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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society focusing on our region's history.
On March 5, 1857, the Portage Sentinel announced the discovery of a six-pound mammoth tooth on Hugh Love's farm in what would soon become the community of Coalburg.
Located in the northwestern corner of Hubbard Township, the place was not known for its fossils. The discovery occurred while laborers were opening a mine. Many more coal beds would be discovered in the area, and the presence of high-quality coal would impact not only Hubbard Township, but the Mahoning Valley and even Ohio for decades.
The editor of the April 29, 1893, Youngstown Vindicator summed it up best, "Youngstown's first claim to being an advantageous center for manufacture was based upon the vast fields of peculiarly valuable coal underlying the surrounding territory…. Thus it was that coal operators were the first to build the foundation of Youngstown's prosperity."
Hubbard was ground zero for the creation of Greater Youngstown industrial complex. A map of Trumbull County a year prior to the fossil discovery recorded the earliest coal mining in Hubbard Township: Jesse Veach's property, just east of Hubbard, boasted an active pit, while Hugh Love operated his mine near the intersection of Chestnut Ridge and Wick Campbell roads.
That junction later would become Coalburg Center. On March 17, 1862, Chauncey Andrews and William Hitchcock leased Great Lot 15, located a mile north of Hubbard. Owned by Jesse Hall, the parcel contained a coal seam later known as the Burnett Bank.
The deposit was so rich that Andrews and Hitchcock built a furnace on the north end of Hubbard in 1868 to profit from bank's output. From there, a mile-long rail line led directly to the Andrews and Hitchcock furnace.
The company sold this coal throughout the Great Lakes region, marketing it in Chicago as "Burnett Bank Coal." Another industrialist drawn to the area's rich coalfields was David Tod, the governor of Ohio during the Civil War. Tod staked a claim on Hubbard land. Then, as leader of the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad Company, he spearheaded construction of a railroad from the township to furnaces in Youngstown.
At a meeting in 1863, the company's superintendent promised its stockholders that "without any doubt," Hubbard's new collieries would supply all the fuel required by every iron mill in the Mahoning Valley. Coal extraction in the vicinity of Hubbard grew by leaps and bounds.
In 1867, Trumbull County produced more coal than any other county in Ohio: 7,140,440 bushels were mined, more than one-fifth of the state's total. As a result of the coal boom of the 1860s, Hubbard Township's population swelled with miners, and the settlement grew large enough by 1868 to be incorporated as a village.
For the year ending in April 1870, Hubbard Township produced more coal, by far, than any other township in Trumbull County: 4,905,912 bushels were mined, which was half of the total of 9,937,488 bushels countywide.
Brown Bonnell andCompany, the largest iron producer west of Pittsburgh, leased a dozen mines in Coalburg to fuel its furnaces. In 1871, its owners formed the Mahoning Coal Company Railroad and, in the following year, built a 7-mile-long rail line to its mines in Coalburg.
Hubbard's heyday lasted a generation. But by the early 1880s, the township's mines had played out, and coal operators terminated their leases or sold their mining camps to farmers. Over the years, the timbers supporting the roofs of the old mines have slowly rotted, leading to occasional cave-ins throughout the area. Ironically, these unpleasant subsidences remind us of the glory days of Hubbard's first industry.
Tacciarone and LaRiccia are the authors of "Coal War in the Mahoning Valley."