The Coalport Area Coal Museum has just moved to our new site at 825 Main Street in Coalport, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Although new to us, built in 1900 and owned initially by the Samuel Hegarty family, the top floor housed the Coalport Opera Company.
Founded in 1991 through the efforts of the Coalport Area Museum Commission, a subcommittee of the GIDA, the coal museum was funded initially by contributions from the community, donations from businesses, and small grants. Until January 2026, through the courtesy of the now-defunct Coalport Borough Council, the museum had been held in the Coalport Community Building—formerly the Coalport Elementary School (which closed in 1977).
The majority of the artifacts in the Coalport Area Coal Museum have been donated by descendants and families of miners who wished to preserve the early hand-loading days of bituminous coal mining in “Glendale Valley.” Our organization is driven by the slogan—"To Enrich our Future by Preserving our Past”—continuously curating our exhibits with the addition of mining-related texts, files and documents well-stocked reference room.
The town’s name of Coalport, was derived from a timber rafts (known as ‘arks’) that were used to move coal down Clearfield Creek which passes through the center of town through to larger rivers. Our records show were over 250 deep mines within our Glendale Valley region—none as important as the Sunshine Mine” that began in 1900 and whose entrance was literally two blocks from the town’s center. Coalport’s downtown had the unique distinction of being named to the National Register of Historic Places back in April 2000, with fifty-one original buildings aiding the nomination.
Now one of the last museums dedicated to the coal industry that is still OPEN, our Coalport Area Coal Museum recently acquired our 501.c.3 non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service, and has also been roted for our vast genealogical resources. Our reference room houses over 100 local family histories, military record collection, 8500 obituaries, 1460 birth certificates, thousands of delineated gravestones from every local cemetery (many researched death certificates) along with drawerfuls of detailed files on all five local municipalities.
Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 17
825 Main Street
Coalport, PA 16627
Telephone:
814-329-9598
Email:
Website: