Recollections of the Mahanoy Plane

When writing Murder at Mountain Tavern, I relied on childhood memories of growing up in Frackville, Pennsylvania, the namesake of the town Mountain City, which is the site for most of the story’s plot. In describing Aubrey McKenna’s (main character) explorations of the town, I refer of points of interest such as the Mountain Tavern, a real site on Broad Mountain where the novel’s fictional murder takes place.

One other significant geographical reference in the story is to the Mahanoy Plane, an actual site in historic Frackville where anthracite coal was hauled in the late 1800s to early 1900s from the Mahanoy Valley below up the side of Broad Mountain to Frackville for distribution to market.

During the 1950s my friends and I spent many hours exploring the ruins of the buildings at the head of the incline which had been an engineering marvel in its heyday. Unknown to most, other than Frackville locals, the site was designated as historically significant by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission with a historical marker in 2007.The attached link is to a current video exploration of the ruins of the original buildings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSXvV...