It took three years to wrap up a mission I launched at the start of the pandemic.

At the time, we were encouraged to take part in activities that avoided crowds.

So I decided to go off by myself to study and visit all of the major coal mine disaster sites in northeastern Pennsylvania, nearly a dozen.

I wanted to see firsthand the places where men and boys died, some horribly, while simply trying to put food on the table.

I went to lay flowers. But my goal was to do more than that.

I wanted to learn what went wrong, to understand what corrective measures, if any, resulted.

So I also visited libraries and cemeteries. I read court proceedings, newspaper accounts and autopsy reports.

The project was educational beyond measure, also heartbreaking beyond words.

I visited a few of the sites multiple times, such as hiking along the Susquehanna River to the remote scene of the Knox Mine Disaster at Port Griffith.

The most shocking tragedy, in my opinion, was the Twin Shaft Disaster near Pittston, June 28, 1896. It was a cave-in at 3 a.m. on a Sunday.

It took the lives of 58 men. Did they die instantly? Were some trapped, left to suffocate or starve to death? We’ll never know.

The victims are still there. No rescues were possible. No bodies recovered.

The shaft was sealed. Yet, to this day, the ground keeps sinking, requiring more backfill to be applied.

Another tragedy, the Baltimore Mine Tunnel explosion at Wilkes-Barre, was particularly gruesome.

The men were riding into the mine in train cars powered by a trolley-type electrical cable when their cache of dynamite exploded.

The June 5, 1919, tragedy killed 92 and injured 60.

The mine shaft was backfilled and the event largely forgotten. In fact, today the site is a Raymour and Flanigan furniture store.

It took 100 years before a memorial marker was placed at a nearby cemetery.

In another horror, 72 miners suffocated at the Pancoast Mine Fire in Throop on April 7, 1911.

Today, the mine shaft has been capped. It’s still visible, located directly behind the Throop police department building.

Of all of the sites, the worst in terms of numbers was the Avondale Mine Disaster near Plymouth.

It remains the greatest tragedy in the history of anthracite mining in the U.S.

On Sept. 6, 1869, a massive fire broke out in the shaft and ignited the coal breaker directly above.

All 108 men and boys working more than 300 feet underground slowly suffocated.

The coroner’s report describes their flesh being red from being starved for oxygen. Some had frantically stuffed cloth in their mouths to filter the air while choking to death.

After the fire was extinguished, the first two rescuers lowered into the vertical mine shaft also fell dead.

It took a bit of a hike to get to that site, a remote, abandoned location that emits a strange aura, a haunting sensation.

The anthracite coal that fired the Industrial Revolution exacted a high price.

Yet many of these sites are just now receiving memorials and historical markers more than a century later.

Better late than never.

Still, I hope a day comes when people begin to take an interest in sacrifices long overlooked.

These lives deserve to be remembered.