But when the war ended, the real dirty work began. Just across from Fort Pitt was a thousand-foot peak the locals called “Coal Hill.” It proved to be an entry into a massive coal seam that ran from Maryland, through West Virginia, and into western Pennsylvania. With coal across the river, Fort Pitt and the borough’s early settlers had easy access to fuel. Laborers who mined the hills poured into the city by the thousands. By the early nineteenth century, as the American economy began its long ascent to prominence, Pittsburgh, with locally manufactured goods that could readily move north,
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Its been vital to Pennsylvania from the beginning.
