Quecreek Mine Accident and Rescue
Lincoln Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
On July 28, 2002, nine coal miners, trapped for four days due to flooding of the Quecreek Mine, were saved via a rescue shaft drilled here. Combined efforts of local, state, and federal agencies, mining and other industries, local mine workers, emergency responders, and community members led to the rescue. The incident prompted changes in mine safety, mapping, and drilling methods. It roused national media & public attention.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On July 28, 2002, the nation held its breath as nine coal miners lay trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine, entombed underground for four days. A rescue shaft drilled at this spot finally reached them, and all nine were lifted to safety in a drama that drew round-the-clock national attention. The effort drew together local, state, and federal agencies, mining companies, emergency responders, and neighbors, and afterward reshaped mine-safety, mapping, and drilling practices.
Why it matters
The Quecreek rescue became a rare shared moment of national hope and prompted lasting reforms in the safety of America's mines.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Quecreek Mine rescue
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early Bible
Somerset, PA · est. 1954
In 1813, in a log cabin on this spot, printer Charles Frederick Goeb produced what is remembered as the first Bible printed west of the Allegheny Mountains. Getting a printing press — and the paper, type, and skill to run it — across the mountains was no small feat on the early frontier, where books were scarce and precious. A Bible off a local press meant a community had crossed a threshold from raw settlement toward established cultural life.
Log Grist Mill
Jennerstown, PA · est. 1947
In 1805 a miller named Cronin raised a log grist mill at Roxbury, part of the network of small water-powered mills that ground the grain of frontier Pennsylvania into flour and meal. The mill turned for well over a century, staying in operation until 1918 before its working days ended. Later reconstructed, the sturdy log building found new life as the Mountain Playhouse, preserving a fine example of early American milling.
Laurel Hill State Park
Jefferson Township, PA · est. 2021
Laurel Hill was one of five Recreational Demonstration Areas the National Park Service created in Depression-era Pennsylvania to reclaim worn land for public use. Between 1935 and 1941, workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built the roads, cabins, and facilities that turned the site into a place for recreation. Today it is the most intact RDA in the state, still holding examples of every kind of structure the New Deal builders left behind.
Rural Electrification
Black Township, PA · est. 1989
In the mid-1930s, three of every four Pennsylvania farms still went dark at sundown, bypassed by private power companies that saw no profit in stringing lines across thinly settled countryside. New Deal support changed that: over five years, consumer-owned cooperatives formed to bring electricity where the market would not, and the Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative was incorporated in March 1939 to serve four Pennsylvania counties and one in Maryland. Neighbors pooled resources to light their own homes and barns.