Customer Reviews

Feldstein's Historic Coal Mining and Railroads of Allegany County, Maryland

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The coal mines of western Maryland were the first stop in America of my Welsh coal miner ancestors. When I started researching my family genealogy I was lucky enough t find Al Feldstein's "Coal Mining and Railroads of Allegany county, Maryland." Although only 38 pages long, it is packed with 135 old photographs with accompanying narratives. Many of the old photographs are from post cards in an era when the industrial development of the nation was a source of pride -- the inside of a coal mine and coal handling equipment; barge traffic on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal when it was a working canal carrying coal and other commodities down the Potomac to Washington D.C.; the National Road as it looked when it was an unpaved dirt road in 1907. Now in the year 2000, the coal mines are closed, the remains of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal are a National Park, and Interstate Highway 68 replaces the National Road. Thanks to the work of local historians like Mr. Feldstein it is possible to travel back in time and gain a sense of what the country was like during its early industrial development.