Historic panoramic illustration titled “Pittsburgh, Allegheny & Birmingham, 1871,” showing a wide aerial view of the three riverfront cities with bridges, factories, smoke stacks, steamboats, and rolling hills surrounding the rivers. The detailed black-and-white engraving captures the industrial landscape of 19th-century Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Coal Seam

Greene River Trail, History

Named by H.D. Rodgers of the First Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, the first reference to the Pittsburgh coal bed was on a 1761 map. In the mid 1700s at Fort Pitt, coal was being mined on Coal Hill, or as it is known now, Mount Washington. The coal was extracted from drift mines in an outcrop about 200 feet above the Monongahela River.