| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 132.2

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 132.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

From the Miners' Doublehouse: Archaeology and Landscape in a Pennsylvania Coal Company Town. By Karen Bescherer Metheny. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007. xxix, 305 pp. Illustrations, notes, references cited, index. $45.)

Helvetia, located in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, is the focus of archaeologist Karen Metheny's interdisciplinary study of life, society, and working conditions in an American company town. Established, owned, and controlled by the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company, Helvetia was constructed to extract and process bituminous coal for the vastly growing American consumer market. Its residents—mainly of eastern and southern European extraction—came to and lived there in company-built housing precisely for that reason. The primary period of interpretation is 1891 to 1947, key years in Helvetia's prominence as a coal-producing western Pennsylvania town. In the peak production years of the 1930s and 1940s, Helvetia's mines employed twelve hundred workers and supported as many residents. A company store was prominent, as were social organizations and outlets such as churches and a company-sponsored baseball team. Indeed, Helvetia was like many other company towns that dotted America's industrial landscape. And, like other such towns, it experienced deindustrialization. The mines officially closed in 1954, and a salvage enterprise purchased the town. Residents gradually relocated or passed away. In 1989, its last residents were evicted and most of the town was strip-mined, leaving behind few extant structures.

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