I am interested in any information with regard to the history of the Scrub Oaks Mine from 1940 till it went bankrupt. In particular what happened to the records of the Allen Wood Steel Co. who owned & operated the mine during this period. Where are the records of the company archived? Luigi

Hi Luigi, after the mine closed I believe many of the records were given to Mount Hope. What happened from here I cannot say but we are fortunate enough to have obtained some engineering drawings from Alan Wood ourselves. I would like to reproduce them for you and John.

Miner Mike

Reliable sources have informed us that the records of the Alan Wood Steel Company, which was headquartered in Conshohocken, PA, were tossed into the dumpster when the company went bankrupt in 1977. According to a former Scrub-Oaks miner who was working at the Mount Hope Mine in 1966 when Scrub Oaks closed, the mine-related documents, including maps, were moved there and saved until Mount Hope ended its momentary reopening in 1978. Then, the remaining Scrub Oaks records were also thrown away, save for a few upper-level maps rescued by this miner. The maps that he possesses only cover Levels One through Six. I recently found that the State Division of Mine Safety has maps showing down to Level Eight, but it only has a shaft cross-section diagram depicting Levels Nine and Ten, which is worthless if one wishes to determine the extent of mining on those levels. A few fortunate people have found documents "floating around" in private hands, but the overwhelming majority are unfortunately lost to history.