The #1 slope was started in the early 1940’s. Ed Bernitsky’s wife came out to work with the boys hosting coal cars with a Model T truck. Some of Ed’s brothers had gone to war at the time. After WWII, the brothers formed Bernitsky Coal Company. They then purchased the property in the mid 1950’s and started the #2 slope. From #1 slope they drove down to #4 drift level and came upon the last set of timber the Silver Creek Colliery had placed. From that level they tried to drive out to the surface, but had complications. They went back to the surface and started driving down to what would be there #2 slope. When they reached #4 drift level where the colliery timber was, they started level 2 Gangway. The had a rough time getting started on that level but finally got it drove and worked that level for many years. In the pictures that you see of me and my grandfather that was around 1970 when they were still working level #2. When they finished robbing level #2, they proceeded to sink the slope around down around 300 feet the slope turned to the left and the widened it to have two sets of rails, one for coming out and the other to return coal cars to Gangway. That had to be around 1976 or so when they started driving the Gangway on the 3rd level because I started my summers around 1977 and came full time around 1979 the Gangway was already driven in around 2000ft or so along with the monkey (return air passageway). The Gangway turned to the right where we ran into the top rock. It was driven in around 200ft and we stopped My uncle’s decided to come back to where we started to go right and we started to blow the bottom rock and continue the Gangway. 50ft in we were in solid coal and drove a chute to connect to monkey. Another 100ft we hit bottom rock and drove a chute to monkey. We made another sharp right with Gangway and in around 100ft or so. We stopped there and drove a long slant off Gangway. And started to rob. We had to because there was so much pressure that the timber sets were snapping overnight. We were in the Mammoth vein where the bottom split middle split and top split all came together making it to be around 100ft thick. Things were going pretty good till 1980, when my grandfather passed away, and then later a fire destroyed the hoisting shanty, ending the operations.
-Written by Joe Bernitsky
Thank you to Joe for allowing us to digitize these photos!
