killed, was nearly forgotten. A state historical marker was erected in 2000 at the site, along Route 119, to record its existence.

Although the patch is gone, the Morewood superintendent's home still stands, near the Mt. Pleasant exit.

Another nearby patch was the site of a mine accident that same year. The methane and coal dust explosion at Mammoth No. 1, on Jan. 17, 1891, in Mt. Pleasant Township, killed 109 miners.

In 2001, township officials uncovered and preserved the mine portal. It is located adjacent to municipal offices in the last company building that is still standing. Some houses of the former Mammoth No. 2 mine patch remain, but the community of Mammoth No. 1 is gone.

Another part of its legacy, however, has been preserved elsewhere.

A bank of six coke ovens from Mammoth No. 1 was moved north of the former community to Mammoth County Park, which had been the site of a different coke yard operated by the Magee Coke Works. There had also been a patch called Peanut at the site of the future park.

FOND MEMORIES

The former community of Manifold, located along Route 19, near the Meadowlands, was one of many patches in Washington County.

It has been whittled down with the opening of a wellness center, a large machining business, a Ford dealership and newer homes. All that is left of the original community of about 300 residents is the "front row" of company homes, but the greater patch remains clear in the memory of Doris Salat.

Salat, 82, lives in a senior apartment complex in Washington, but she regularly takes out worn photographs of Manifold to reminisce. She first saw the patch at age 14, when she came from Cambridge, Ohio, to visit her brothers, who were coal miners there. Her father, who had emigrated from Great Britain, was a miner in Cambridge.

Salat and her late husband, John, lived for 20 years in a house they built at the site of an elementary school that bordered the patch. The couple retained the old school's stone steps and flagpole, which are still part of the property.

In an article she wrote about her experiences, Salat expressed in the first sentence a common theme among those who lived in coal patches.

"Manifold was a great place to live and bring up your children," she wrote.

She also noted that people of all races and ethnic groups "all lived together and got along."

PITTSBURGH MINES

Allegheny County has its share of former coal patches along the Monongahela River. Vestiges of old coal towns also abound in greater Pittsburgh, according to Ron Baraff, director of museum collections and archives for the Homestead-based Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.

Coal was mined as early as 1761 on Coal Hill, now Duquesne Heights on Mt. Washington. Mining operations continued there through the 19th century.

Baraff pointed out that early inclines brought the coal to market. He said a rail located adjacent to the current Mon Incline transported freight, including coal, down the hill. He said that there are numerous clusters of mining homes on the older part of Painters Run Road.

A number of homes for coal miners were built along Streets Run in Hays. The communities surrounding Hays weren't a prototypical patch as in a rural location, "but rather homes along a spur and tipple line," Baraff said.

THE MINE COMMUTE TODAY

Mining in Somerset County generated international attention in 2003 during the rescue of the "Quecreek Nine" miners who had been trapped underground for several days when water from an abandoned chamber flooded their coal mine. The mining tradition in the rural county traces back decades.

Chris Barkley, the director of the Windber Coal and Coke Heritage Center, said at one time there were scores of thriving mining operations, many operated by Berwind Natural Resources, based in Windber, in the northern part of the county. He said the county "lost a lot of coal operations" in the 1960s.

Barkley named a score of small Somerset coal communities that aren't there anymore, including Goodtown and Ashtola.

Windber, however, continues to thrive.

Indiana County also has a number of former coal communities that have faded away. Local historian and author Clarence Stephenson cites one example in the northern part of the county near his home in Marion Center. He said as a boy in the mid-1930s, he could hear the whistle of trains stopping in the community of Loraine, or Laraynne, depending on the different versions of its spelling.

"It wasn't too long before the whistle stopped," Stephenson said.

Building materials from the last mine structure were used in the construction of a Marion Center school, Stephenson said. The only vestige of the community that remains is eight or 10 house foundations in an overgrown field.

Mining developed later in Greene County than in neighboring Fayette County, and the coal patches aren't as old. Nemacolin, founded in 1917, was a model community with homes that had indoor plumbing. But Greene County also has coal patches that have largely disappeared, including Poland Mines.

Deep coal mining continues in Greene County, with the Emerald Mine located just outside Waynesburg on Route 21. But modern miners commute to work from area communities -- sometimes former patches -- and farms, not company towns owned by the mines.

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