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SURROUNDING AREAS
Grassflat

Shooting Affair Near Drifting

Clearfield Area Today and Tomorrow

Originally Published March 20, 1987

Best known of Clearfield County’s “ghost towns” are the villages of Gazzam and Peale, which had their beginnings in the coal development-railroad building days of the 1880’s and quietly died early in this century when the coal veins that supplied their life blood were exhausted. There were many other lumbering-coal settlements in the county that are now only a history, but Gazzam and Peale have been the strong survivors in legend and fact.
Both Gazzam and Peale came into being as a result of construction of the Beech Creek, Clearfield and Southwestern Railroad (later a part of the New York Central) into Clearfield County to tap its rich coalfields. Both were named for directors of the railroad and the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Co., which developed the town and had close ties with the railroad-Gazzam for Joseph M Gazzam of Philadelphia and Peale for ex-senator S.R. Peale of Lock Haven.
Except for the similarities between Gazzam and Peale just mentioned, this column will concern Peale. Both villages, by the way, are now virtually only memories, although one or two houses may remain at Peale.
Located on the southeastern border of Clearfield County, near the Centre County line, Peale was built as a coal mining town, but strangely, it never had an active mine or at least had one only a short time. Former Progress Staff writer Andy Petkac wrote in an article on Peale in 1975 that shortly after Peale was born in 1883 higher quality coal was found near Grassflat, three miles west, and the newly opened drift mine at Peale was abandoned. As a result, according to Kyle Crichton, a former Peale resident who became nationally known as a writer for Collier’s magazine, “Peale was left as a small, clean, brand-new town sitting in a sylvan glade.”
The railroad was completed from Jersey Shore to Peale in July 1884, from Peale to Philipsburg by Feb. 1, 1885, and to Gazzam in July 1885, with a branch connection into Clearfield completed in December of 1885. Its main customer and indeed a partner was the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corp., which had been chartered in 1882 with its board of directors including W.K. and Cornelius Vanderbuilt, Clearfielders William A Wallace and B.L. Wallace and Lock Haven’s S.R. Peale. The C.B.C., to become an important producer in the Clearfield-Cambria-Indiana counties for many years, at the time owned 33,000 acres of coal lands in Ferguson, Knox, Jordan, and Morris townships of Clearfield county and Snow Shoe and Burnside townships in Centre.
Construction of Peale began in 1883. In May of that year, the Clearfield Republican weekly newspaper, printed a notice from George H. Platt, superintendent and engineer for the C.B.C Company, that bids for “building five blocks of six tenements each, 25 blocks of two bids each and 20 single tenements” would be received May 19. The buildings, it was noted, would be built some distance northeast of Kylertown.
A word picture of Peale as it appeared in 1885, two years after its founding, was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the article read in part:
“The town of Peale is located in Clearfield County on the line of Beech Creek Railroad, 75 miles west from Williamsport. It was named after Hon. S.R. Peale of Lock Haven and it is owned, and everything in it too, by the coal company. Two years ago the ground was a wilderness; today there are nearly 300 buildings and a population of 2,500 souls in the place, every one of whom is employed or dependent upon those who are employed by the coal or railroad company.
“Mr. (George H.) Platt, the general manager, is the founder and was the first settler of the town. When the tract of 23,000 acres was purchased, Mr. Platt drew up plans for the town. A large force of men were employed, lumber was purchased, lots staked off and in 18 months more than 200 houses had been erected. At the same time, work in the mines was being prosecuted.
“The town is built on a hill, at the base of which is Moravian Run, a branch of the Moshannon. It is divided into two parts by a small stream, which runs into Moravian Run. The place is laid out with all the regularity of a city. Down in the ravine at the foot of town are the slaughter houses, while all the stables in the place drain into the little stream which runs through the center. Far up above this, on Moravian Run, a dam has been built where ice is cut in the winter and stored in a house close by. A reservoir is on top of the hill back of town and distributing mains convey pure water into every street and from there to ever house in the place.
“The houses are all two story frame buildings, painted brick red. They are wainscoted to a height of about four feet from the floor and are plastered throughout. They contain three rooms on the first floor and two or three on the second, with the necessary outbuildings. They are rented at from $4.25 to $6.75 per month, including water. Altogether they are the most comfortable miners’ cabins seen throughout Clearfield County…The rent is not high for a man earning $9 to $12 per week and is about what is charged for house of other towns.
“The only store in the place is owned by the company. It is one long room, perhaps 100 by 40 feet, and everything is sold there that a man would likely to use. Liquor is the exception, as nothing intoxicating is sold in the place. An account is kept with each miner’s family and once a month the books are balanced.
“There is an Episcopal church in the village and a town hall, which is also used as as place of worship by the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Lutheran societies. There is a chief of police but his duties are merely nominal, as no one is ever arrested. There is no jail. At the present the town is without hotel accommodations, but the erecting of a house of entertainment is contemplated.
The government of all these people and institutions is confined to one man, Mr. Platt, the general manager. Fortunately he is a man of good judgment, wide experience with miners and affable manners so that he succeeds admirably in governing without causing any dissatisfaction…There is no form of town government, which indeed seems hardly needed. The men seem contented, and as they receive fair pay for their work, make few complaints.”
A history of Cooper Township, published in the Public Spirit, another Clearfield weekly newspaper, in the 1896-1900 period, reported that at the time Peale had “three schools, a large hall used for public meeting, etc., and had a large and handsome Swedish church which, however, was recently destroyed by the fire but which will be rebuilt as soon as the society feels able to do so. The history noted that the C.B.C. Co. was then employing a population of about 3,000. Samuel Green was listed as mine foreman at Pleasant Hill, William Fleming at Moravian, William Crichton at Grassflat and James Adamson at Knox run. The postmaster then was George Jacquish, who “also holds the position of outside foreman of these four mines.”
Andy Petkac, in the Progress article of 1975, reported that by 1936 only a handful of people lived in Peale. As early as 1912 the coal company was tearing down houses…. like wooden puzzles, each plank was numbered, loaded on railroad cars and shipped to the other coal towns. In the 1940’s, Mr. Petkac reported strip-mining operations took the old time drift miners rejected. The strip mines and two clay mines, left parts of Peale scarred with slag heaps and highwalls.

Winburne