Image: The anthracite region of Pennsylvania stretches northeast from Tower City to Carbondale, a narrow swath covering slightly less than five hundred square miles in a triangular five-county area. The region was little more than a wilderness at the turn of the nineteenth century, but with the development of commercial mining operations in the 1820s, and the completion of canal and railroad links to Philadelphia and New York City, the area's population grew rapidly. At its peak, during World War I, the mining and processing of anthracite coal employed 175,000 men and supported a regional population of almost a million.