I finished the first chapter of my master’s thesis on the slate industry in Pen Argyl! Here it is:


The History of the Stephens-Jackson Slate Company:
A Case Study of the Slate Industry in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania

Part 1: Haulage

By Mike Piersa

Driving through the slate belt of Northampton and Lehigh Counties in Pennsylvania, it is not unusual to see mysterious dead men clinging to the grey hillsides. These are not humans, but the slate industry term for monolithic formations of slate stacked into bulky twin towers. Built to anchor aerial cableways, which hauled slate from the pits to the surface, these structures are often the last recognizable remnants of the immense industrial facilities that once surrounded every quarry. However, in the case of the Albion Quarry of the former Stephens-Jackson Slate Company, the dead men were not alone. They inhabited a veritable ghost town.

Rising on a bluff just south of Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania remains a museum quality collection of mill buildings, engine houses, repair shops, machinery, and offices dating as far back as 1878. Amazingly, these structures and their contents had done what so many others failed to do: survive. In order to understand how such a facility could endure, it is necessary to learn more about it, especially the unique technological systems that earned their keep for over a century. By combining these artifacts with fragments of existing scholarship, surviving documents, and oral histories, it is possible to recreate the history of the operation in a depth never before explored in print. The deeper one looks into this one site, the more connected it becomes to others. When placed in this context, a broad view of the Pen Argyl slate industry, from inception to present day, emerges.


Fig. 1. Stephens-Jackson in 1894. Map by T. M. Fowler.

The most visible aspect of slate quarrying is haulage, the process by which material is hauled or moved. Mining occurs out of sight, in the depths of a pit and processing is equally distant, obscured behind the walls of mills. However, the industry could be seen and its vibrancy even judged from afar by watching and counting the number of active aerial cableways that towered over the region. Often the first piece of infrastructure to be installed, the aerial cableways and associated infrastructure are an ideal starting point for quarry studies. Pennsylvania style slate quarries could not begin without them. By studying the process by which a quarry was opened, slate was hoisted, and moved to mill or dump, the constraints around which the industry subsequently developed can be understood.


Fig. 2. Northwest view from atop the Stephens-Jackson dump. Wind Gap, where Route 33 crosses Blue Mountain, is in the center. Grand Central Landfill, built over several filled-in quarries, is visible on the left. Photo by author.


Standing atop the dump at Stephens-Jackson, the entire slate belt comes into focus. Dominating the view to the north is the borough of Pen Argyl and Blue Mountain. To the east is Bangor, where the local industry began around 1850. Closer still are the dumps of the Jackson Bangor Slate Company quarries. Additional quarries continue west, toward Wind Gap and beyond. Farmers’ fields and woodlands sprawl to the south. The same Pennsylvania Dutch fields once covered the quarry sites, but a chance discovery in the 1850s sparked a transformation that saw the area become the heart of the American slate industry.
In that decade, a farmer stumbled upon an outcropping of slate. As valuable as slate was, the find did not spark a gold rush-like frenzy. Instead, development of the slate industry took time. It would be several decades until technology caught up with geology.

As a rock, slate took millions of years to develop. First, clay, mica, quartz, muscovite, chlorite, and a variety of other fine grained materials had to build up into a sedimentary rock formation. Over time, heat and pressure induced metamorphosis, which produced slate. Like coal, slate was formed in beds. However, slate could not, and still cannot, be mined like coal. Traditional bituminous coal seams are usually flat. Anthracite coal veins generally follow the profile of the land above them. Slate can come in any variety of directions. In Pen Argyl, geologic forces have forced the slate into vertical veins, also known as runs. Each run has slightly varied characteristics. Over larger areas, the differences are even more pronounced. In New England, slate is harder and comes in multiple colors, such as green, purple and red. Pen Argyl and Pennsylvania slates, on the other hand, are literally shades of grey or black.



Fig. 3. Aerial View of the Dally Number Two Quarry. The now flooded Albion (Courtney) Quarry of Stephens-Jackson forms the upper right corner of the image. Note the grey slate visible beneath the tan overburden at the active quarry. Photo by author.


Before the slate deposits could even be reached, a lot of work was required. Slate prospectors first had to site the quarries. This could be a difficult task, involving many false starts. By the nineteen twenties, scores of abandoned prospect holes dotted the countryside. In other cases, entrepreneurs could follow an existing vein and start mining next door to a pre-existing quarry. In the case of Stephens-Jackson, this pivotal moment came in 1878 when the firm traced the Albion Run west from existing quarries to a new site and “took off top,â€

mike that is fantastic! took a bit to read, but more than well worth it! great job, looking forward to the next installment.

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You really did your homework Mike!

Thanks for sharing the project!

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