David Boutwell sent this to me the other day and I am passing it along to you all, cause it’s just really darn interesting. I thought I knew a lot about the Coal Company Patch House, when I developed the kit. Turns out I was completely wrong.
Message: Good morning, I’m not sure if anyone has brought this to your attention yet, but i wanted to pass along some information about one of your images in one of your pdfs attached to the coal company house that i think is fascinating. One of the images refers to a line of company houses in “Ravensdale PA”. I wanted to see if I could find that same spot on Google Maps, so I searched for “Ravensdale PA”, and my search in Google Maps took me not to Pennsylvania, but to Washington State. As I zoomed in on Ravensdale Washington in map and satellite view, I could clearly see a line of houses and railroad tracks. And as I zoomed in on street view, I very quickly found the spot where that picture was taken…and all of those houses are STILL THERE, minus one of the smaller houses off to the left. In the modern street view you can see the two styles of houses see in the picture, and an empty lot where on of the smaller houses once stood. In researching Ravensdale Washington, I discovered that there was a mine explosion at the mine right across the road and tracks from those houses, where the men that lived in those houses worked, and 31 of them died. more would have died had an electrical failure not prompted the mining company to send 120 men home that very morning. There is a You tube video titled “100th Anniversary of the Ravensdale Mining Disaster”, which tells the story. Other webpages that talk about the history of Ravensdale and the mining disaster show that same pic that your website shows, and other pics of the area show those same houses in the background. Living in Northern Virginia, where I have lots of opportunities to make connections between modern locations and historical photos, I am fascinated by serendipitous personal discoveries like this (examples of which I can go on and on), even if, most likely someone has probably brought this fortuitous error in the image description to your attention. So, I thank you. Because of that error, I now have a building on my girlfriend’s autistic son’s HO gauge railroad track that has a HUGE real-life connection to history. And, every time I see that building, I will think of its connection to the past.
Thank you,
David Boutwell
Haymarket Virginia