The Pottsville Gap Colliery
was located on the Sharp Mountain, south of the Schuylkill River and in line
with Coal Street (now Rt.61) in Pottsville. The original operators were Lippincott
and Richards who in 1826 drove a drift on the mammoth vein eastward at the same
level of the navagation company's canal and they operated the drift to 1830.
The coal was loaded directly
into the canal boats at the mouth of the drift. by 1828, 300 feet of gangway
had been driven.
In 1830, Robert Barclough
succeeded Lippincott and Richards and he continued driving the gangway 1200
ft. further to a connection with a gang- way driven west from a tunnel at Palo
Alto. After mining from 1830 to 1845, the drift was abandoned as it was worked
out.
In 1852, Alfred Lawton re-opened the mine and in 1854 sunk a slope on the same vein as the old drift. The colliery was operated under discour- aging circumstances until 1868 when E. Desocarez and Van Winkle purchased the colliery and sunk the slope to a lower level, driving gangways east and west. It was said that the westward gangway was driven under the Schuylkill River which increased the flow of water into the mine, making it difficult to keep the mine from flooding. There are no records to prove this but in 1872, during the negotations by General Henry Pleasants, for the sale of the property at New York, the slope closed and the abandonment of the colliery followed in 1870. The coal at this colliery was good and hard but was very irregular and at times had a thickness of 16 feet.
Just prior to the closing of the slope a New Breaker had been completed.
The complete total shipments are not available but 6991 tons were shipped from 1828 to 1835 and 12,637 tons were shipped during the year 1840. The shipments from 1862 to abandonment in 1870 was 40,161 tons of coal.