The Dorrance Breaker Wilkes Barre PA 1983
by Arthur Miller
Title
The Dorrance Breaker Wilkes Barre PA 1983
Artist
Arthur Miller
Medium
Photograph - Contemporary Art
Description
Back some thirty odd yrs. I did a series of architectural photographs of the dismantling of one of the few remaining Anthracite Coal breakers in Wyoming Valley....The Dorrance Colliery. There it sat, within a mile of our beautiful county courthouse, along the banks of the Susquehanna River....Wilkes Barre's enormous Dorrance Breaker. It was named after an important fellow by the name of Col. Charles Dorrance and it started operation in 1884. The Colliery had survived the Depression and both world wars, but did not survive the infamous Knox Mine disaster at Port Griffith, PA in 1959. In any event, these were the stomping grounds for me and my school buddies. It bothered me to see the end of this old friend so humbled and broken. I knew that the end was near also for the other few remaining breakers that dotted our local landscapes. Maybe I'm a little crazy after all these years, like the song says, but I missed the dirt, noise, smells and all the rest that goes along with coal mining and coal miners. Webster defines 'mystique' as 'an aura of heightened value, interest, or meaning surrounding something, arising from attitudes and beliefs that impute special power or mystery to it'.
Well yes, then that's the word I mean 'mystique': giving special power to the legend of the Anthracite coal miners and families and to the thousands upon thousands of Welsh, Polish, Slovak, Russian, English, Italian, Irish, and more... ya know, those who gave it their all. ...and maybe, I'm thinking, that we did them all a disservice by not putting a nice monument of a proud coal miner on our Public Square; or maybe leaving up part of one of those coal breakers just to say thanks, we appreciate what you did for us and we'll never forget you, your kith & kin from the 'Valley With a Heart'. I think it would a been a nice gesture on our part. Art Miller
Uploaded
February 13th, 2016
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