United States
See also: Coal mining in the United States and List of coal mines in the United StatesCoal mining in the United States has historically had economic and cultural dominance in regions such as the Allegheny Mountains and Appalachian Mountains, where it was a major part of identity and traditions. The replacement of workers by mechanization has had major consequences for the industry and for the people it affects.
Coal is mined in the Appalachian Mountains region, and the Midwest. Most coal now produced in the United States is mined in western surface mines, especially in Wyoming's Powder River Basin. A surface mining method often used in the Appalachians is mountaintop removal mining.
The states with the largest recoverable coal reserves are, in descending order, Wyoming, West Virginia, Illinois, and Montana. The largest single mine in the United States is the North Antolope Rachelle near Gillette, Wyoming; it produces more coal annually than many states. In 2009, it alone produced over 100 million tons of coal, and has plans to produce 130 million ton in 2012 more than 23 other coal producing states including Pennsylvania.
Areas with significant coal mining activities include:
- Coal Region of Pennsylvania - One of the largest deposits of anthracite coal, the region is in Northeastern Pennsylvania, in the central Appalachian Mountains comprising Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Carbon, Schuylkill, Northumberland, and the extreme northeast corner of Dauphin counties. Major population centers include Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Pottsville
- West Virginia - see economy of West Virginia
- Eastern Mountain Coal Fields and Western Coal Fields of Kentucky
- Southern Illinois Coal Fields, including the Harrisburg Coal Field
- Colorado - including Denver Basin. - see coal mining in Colorado
- Powder River Basin
- Raton Basin
Read more about this topic: Coal-mining Region
Famous quotes related to united states:
“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)