SCRANTON, Pa. — fMembers of the Underground Miners cut the ceremonial firing line, officially reopening the Brooks Mine. The tourist mine in Scranton's Nay Aug Park hasn't had any visitors since the late 1970s.
"It's a piece of history coming back to life, and it's an important part of history because most kids don't know what coal is," said Bob Gattens from the Scranton Municipal Recreation Authority. "They look at coal, and they have no idea. And that's our past in this area, whether you're from Carbondale, Wilkes-Barre, that's our past."
Coal was never taken from the Brooks Mine. Rather, it was an educational attraction to show what an actual mine would look like.
More than a dozen volunteers with the nonprofit organization spent the last year and a half working to restore the Brooks Mine. Many of them have a connection to mining.
"I used to listen to my grandfather tell me stories about working underground, and when I think about it, there's not a day that I don't go underground, and I think about them and what they did to make northeastern Pennsylvania the way it is right now," Scott Kerkowski said.
Chris Murley helped spearhead this project and gave a tour of the mine. Murley says they also used many of the tools and methods that would have been used when the mine was first built in the early 1900s.
"We wanted the mine to be as authentic as it would have been in the 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s. Not much has changed today. A bunch of guys in the group are active coal miners still, and we did the job just like they would have," Murley said.
The Brooks Mine will officially open to the public on Saturday.
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