Earth Conservancy, Industrial Archives & Library sign landmark agreement to preserve historic records

Mar. 14—ASHLEY — Reflecting on the significance of the agreement he just signed, Steve Donches, president and CEO of the Industrial Archives and Library, said it best.

"In essence, by making this amazing collection open for public access, we are restoring access to the community's history — and that's exciting," Donches said.

In a significant joint effort to conserve and preserve the historic records of the former Glen Alden Corporation for research purposes, Earth Conservancy (EC) of Ashley, Pennsylvania, and the Industrial Archives & Library (IAL) of Bethlehem, announced an agreement in which IAL will assume ownership of the coal company's records for the purpose of preparing them and making them accessible for research by historians, scholars and the public.

The Glen Alden Coal Company, once the largest anthracite coal producers and employers in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, was one of the key players in Northeast Pennsylvania's storied anthracite coal industry, long the mainstay of the region's economy.

In 1930 at its peak, Glen Alden operated 26 collieries, employed 34,000, and produced 13 million tons of coal.

Later, Glen Alden began dyeing its coal an iconic blue color, and in 1966 sold off its mining wing as the Blue Coal Corporation.

Totaling more than 20,000 linear feet, the records housed at Earth Conservancy go back over a century and represent virtually an intact history of Glen Alden, Blue Coal, and their predecessors and subsidiaries.

Blue Coal was forced into bankruptcy in 1976, leaving the company's records to languish in a lengthy bankruptcy proceeding. Meanwhile in 1992, Earth Conservancy was founded to put the former anthracite land back into productive use.

Then, in 1994, then-U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski secured a $20 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Defense — $14 million of which was to purchase all the corporation's property, including its offices in Ashley and the company records, greatly facilitating the work of Earth Conservancy and serving as an important resource for EC as it pursued its mission.

However, as EC began to contemplate and plan for the ultimate conclusion of its work, it began to search for another suitable organization that could be the final custodian of the records.

"For many years, we at Earth Conservancy were concerned with finding an organization interested in the history of these great coal companies and capable of handling this immense task of organizing and properly storing a project of this magnitude," said Terry Ostrowski, president & CEO of EC. "Fortunately, several years ago, the IAL was brought to our attention and our joint efforts since then have been dedicated to setting the stage for today's action."

Donches said IAL shares a deep concern with EC and others that the history of industrial America was being lost with the rapidly changing industrial landscape.

"And it is our mission to collect and preserve for this and future generations those historical records of the great companies which had played a vital role in the growth of America," Donches said. "Our staff has been developing and implementing a work plan that will assure the safekeeping of this enormous treasure of the anthracite industry," he added.

Nick Zmijewski, Archivist at IAL, said the Earth Conservancy Collection is a truly unique, one-of-a-kind collection because it is so complete.

"In some respects, it's as if the employees walked out at 5 p.m. on a Friday and just never came back," Zmijewski said. "So many records that otherwise would have been purged have survived through to today, allowing us to put together a full picture of the operations, from sales to mining to legal to personnel to real estate to engineering."

Zmijewski said it will take years, if not decades, to fully process the collection and make it fully accessible for research.

"But the collection will greatly improve our understanding of mining in the Northern Field and be a showpiece of not only one company, but also an entire industry," Zmijewski said. "I hope the public finds it as exciting as we do, and I look forward to IAL providing access to these materials on a regular basis."

Reach Bill O'Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.