Production In Ohio

It is probable that the first commercial production of coal in Ohio was for the supply of Wheeling, before mines were opened at that place. This coal came from Pipe Creek in Belmont County,l where the seam was exposed a short distance above the river. This movement could not have lasted more than a few years, because coal was being mined at Wheeling in 1818, and probably before that.2 Mining began in Tuscarawas County in 1810 and in Perry County in 1816, and has been followed steadily since then. In the eighteen twenties the Pomeroy field in Meigs County, Jackson County, and the northern Ohio field in Summit County commenced production. All of the early data available are given in Table 57. No early official reports were made, but after 1859 the Secretary of State published statistics of production, admittedly inaccurate, by counties, and under various officials these have been continued to the present day. Ohio has never published statistics about coal in smaller units than the county; no reports of individual properties have ever been collected. The period from 1800 to 1885 includes the opening of practically all of the coal fields of the state, although those of eastern Ohio were not large producers at its end. During this time the use of raw block coal in blast furnaces had begun and ended, and at the end, coke was nearly the universal fuel for this purpose. Much of the coal traffic on the Ohio River and its main tributaries originated in the necessity of a fuel supply for Cincinnati and other down-river cities. This traffic started in 1794, and few records of it are available until many years later; in 1846 records of the movement to Cincinnati began and have been maintained with increasing thoroughness, and represent one of the most complete records of such a traffic extant anywhere. As these data show the originating fields of most of the coals used there, the available figures to 1885 have been collected in Table 16.