Led by Harry Whyel, the Whyel Coke Company of Uniontown, Fayette County, established the town of Whyel; and the Yukon Mine & Coke Works in 1908. This company also owned the Thomas Mine and Coke Works in Fayette County, and the Ellen Mines and Coke Works, near Whitney, Unity Township, Westmoreland County.
The drift-entry Yukon Mine ran 1,500 feet into the Pittsburgh Coal Seam, which averaged 84 inches thick in the vicinity of Whyel.
The Yukon Coke Works was constructed in Upper Whyel, along a tributary of Sewickley Creek. By 1910 the Yukon Mine & Coke Works operation employed eighty-nine miners and coke workers. The Yukon Mine miners produced nearly 47,000 tons of coal in 1910, the coke works, containing just thirty-six bee-hive coke ovens, was operated very little.
By 1914 the Yukon Mine & Coke Works, of the Whyel Coke Company, employed 126 miners. In 1913 Yukon Mine miners had produced nearly 224,000 tons of coal, operating electric-powered cutting machines and using three electric-powered locomotives for hauling the coal from the mine to the coke ovens. The Whyel Coke Company probably purchased the electricity used at the Yukon Mine from the nearby Magee Mine powerhouse, of the Westmoreland Coal Company. The Yukon Mine Coke Works contained seventy bee-hive coke ovens.
J. A. Abraham, who had served as the superintendent at Whyel Coke Company’s Ellen Mines and Coke Works near Whitney, in Unity Township, was superintendent at Yukon Mine by the mid 1910’s.
The Yukon Coke Works continued to operate through the early 1960’s, its last owner was the King Coal Company, of Uniontown, PA.
Whyel information printed with permission from Raymond A. Washlaski, editor “The Old Miner”
For more information, visit Raymond’s website: http://patheoldminer.rootsweb.ancestry.com/