GIRARDVILLE, SCHUYLKILL COUNTY

Girardville is a borough in Schuylkill County and typically of the region, it contains anthracite coal deposits. Coal-mining provided employment for many of the people who lived there c. 1900 and for several decades of the 20th Century. Girardville is also the site of an annual St. Patrick's Day parade that is one of the largest in Pennsylvania. The evolution of the anthracite coal region began hundreds of millions of years ago. At that time, Pennsylvania was home to wetland forests; as the vegetation died it accumulated into vast quantities of decomposing organic matter. Over the ages, tremendous pressure from layers of sediment transformed this peat like substance into coal. In regions where the heat and pressure were particularly intense the resulting coal was a very hard type, consisting of nearly pure carbon content. It is commonly known as anthracite.