The coal of Pennsylvanian age lies under a large part of the central part of the Lower Peninsula. It lies near the surface in Ingham and Jackson Counties, and the thin overburden of glacial drift means that it can be (was) mined by open pit methods. In the center of the coal-bearing area (in Midland County) coal is found at depths of about 800 ft.

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The seams vary in thickness, but the major coal-producing strata are approximately 1 m thick. The largest deposits found (and the most coal mined in the past) were in the Saginaw Valley. The height of production as 2 million tons in 1907, but most mining operations had stopped by 1920 except for some small-scale, open pit mining near Williamston, which ended in 1952. The major problems are:
    **the low quality of the coal, including a weak structure that makes the coal break down into powder when transported
    **thin seams
    **the limited lateral extent of productive seams
    **large amounts of overburden (glacial drift), which handicaps the utilization of open pit methods.
It is estimated that the coal reserves of Michigan total 220 million tons, of which half could be mined with the present technology.

History of coal mining in Michigan
   The last deep coal mine in Michigan closed in 1952. However, at one time more than 160 coal mines once were active here. Although coal is found throughout the central part of the Michigan Basin, mining has mostly been concentrated in the southern and eastern sections of this area, because here the coal seams are close to the surface. Most of the mining activity was concentrated in Bay, Saginaw, Tuscola and Genesee Counties.
    Coal was first discovered in Michigan around 1835 as pioneers built a grist mill west of Jackson. In 1837, Michigan’s first geologist, Douglass Houghton, who investigated the coal deposits, reported: "In the bed and bank of the (Grand) River...at Jacksonburgh, the sandstone is seen to embrace a bed of bituminous shale...intermixed with very thin layers of coal."
    Much of the coal existed in outcrops, which made excavation easy. In 1840 settlers extracted 1,500 bushels of coal for local use. But because there were few steam powered engines or large institutions to provide the markets essential for the commercial development of coal mining, it would be almost 20 years before their needs spurred the commercial mining of coal.
    Jackson rests at the southern tip of the Michigan Coal Basin, which was formed between 270 and 330 million years ago as the region fluctuated between swamps and drylands. During the Pennsylvanian Period of the Paleozoic Era, oceans flooded Michigan, then receded and dried out to become swamps. The process was repeated many times leaving layers of decayed vegetable matter pressed between layers of rock. Eventually the compressed matter became coal. It takes up to 60 feet of vegetable matter to create five feet of coal. Most of Michigan’s veins of coal, which undulate like subterranean waves, are less than five feet thick.
    The coal near Jackson lay in seams that tapered off at both ends and were broken into pockets by limestone and sandstone. These deposits were near or above the surface because the Michigan Basin is tilted with its eastern edge, running between Albion and Saginaw, closest to the surface. Most mining has been done along that edge; deposits in Montcalm and Mecosta Counties, near the center of the basin, are too deep to mine economically.
    Following the Civil War, mines honeycombed the area northwest of Jackson. Unlike latter-day Michigan coal mines, Jackson mines snaked haphazardly, following the largest deposits of coal. Most Jackson mines were 30 to 50 feet deep, though some were deeper. The Woodville Mine, which eventually covered several hundred acres, had a 90 foot vertical shaft. The bituminous (soft) coal it produced worked well for lights and as fuel to power locomotives and large factory engines. During the early 1860s half of its coal went to Detroit, where its home offices were located. Its coal was also used to light the streets of Jackson.
    Jackson’s mines included slope and vertical mines. In a slope mine the miners walked into the ground, then rode cars down an incline to the coal seam. Most of the mines, however, were entered by a vertical shaft.
    Once the men were underground they lit lard lamps. Beneath their feet pools of water covered the floor. The air was rank, despite ventilation shafts. The galleries created as the coal was mined were reinforced with timbers. In the galleries the miner walked---stooped over. Reaching the seam where the last mining had occurred, he chipped away at the base of the seam and then drove a wedge between it and the limestone ceiling to break out the coal. He loaded the coal into an iron car pulled through the galleries by the underground mules. Many times miners chipped away at the coal seam while laying on their bellies--in wet mud that made up the floors of the mines.
    The iron cars were hooked to an "endless chain" that was powered by the steam engine. Full cars, attached at any point on the chain, were emptied into chutes that fed into railroad cars or wagons. Often railroad companies built tracks up to a mine so that cars could be loaded directly. Wagons hauled coal into town, but most of it was shipped by railroad.

    The average miner mined 2.5 tons of coal a day. Jackson coal mines dominated the Michigan coal market through the 1870s and into the 1880s. In 1870 the Jackson Weekly Citizen boasted of "inexhaustible beds of bituminous coal, capable of furnishing fuel to the fires of central Michigan for an unlimited number of years." By 1880, the eight Jackson mines were producing 125,000 tons of coal annually, and employed 250 men.
    The coal, however, was not an unlimited resource. The Woodville Mine near Jackson exhausted the seam of coal it had been following and closed in the mid-1880s. Other mines suffered similar fates as advances in railroad transportation made it easier and cheaper to import coal from outstate. In Michigan, coal mines in Bay and Saginaw Counties, which opened in the late 1880s, offered better quality coal and were much larger operations than the ones in Jackson County. In 1900, Bay and Saginaw mines produced almost 800,000 tons, while Jackson mined a meager 23,317 tons, only 3 percent of the state’s output.
    Coal mining in Michigan reached its zenith in 1907 (see chart below). The state produced 2 million tons in that one year, compared to 3.4 million tons during the entire previous century. In Jackson, however, only a few small mines operated into the early 20th century, and they produced only for local consumption.

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Jackson’s abandoned mines filled with water. People dumped rocks and dirt into the shafts and covered them with timbers. Open flooded mines froze in the winter providing children with skating ponds. Mine buildings were razed of left vacant, eventually succumbing to fire or the weather. Equipment rusted.
    In 1952, Michigan’s last coal mine-located in Saginaw County-closed. In over a century of production Michigan mine had produced approximately 46 million tons of coal.
    Today, over 300 million tons of coal remain beneath the Lower Peninsula. An open-pit mine operated briefly in Ingham County in the mid-1970s, and in the early 1980s mining operations leased thousands of acres of former coal mines in anticipation of strip mining coal left behind by earlier operations. But the drop in coal prices halted production before it began, and thus, current production of coal in Michigan is essentially nil.

Some of the images and text on this page were taken from various issues of Michigan History magazine.

This material has been compiled for educational use only, and may not be reproduced without permission.  One copy may be printed for personal use.  Please contact Randall Schaetzl (soils@msu.edu) for more information or permissions.