A Garden Permit from Coal Country

Some time ago I was given an interesting piece of local history by someone who worked in the Marianna mine. At first glance it is a simple document, but it offers a glimpse into everyday life in the coal towns of Washington County.

The document is an Employees’ Garden Permit issued by Ellsworth Collieries, a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation. It allowed a worker to use a numbered company garden plot for the growing season. The permit includes a line reading “Season 193_,” which suggests it was intended for use sometime during the 1930s, with the final year written in by hand.

In many coal company towns, miners’ houses had small yards where families might keep a modest garden. But companies often owned large amounts of surrounding land, and some of that property was divided into larger garden plots for workers. These plots were typically grouped together on company land and assigned by number.

Because the land remained company property, workers needed a permit to use it. The wording on the form makes that clear. The permit states that the holder must “work garden plot to fullest extent,” and that failure to do so would revoke the permit. Each plot was issued for a season and could be reassigned if it was not properly maintained.

For mining families, these gardens could be an important part of everyday life. Larger plots allowed workers and their families to grow vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, beans, tomatoes, and corn. After long shifts underground, tending a garden became another part of the routine of life in coal country.

Documents like this were practical items meant to last only a season, and most were likely discarded once the gardening year ended. Because of that, surviving examples are uncommon today.

While the history of coal mining often focuses on the work underground, small items like this permit remind us that daily life in mining communities extended beyond the mine. Families worked the coal seams below the earth, but they also worked the soil above it, cultivating gardens that helped sustain households in the coal towns of southwestern Pennsylvania.