Brief History of Longwall Coal Mining in Illinois

By
Robert A. Bauer, Illinois State Geological Survey
(7-2015)

Introduction

The first longwall coal mining started in the late 1600s in Great Britain and was first used in
Illinois in 1856. The earliest longwall mining had all parts of the operation performed by hand
and utilized many different extraction designs. Over time, various parts of the longwall mine
operation were mechanized culminating in the 1950s and 1960s when it became fully-
mechanized with specifically designed equipment for the operation.

Pre-Fully Mechanized Longwalls

Longwall Coal Mining Started in Great Britain

The longwall coal mining method started about 175 years before appearing in Illinois. Mining
historians find that the longwall method started in Great Britain in the late 1600s in Shropshire
County (Galloway 1882, Hatcher 1993). Flinn (1984) notes that from 1700 on, in Great Britain,
there was a national trend away from room-and-pillar mining toward the longwall method to a
point that by 1900, seventy-five percent of the coal produced was by the longwall method
(Church 1986).

Illinois Longwall Mining

According to available records, longwall mining started in Illinois shortly after 1856 in LaSalle
County at the LaSalle Mine of the LaSalle County Carbon Coal Company (Harris 1918). This
mining method was used in over 161 mines in 19 counties (figure 1). These pre-fully
mechanized longwall mines operated from about 1856 through 1954 (figure 2) with most of them
starting this practice in the 1870s & 1880s. Records and maps show that over 161 mines used
this method in Bureau, Christian, Grundy, Kankakee, Knox, LaSalle, Livingston, Logan,
McDonough, McLean, Macon, Macoupin, Marshall, Montgomery, Peoria, Putnam, Will and
Woodford Counties and one experimental panel in Perry County. There are most likely other
mines and counties where such mining took place as indicated by Young’s (1917) example of an
experimental panel longwall in a mining district that contains Franklin, Jackson, Perry and
Williamson Counties and that “several plans are now being tried or considered for the more
nearly complete extraction of the coal in this district.” These longwall mines in Illinois, most
often operated in the Colchester No. 2 Coal seam, but also operated in other coal seams;
Assumption, Rock Island No. 1, Lowell, Cardiff, Springfield No. 5, Herrin No. 6 and Danville
No. 7.

The use of the term longwall, long-wall or long wall in Illinois was used by the earliest mine
inspectors in their reports to the Governor. The First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics of Illinois (1881) contains “Coal Mine Inspectors’ Returns” to the Governor of Illinois
for the years 1879 and 1880. The 1879 report remarks about the characteristics of several mines
in LaSalle County that are using the “long wall plan”.
Longwall Mining Method in Illinois
As was the case in Great Britain, longwall mining in Illinois used many different overall designs,
but shared similar elements of removing all coal along a continuous face, placing or packing rock
into the area where coal was removed, downward movement of the roof and overburden where
the coal was removed and lowering of the ground surface. From available mine maps in Illinois,
it appears that the most common longwall design removed all the coal starting near the shafts
(vertical entrance) to the coal seam/mine and moved outward away from the shafts (figure 3).
This is generically called an advancing longwall since the operation is moving away from the
entrance. Not all mining was concentric, moving away from the shaft in all directions. Some
mining operations advanced faces in one direction between adjacent mined out areas or to
accommodate mineral rights boundaries (figure 4) and others used large advancing longwall
panels (figure 5). Another longwall operation used the retreating method of first outlining a
panel with entryways and removing the coal as the longwall face retreated toward the entrance of
the panel (figures 6 & 7).

No matter what type of longwall extraction design used, the mining operation at the face was
similar. At the working face (figure 8), the miners first removed part of the underclay, layer
from below the coal seam (i.e. undercut the seam) or under certain geologic settings, the cut was
made in the lower part of the coal seam. In early mining, this task was done by hand and later by
undercutting machines. The coal was then pried down or allowed to fall from the roof rock, and
then carried to coal cars in the roadways or loaded onto chutes or metal conveyors along the
working face. Waste materials of underclay from undercutting the coal, roof rock that came
down with the coal or unwanted impurities in the coal were placed opposite the working face
between the pack walls of rock that were built on either side of the roadways/haulageways.

The pack walls and stowed waste materials made a yielding support, which prevented a sudden
break in the roof at the face and allowed a gradual lowering of the mine roof and overburden.
The weight of the overburden greatly compressed the fill about 200 to 300 feet behind the
working face (Herbert and Rutledge 1925) (figure 9). When this occurred, subsidence resulted at
the ground surface over the entire mined area. This is noted in the 1883 Statistics of Coal
Production in Illinois in reference to mining in the Braidwood, Illinois area: …”all coal in this
field is worked on the long-wall system, and as fast as the mineral is removed the surface comes
down with the roof..”.

Young (1916) contrasted the effects of subsidence from longwall mining and room-and-pillar
mining: “It may be said that in general the surface effects of longwall mining are more uniform
than those resulting from room-and-pillar and panel workings. This is due principally to the
gradual sinking of the roof in longwall mining where the same gradual movement generally
extends through the overlying rocks toward the surface. Upon the surface the evidences of
subsidence will be a gentle sag, and where the longwall face is stopped there may be a more or
less well-defined terrace outlining in a general way the area that has been undermined”. The
publication describes the impacts on agricultural land and remedies, how structures behave as
undermined and towns that attributed trouble with their water and gas mains to longwall
subsidence.
 Fully Mechanized Longwalls in Illinois

Starting in 1962, fully-mechanized longwall operations were tried in Illinois. From 1962
through about 1973, ten longwall faces in Illinois that were of limited economic success were
tried. These attempts by Old Ben Coal and Freeman Coal Mining Companies are presented in
two papers found in the Illinois Mining Institute, volume 81, pages 24-38 (1973). The number of
“faces” is not the same as panels. In some panels, face widths were reduced in an attempt to
improve conditions at the working face.

Old Ben Coal Mining Company started with a mechanized longwall face in 1962 in Mine No.
21. All 6 of their faces were in Mine No. 21. Freeman Coal Mining Company started a
mechanized face in 1965 in their Orient No. 5 Mine. In 1971, a mechanized longwall face was
employed in Orient No. 6, where a total of 3 different faces were tried. The first longwalls that
were considered successful for production purposes were installed in Old Ben No. 24 in 1976 as
a longwall demonstration project which better matched equipment to the geologic conditions.

Since these early longwall panels, over 240 fully-mechanized longwall panels have operated in 6
Illinois counties (D. Barkley, Personal communications 2007). Longwall panels today in Illinois
range from 900 to 1,250 feet wide, up to 2.6 miles long (Fiscor 2007), and 330 to 970 feet below
the ground surface. In 2005, 53% of the coal produced in Illinois was mined using the longwall
method (Illinois Office of Mines and Minerals, 2005 Annual Statistical Report), which is similar
to the percentage mined in the nation by longwalls (Weisdack and Kvitkovich, 2005).

References
Andros, S.O., 1915, Coal Mining In Illinois. Illinois Coal Mining Investigation Co-Operative
Agreement, Bulletin 13, 250 p.

Bauer, R.A. 1984. Subsidence of bedrock above abandoned coal mines in Illinois produces few
fractures. SME-AIME Fall meeting, Denver, Colorado. Preprint No. 84-400, 8 p.

Church, R., 1986. The History of the British Coal Industry; Volume 3, 1830-1913: Victorian
Pre-eminence, 813 p.

Fiscor, Steve, 2007, U.S. Longwall Census, Coal Age, Vol. 112, No. 2, pp. 30-38.

Flinn, M.W., 1984. The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume 2, 1700-1830: The
Industrial Revolution, 492 p.

Galloway, R.L., 1882. A History of Coal Mining in Great Britain, 273 p.

Harris, G.W., 1918. Longwall Mining at LaSalle, Illinois. Coal Age, vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 388-392.
Hatcher, J., 1993. The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume 1, Before 1700: Towards
the Age of Coal, 656 p.

Herbert, C.A., and J.J. Rutledge, 1927. Subsidence Due to Coal Mining in Illinois. U.S.
Department of Commerce, Bureau of Mines, Bulletin 238, 59 p.

Illinois Office of Mines and Minerals, 2005. Annual Statistical Report at:
[Link]

Toenges, A.L., 1936. Longwall Mining Methods in Some Mines of the Middle Western States,
U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 6893, 61 p.

Weisdack, George. V. and James F. Kvitkovich, 2005. Importance of longwall mining to the
coal industry: Mining Engineering, Vol. 57, No. 12, pp. 21-26.

Young, C.M., 1917. Percentage of Extraction of Bituminous Coal with Special Reference to
Illinois Conditions. University of Illinois Eng. Experimental Station Bull. 100, v. XIV, No. 42,
June 1917, 175 pp.

Young, L.E., 1916. Surface Subsidence in Illinois Resulting from Coal Mining. Illinois State
Geological Survey, Mining Investigation Bulletin 17, 113 p.
Figure 1. Number of pre-fully mechanized longwall mines per county.
Figure 2. Number of pre-fully mechanized longwall mines & years of operation per county.
Figure 3. Most commonly used pre-fully mechanized longwall mine design in Illinois, top a
diagram and bottom more of a representative of a mine map .
Figure 4. Example of longwall mine advancing between a previously mined out area and what
appears to be their mineral rights boundary on the east.
Figure 5. One example of a type of advancing longwall panel from LaSalle County.
Figure 6. Example of retreat longwall panels in Illinois (Toenges 1936).
Figure 7. Details of operation shown in figure 6 (Toenges 1936).
Figure 8. 1912 picture of working face of longwall mine at the end of a haulage way (ISGS
Photo).
Figure 9a. Cross section diagrams at the outside edge of a longwall. Cross section from mine
working face at right with undercutting and condition behind working face, back toward the
mine shaft (Bauer 1984).

Figure 9b. Showing additional area of roof that miners would cut out above haulageway all the
way back to the shaft to make room for mine cars after the roof subsided and compressed the
pack rock.
Figure 10. Longwall face with packed rock to left, props and solid coal face to right. This is the
working area for the miners, showing same setting as figure 9. Andros 1915 Figure 27.