Eckley Miners' Village

OVERVIEW

A coal-company town in Luzerne County built from 1854 for the miners of the Council Ridge colliery and kept intact as a museum by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission since 1971, when Paramount rebuilt part of it for The Molly Maguires. Fifty-odd company houses, two churches, a company store and a doctor's office stand on their original street; a few houses are still lived in.

HISTORY

Life in a patch town — company housing, company store, the breaker boys — is what the museum interprets. The Molly Maguires trials of the 1870s were in the same coalfield.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The museum's own programmes and the regional press carry residents' and staff accounts of footsteps in the empty houses and figures on the street; the village runs a ghost-lantern tour in October. The entry records the tradition as the museum tells it.

VISITING

Museum hours; visitor centre with tours. The lived-in houses are private.