Coal museum opening in Clearfield County hopes to educate, connect community to the past

WPSU | By Sydney Roach

Published May 20, 2026 at 1:34 PM EDT

The Coalport Area Coal Museum is located at 825 Main Street in Coalport, Pa. in a former opera house building.

A museum opening this weekend in Clearfield County highlights the area’s coal history and helps visitors learn more about their ancestors who worked in the nearby mines.

Bill Morrison is the president of the Coalport Area Coal Museum, which is now one of two tenants in a building that started as an opera house.

Richard Snyder II (in center of the group) is the curator of the Coalport Area Coal Museum. He talked with visitors and explained some of the museum's exhibits.

Morrison gave a tour of the museum, which is one large, open space on the first floor of the building.

“This is our introduction to the coal mining," Morrison said as he pointed out old town maps and photos of Coalport on the walls.

There are many donated items at the Coalport Area Coal Museum, including coal mining tools, historical photos, maps and news clippings.

“Obviously coal was an important part of (Coalport's) history," Morrison said. "It actually started as a lumber town, and then in the late 1800s, because the coal was plentiful here, it became a key focus of employment in the area.”

Most of the photographs and items inside the museum are from people who used to work in the mines around Coalport. Morrison said their descendants still donate items to this day.

A miner's first aid cabinet is one of the items on display at the Coalport Area Coal Museum.

“As you work your way down through, you can see some of the hats that they wore, the helmets. The carbide lanterns that they would use to be able to see in the mines. A variety of lunch buckets. Which is, you know, where the term came from," Morrison said. "It was literally a bucket that they would carry their lunches in.”

Sitting under the row of helmets is a miniature reconstruction of the ironically named “Sunshine Mine.”

“Yes, because it would be dark and damp," Morrison laughed.

This model of the Sunshine Mine represents the tipple where coal was processed and the rail cars carrying coal out of the mines.

Morrison said the now-deceased Coalport resident Stush Slovikosky created and donated the model. Slovikosky was a coal miner, but did not work in the Sunshine. The model doesn’t show the mine itself; instead it shows the brown barn-like structure that covered the entrance to the mine. Rail tracks come out of it with tiny model railcars full of coal.

“You can actually see he was pretty accurate with scale and such, and used some materials to kind of resemble what the mine actually looked like with the rails for the cars that went underneath," Morrison said.

The Sunshine Mine was one of hundreds of mines near Coalport that employed thousands of people. The entrance was two blocks from town, but is now closed off.

“It's kind of unique because a lot of the old coal towns, the mine actually sat separate from the town," Morrison said. "They wouldn't build the town around the mine.”

In the very back of the museum is what Morrison calls the “resource center.” The walls are lined with bookshelves full of binders of family histories, military records, obituaries, birth certificates and cemetery guides.

A back section of the Coalport Area Coal Museum contains genealogical records to help people learn more about ancestors who worked in a coal mine in or around Coalport.

“We've really become more than just a coal museum," Morrison said. "We've become a resource for community and former community members.”

Morrison said they’ve already gotten many walk-in visitors and calls from across the country.

“We typically get phone calls from people in New Jersey, or Washington state or North Carolina who want to know, ‘Hey, my ancestor worked at a mine in Coalport. I don’t know which one. Can you help us find it?'" Morrison said.

Richard Snyder II, the museum's curator, flips through old pictures of Coalport and its mines.

Since the museum’s soft opening in February, Morrison said he’s been surprised at the amount of foot traffic. Before January, the museum was in a less visible part of town.

“I think we had more visitors than we did all last year at our old site," Morrison said.

The Coalport Borough Council had let them use space in their community building rent-free, but the borough council is currently defunct. The coal museum and some other organizations were forced to move out. Now, Morrison said they have to pay for rent.

“We have a financial burden we did not have before," Morrison said.

The Coalport Area Coal Museum used to be located in the borough's community building. The museum and several other organizations had to move out because of the now-defunct borough council, which had been paying most of the building's costs.

Even though Morrison said he worries about the rent payments, museum admission is free, and he doesn’t intend to change that. He hopes to get more financial donations from the community to stay open long-term. The museum recently acquired a 501c3 nonprofit status from the IRS.

The museum’s grand opening is this Sunday from 1-5 p.m., but it will also be open on Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The museum is regularly open on Sundays and Thursdays from 1-5 p.m., but officials hope to expand availability in the future.