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 Post subject: Huber Breaker park seeks donations
PostPosted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:42 pm 
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Location: Anthracite Region of PA
Board behind Huber Breaker park seeks donations


By Paul Golias (Correspondent)

Published: March 27, 2012



Warren Ruda / The Citizens' Voice A planned memorial park near Huber Breaker in Ashley is behind schedule because of lack of funding for the project.


The Huber Breaker Preservation Society's board chairman says the group needs a major boost to create a mini-anthracite living history park on land in front of the breaker on South Main Street, Ashley.

The society has run into several snags and is well beyond its targeted park completion date of December 2011.

"We need an individual or a group to step forward to help make this happen," said Ray Clarke, longtime society treasurer, board chairman and ardent supporter of saving the historic Huber Breaker. With the breaker property tied up in bankruptcy, the society has an alternate plan that would develop 3.1 acres in front of the breaker into a history park.

That plan, however, is in jeopardy and further delays could cost the society the land on which it hopes to build.

If no one person or group comes forward, Clarke said, the project will need many hundreds of donors.

"This is important to many generations. With the breaker preservation in limbo, our best chance at honoring those who worked in the mining industry is construction of this park and memorial," Clarke said.

The cornerstone of the project is a proposed granite memorial to all who worked in the anthracite industry. The park would include a walking trail, kiosks explaining anthracite history and the use of various Huber Colliery structures. The dilapidated breaker still stands to the west of the site that was donated to the preservation society in 2004 by Earth Conservancy, a group that works to reclaim and restore mine-scared land.

The history park project's total cost is $125,000, Clarke said. The Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, which has its office in the Earth Conservancy building in front of the breaker, is assisting the society in filing for grants. One such grant was $2,500 from the Wilkes-Barre Career & Technology Partnership for benches, picnic tables, landscaping, tools and a water line to the site.

Paving blocks, lettered and unlettered, and benches or picnic tables have been "sold" as part of a fund-raising program that has raised $12,000.

Clarke said the monument, which will cost about $11,000, will include a black polished etching of the historic breaker. Columns supporting a top piece of granite will be engraved to honor all who worked in the northern anthracite fields, he said.

Flowerbeds, benches and trees will line the walkway and enhance the knoll on which the memorial will be located. A community volunteer committee, Friends of Miners' Memorial Park, is envisioned to handle upkeep.

The society proposes future construction of a typical company home on the site. Tens of thousands of people lived in the houses built by the coal companies.

Opened in 1939, the breaker was named after Charles F. Huber, chairman of Glen Alden Coal Co., predecessor to Blue Coal Co. The Huber mine and breaker employed 1,700 people at its peak. The coal was sold throughout the eastern United States and most was hauled out by the Central Railroad of New Jersey which had a major yard adjacent to the colliery.

The breaker and 26 acres of land west of the smaller preservation society plot are owned by No. 1 Contracting Co., which filed for bankruptcy on March 5, 2010.

Efforts by the Huber Breaker Preservation Society to acquire the breaker and to stimulate state and federal grants for its restoration have been unsuccessful.

Donations for the park can be made to the Huber Breaker Preservation Society, St. Nicholas Federal Credit Union, P.O. Box 1213, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18703; or The Luzerne Foundation, 140 Main St., Luzerne PA 18709. For information, contact Ray Clarke at 570-824-3176.


Read more: http://citizensvoice.com/news/board-beh ... z1qMsOgaPf

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