MAHANOY CITY, SCHUYLKILL COUNTY

Mahanoy City (pronounced ma-HA-noy) is a borough located in Schuylkill County. Mahanoy City, originally a part of Mahanoy township was settled in 1859 and the name "Mahanoy" is believed to be a variation of the Native American word 'Maghonioy'. The borough was a major center of anthracite coal production and is served by branches of the Lehigh Valley and the Philadelphia & Reading railways. The borough's principal industries are still the mining and shipping of coal although the demand for it has steadily declined since its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. 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.