The Boiler House was built about ca.1915 and is a two-and-a-half-story wood-frame building with a hipped roof, topped by a cupola.  A timber and iron Howe truss supports the hipped roof.  The building retains its board-and-batten double door and its multi-light double-hung sash windows;  it now serves as a garge.

The coke works were located along an old railroad grade and a tributary to Hanna's Run.  It contains a battery of approximately 100 rectangular coke ovens.  These are of brick construction with brick and stone fronts and stone retaining walls.  They are in moderately to severely deteriorated condition; a reclamation project destroyed a number of the ovens at the southern end of the coke works.

The unincorporated town of Wilpen has two sections of houses, one that has five company-built residences that housed the managers and their families, and the other that contains about thiryty houses where the miners and coke workers lived.  In addition, the Wilpen Public School remains standing.

The residences that housed the company's managers are large two-story double houses with gable roofs (covered with slate), double brick chimneys, and stone foundations.  These stand on SR 1017.  Nearby on Wilpen Road are the workers' houses.  These are single-family wood-frame dwellings with front-gabled roofs, one-and-one-half stories, brick chimneys, and stone foundations.

The Wilpen Public School is a one-story building with stretcher-bond red-brick walls, a double gable roof covered with asphalt, and a rubble-stone foundation. Above the main entrance, inscribed in stone is "Wilpen Public School" and "1915."  Alterations to the building include the boarding-up of windows with wood, the installation of a new door, and a large garage addition.  The old school currently serves as an office.

Following the death of Henry Oliver in ca.1904, Snyder acquired the interests of the Oliver Steel Companyand merged them into his Shenango Furnace Company.  Subsequently Shenango Furnace Company expanded its operations in the Ligonier Valley.

From his early ventures in the coke business and as vice president of the McClure Coke Company, Snyder was familiar with the various coal properties in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.  In ca.1906 his Shenango Furnace Company acquired property in the Ligonier Valley and opened the Wilpen  Mine & Coke Works, and established the coal patch town of Wilpen, north of Ligonier.  The Ligonier Valley Railroad extended a branch line to the new Wilpen Mine & Coke Works from its Fort Palmer Branch.  

From the 1906 Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania;
Shenango Furnace Company - Wilpen Mine:  This is a new mine just being opened, and was not under the law when inspected, but was in fair condition.  A permanent tipple, 200 coke ovens, rilroad siding, and everything in connection with a coking plant are in course of construction.

The company's drift-entry Wilpen Mine and its coke works, containing 167 rectangular coke ovens, employed about 100 men and boys.

By ca.1910 the company employed seventy miners in the drift-entry Wilpen Mine. They produced over 115,000 tons of coal in 1910.  Twenty-eight men and boys toiled in the coke yards, producing nearly 57,000 tons of coke in 1910.  In all, the company employed 131 men at the Wilpen Mine & Coke Works.  Most of the workers lived in company-built housing in the coal patch town of Wilpen.  A.K. Renwick served as the company's general manager at its Wilpen operation.

Two electric locomotives and mules were used by 250 miners to bring 300,000 tons of coal to the surface in ca.1913.

Equipment at the Wilpen Mine in ca.1914 included one Stirling water tube boiler and two return Erie City tubular boilers, the combined capacity of which was 580 horsepower.  The company's powerhouse at Wilpen contained three-phase sixty-cycle AC generation units, each producing 2,300 volts AC and 250 volts DC.

The Company store at Wilpen was owned by Walker & Company, and managed by Harry Walker of Wilpen.

Standing in marked contrast to the mine and company patch town of Wilpen was nearby Wilpen Hall, the country residence of William P. Snyder, who by the early 1910's, had reached the peak of his financial prowess.  In addition to the large blast furnace complex at Sharpsville, his Shenango Furnace Company owned iron ore lands in Minnesota, coal lands in Westmoreland County, and three steamships for hauling iron ore across the Great Lakes.  Snyder remained one of the business elites of the Pittsburgh area until his death in 1921.

Production through the 1910's remained fairly stable at Shenango Furnace Company's Wilpen Mine & Coke Works.  The mine consistently produced over 300,000 tons of coal each year and the coke works annually produced between 30,000 and 50,000 tons of coke.  During World War I, the Shenango Furnace Company acquired a second mine property along the Wilpen Branch of the Ligonier Valley Railroad.  The Lytle Mine, a drift-entry mine, became another producer of coal for the Wilpen Coke Works.  No coke ovens were built at the Lytle Mine.  The company continued to coke the coal at Wilpen, shipping much of it to the Sharpsville blast furnaces, via the Wilpen Branch of the Ligonier Valley Railroad to the connecting Pennsylvania Railroad at Latrobe.

The United Mine Workers of America, Local #5867, represented the Wilpen Mine coal miners.

In ca.1925, the Baton Coal Company, with corporate offices in Pittsburgh, acquired the Wilpen Mine & Coke Works and the Lytle Mine.  Five years later Baton Coal Company operated only the Wilpen Mine.   In ca.1930 the Wilpen Mine & Coke Works produced over 157,000 tons of coal, and the Wilpen coke works, with 104 operating coke ovens, produced nearly 19,000 tons of coke.

In ca.1940, with 160 miners working at Wilpen Mine & Coke Works, production averaged 1,200 tons of coal per day.  That year eight electric trolley mine locomotives were operating at the mine.  The Wilpen Mine ceased operation in ca.1945, but sixty-two coke ovens remained in use until ca.1951 using strip mined coal.

(History and description of the Wilpen Mine & Coke Works, adapted from with additional data from "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1994,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

My Grandparents moved to Wilpen where Grandfather Wade Webster Harkcom worked in the mines after the Fort Palmer mines shut down. There are a number of families that moved from Fort Palmer to Wilpen after the Fort Palmer Mine & Coke Works shut down...including the Petrucci family, Zurich family, Mimna Family, and the Harkcom families to name a few...other families in Wilpen during the Coal and Coke operations were the Humanic (Humenick) family, they too were instrumental in the chartering of the Greek Orthodox Church in Wilpen. Other families included in the Wilpen era are the Tiberi, Albensi, Simonetti, Rushnock, Concus (Konkus), Midlo, Zaher, Manzulich, Lebo, Zamborsky, Demyanovich, Vlasko, Guerrieri, Spearnock, Slebonik, Turcheck, Perla, Labuda, Banas, Stanislaw, Danko, Hoza, Smolleck, Popps, Kondrick, Getz, Stouffers, Permuka, Volchko, Pavalovich, Kovach, Monico, Kozar, Topeka, Sherry, Kolesar, Kinnicks, Andrecyak, Smetanka, Austin, Zizan, Markosky, Bolha, Lori, Baloga, Horansky, Findley, Fitchko, Eslary, Smith, Kovatchko, Kudrich, Barber, Lukatch, Sapida, Chendy, Gergley, Grinn, Tabilli, Dalle-Tezze, Fiorina, Janovich, Petty, Tobias, Gilan, Widich, Morrow, Talarovich, Bell, Matrunic, Kislan, Kittey, Moyher and Palek families are some more native Wilpens. The "Diamond Mines" included the Miney, Zamborsky, Martin and Hutchinson families to name a few.

Jim Giesey, Ligonier, PA

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