I'm here in Shoaf, Pennsylvania, and in the woods behind me is a set of abandoned coke ovens.

And there used to be about 43,000 coke ovens in western Pennsylvania.

And they're a core piece of our industrial heritage.

Here in Shoaf, there's about 300, and we're going to see as many as we can today.

Coke ovens completely transformed the landscape of western Pennsylvania, both physically and socially.

This is not a video delving into how Coke is produced, or what it's produced for, or how it affected the landscape.

I have a whole video planned for that in the future.

For right now, you can follow me into the forest and see the remains of coke ovens and industrial western Pennsylvania.

I'm Noles.

I'm here to explore and explain I know I said this video wouldn't be about what Coke is or what it does, but I thought a little bit of background is warranted while you watch me stumble through the forest.

If you aren't from coal country, you may have never heard of a coke oven before.

Here's the gist of it.

Coal is a valuable resource, and it was used for everything from heating houses to running locomotives to fueling machinery that made the industrial world run.

But one thing coal wasn't good at was making iron and steel.

It's too impure.

What you need to do is cook the coal or cook it.

And the best kind of coal to coke is Connellsville coal from the area southeast of Pittsburgh.

So hundreds of towns were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s to both mine the coal and coke the coal on site.

Then the coke was shipped by rail to the iron and steel mills in Pittsburgh, where it was mixed with limestone and smelted iron ore inside of a blast furnace, making pig iron, which was then mixed with a few other ingredients to make steel.

These small towns that were built to serve the mines and coke ovens all looked pretty much the same, with rows of identical houses, a company store, a church or two, a coal mine, and huge rows of coke ovens called batteries.

I'll get into the cooking process itself a little later, but that's the role these coke ovens and shoaf played in the industrial world.

Enjoy the rest of the video.

So I think right now we're on top kind of of one of the banks of coke ovens.

So I'm going to continue on the trail this way.

And maybe the sole route us around to the front, except there's a lot more Jager bushes that way.

We finally made it through the thickest part of that.

I could not have held my phone up that whole time and actually made it through.

And the rain has just continued to pick up, so we'll see how long we last here.

But there's a old tower over there of some sort.

And here's what looks to be some kind of old conveyance system.

Probably going through that tower.

Like I said, I really didn't do any research about this place before coming here.

I just kind of wanted to see it.

You know, going in blind and, Oh, my exploring park here has alerted me that there is.

Okay, we are on top of the coke ovens, so we've really got to watch our steps here.

This is the, funnel.

I don't know what they call it.

The Oculus, where they would have put the, coal into to be coked.

And there's another one over there.

So we're on top of the row of ovens.

And right now, one of the rows of ovens.

So we need to get down from here in a careful way.

So I'm going to turn the camera off again and we'll we'll find our way around down to the bottom.

So you can kind of see just the size of the operation of these coke ovens.

So I'll meet you down there.

As we move along the top here, trying to find our way down so we don't fall into a Coke oven.

There's been these rocks or these stones, which are really cool because there's this groove in the middle.

It's a little bit wider than your foot.

And that would have been where the rails were placed, because as they took coal out of the mines, they would have put it in railroad cars centered along this top of the row of ovens, and had Hopper cars drop it into each of the the holes in the top of the ovens.

Oh, that rain is just awful.

So that's a neat little artifact.

And I think there's still some rails in place over on one of the other rows of coke ovens.

And we're going to try and find our way over there.

So we're making our way.

Still on the top.

These are very, very long rows of coke ovens, and you got to be super careful.

There's a hole.

I don't know how that goes.

coke ovens There's probably a ten foot drop, but it's neat to see the brick underside of the whole thing.

And we'll get a, an inside view later on when we get down to the bottom.

I'm getting eaten alive.

Not eaten alive.

I'm getting torn to shreds by these.

Oh, these Jager bushes here.

This is a difficult exploration to put up lightly, especially with the rain, which thankfully has seemed to let up.

So I'm going to continue along here, and I'll bring the camera back out when, it gets a little easier and there's more things to see.

So finally, after like a half hour of doing the Pennsylvania shuffle, which means the limbo underneath Jagger bushes, we found something, in my opinion, worth seeing.

And that's this what appears to be a bridge, carrying the the railroad over or onto the elevation of the coke ovens, which means, finally, we've left the row of coke ovens and we can actually move down between them, which is where I wanted to go, but we took a wrong turn.

So I'm going to duck under here for.

Now, look at that.

That's pretty cool.

So one track of Larry cars would have gone that way.

There's some Larry cars, I believe, sitting over there.

And that just means the small railroad cars that were used to transport coal out of the mines and right into the coke ovens, I believe they were only used in coke operations, but I actually don't know that for sure.

So here we've got some of the retaining wall, the front facing off of the ovens.

And I don't know if there's just some collapsed ovens here or if I didn't start over here because otherwise they're in pretty good shape.

And here is one.

Yeah.

This place is overgrown.

Here's a couple over here with their brick front.

So the way that this would have worked for coke ovens is the coal would be mined just up the road from here a little bit brought over on these Larry cars and dumped in the top of these furnaces.

And I'll see if I can get an inside view.

So Duncan is furnace is.

Yeah.

Through that little oculus in the top into these big beehive pits.

That's why they call them beehive coke ovens, because they kind of look like a beehive.

And then a man would have built a brick door, rebuilt the brick every time that the coke was cooking.

And Coke just means cooked coal and built the door up, tore it down every shift.

I don't know how long it took.

It takes, coke to bake, but it's a lot of work.

Instead of just having a metal door.

But you need to have an airtight seal so that it bakes correctly.

And here I believe there was about 300 of them.

So I don't know if that means 300 men working every shift or how, you know, if you ten did more than one oven.

I'm not sure.

But anyway, that's really cool.

I think there's going to be some better opportunities, maybe a more clear area to see some more of these up close.

So this is the central, part of the operation here.

It shows there was a line of coke ovens, as you can see along this bank, which would be, east, I believe.

And then there is a line of coke ovens over here on the West Bank.

And this is so cool.

I can't wait to get over there.

But obviously there's a little bit of a, obstacle in my way.

Those are some of the remaining Larry cars that would have dumped the coal into the ovens.

I just love that those are still there.

And there's some I don't know what those tall metal pieces would be used for in that red building in the distance is the tipple.

We are going to work our way over there.

It's just a little hard to get around, as you know, and I'm thinking we were just discussing this, that this would have been a railroad down here, because I don't know this for sure, but I think that the coke would have been moved out of these ovens and just kind of pushed, I would guess, into, hopper cars here or railroad cars.

Anyway, that would have been about at the same level as the top of these stone walls.

Made it for convenient to get the Coke out of here and shipped up to Pittsburgh.

We're going to continue on down this way.

I am so glad that it stopped raining.

I am so glad that we're finally out of the thick of the forest, and we can actually see what we came to see.

I lied, we actually are going the opposite direction because we can actually walk this way and so here's that trestle that we saw just a little bit ago coming in this way, and branches into, there's other trestle branches off of the same point.

So, you know, spurs off the main line.

And this carries coal to the one, row of coke ovens while this carries coal to the other row.

And I think that's really cool to see that they're both still standing.

That's actually pretty amazing.

Also kind of amazing to me that they're built out of steel and not wood.

What is what I would expect.

So it looks like the trail splits off in four ways here.

Well, let's go this way.

There, there, here, and there.

Let's go up here.

Oh, wow.

If you look down there in the right.

You.

Here's that red hose again.

Oh.

There's a ladder over there.

Do you feel like catching a million infectious diseases?

I can't say I do.

There's so many other things in life, and there is this thing decomposing on the bottom.

Wow.

Oh, look at that.

Oh.

Oh.

What'd you find?

What'd you find?

I'm gonna put it on camera.

That's crazy.

Oh, that's so cool.

Look, the whole body.

Oh, oh, I'm gonna make my way over there.

This, I am guessing, its the mine.

What's left of it.

That's frightening.

Actually, over here is the the tipple.

And one thing I remember reading about Sheriff long ago is that this tipple is not original.

It was actually moved here from the anthracite region in the 50s.

I don't know why that.

Seems like a lot of effort to go to, for example.

But, anyway, here is the here's the something.

It's a bunch of steel beams and that, that trestle keeps coming across.

So I'm gonna make my way over here and see what she found.

Show that off to the camera.

Oh, man.

Oh, yeah.

That's so cool.

See the film?

It was laying downhill basically.

Here we just passed the pelvis, and that's the other half to tells us where the tailbone and the spine connecting pelvis.

The spine continues up in this here.

Sure does.

Appears is the front arm bones and some of the red bones.

But I don't know why this piece got dragged all the way over here.

Wow.

Part of the spine.

I'd bet that scavengers.

What a place to die.

Yeah, well, it's.

Oh, speculum.

Fracture.

Shoulder blade.

Oh, here.

This is one of the discs that goes in between the vertebra.

Wow.

And spine.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

That you didn't think you'd get a biology lesson watching this video, To the viewers.

All that.

What a place to die.

Oh, toe bone.

And these are state of the art archeological techniques you're using here.

Just kicking it.

Just kicking it around.

As we're making our way over.

This is one of those things where, like, you can't really tell unless you're kind of looking at it from a big picture standpoint.

This is a steam shovel that we're walking through kind of right now.

That's the very front of it.

There's like the window for the cab, and then it's the arm going up.

I'd like to know when the last time is that this thing operated.

Look at that.

I mean, that's that's some thick American metal right there.

That might be like a retaining wall.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll get around somehow.

There's the temple.

Yep.

There's the, There's the tray or I don't know what you call it.

Like I'm not a machinist.

Okay?

I'm just in awe of these machines.

Just the size of them.

There's some more coke ovens over there.

There's a steam shovel with it.

You know, this might not be a steam shovel, but that is over there anyway.

Very cool place.

So as I'm climbing through this, machine, whatever it is, not a steam shovel.

I think I just kind of wanted to show off all the cool, little intricate pieces, and then we're getting closer to these Larry cars over here.

We're not going to be able to get up there because there's up on top of a, you know, 20ft stone wall, basically.

But, it's cool.

Anyway, to finally be over on this side of the, the aisle and there's that.

I just love this so much.

Hey, there we go.

Look at that thing.

Hope we can climb up in.

It might sound really dangerous, but, I want to do it, so I hope you can.

That is a classic Coke oven shot right there.

Look at those things.

That pine tree just really kind of brings the brick out.

I think maybe that's a weird thing to say about coke ovens.

I don't know.

I'm actually amazed how good shape these are in.

Like, I really think they should be preserved as a museum.

I just because a lot of them.

I'm sure you've seen coke ovens in the woods.

If you're watching my videos and you're from southwestern Pennsylvania.

That these things are usually not in good shape.

They're usually really hard to tell that they actually work coke ovens at all.

But, like, look, I mean, it's got leaves covering the floor.

It's got, it's, you know, perfectly round hole in the middle and it's got the bricks are still lining the inside.

There's no rubble.

That is not usually the case for coke ovens.

What a beautiful place.

And over here, this is pretty cool.

You hear that twig snapping in the background as I try to move around?

But over here.

It's a Manitowoc, which I guess is a brand of steam shovel.

And then there's the roof of some building down below, and I hope I can get down there.

That looks even clearer.

And I could really use a walk that I don't have to duck and weave through the woods.

We're going to make our way over there, I promise.

So I just finished saying that these are actually in pretty good shape.

And then we come to the other side of the pine tree, and they have trees growing out of them, and they have, roots, I guess, that have pushed all the dirt down into them.

So it's a generalization that they're in good shape.

And in fact, if you can tell on camera how that wall is blowing out, that probably doesn't have very long for this world.

So for the most part, they're in good shape.

I also noticed this while we were walking over.

And if somebody in the comments can tell me maybe why this is the case, that the railroad here is definitely a broad gauge.

It's not your standard railroad gauge.

And my guess is just because the railroad here existed for the only purpose of of getting stuff into and out of the coke ovens, and it didn't have to interact with other railroad lines, so they would have built it, a little wider.

But if somebody knows that, which I'm sure somebody does, because my viewers, are nerds just like me, then you can, drop that in the comments and let me know, because I'm I'm very curious.

Oh, here is probably the most collapsed coke oven we've seen so far.

I can actually see sunlight coming out of this one.

Oh.

Wow.

Look at that thing.

Oh, there is no roof at all.

Oh, man.

That's your typical coke oven in Pennsylvania.

Thank goodness for this ladder.

I don't know how else we would have gotten down below.

We're making our way over this pile of junk, to be frank and.

Into this clearing area.

Look at that.

How cool is that?

Whoa!

What is that?

I thought my first thought was toilets, but it doesn't make sense.

Oh, weird.

It's some kind of molds of some sort.

Maybe.

What are we looking at?

Oh, look at that entrance door.

Oh, and some rolls of something.

An old window.

What are these?

Are this tires that started.

Smells funny in here.

Yeah.

That's styrofoam.

So there's a bunch of styrofoam molds.

For some reason.

And then kind of looks like old carpet.

But I'm doubting that that's what that is over there.

That's weird.

All right, I walked ahead a little bit.

I'm gonna let her catch up, and, I'll meet you over there in the tipple.

I think we found our first piece of coke.

There was a lot of coal in the woods, you know, but that's not really anything to to write home about.

But this, I think, is a giant chunk of baked coal, which is kind of the whole point of this operation.

I don't know, 100%, but that's I've seen pictures and that looks pretty much like it.

And I'm wondering with these big tubes or cylinders, whatever.

Yeah.

If this is some kind of Coke product as well, I don't know what the purpose of this would be.

Is this how they shipped coke to steel mills?

But then if that's the case, why, why would they be left here?

And there's a different kind of shape there has a, v notch in it, and some of these look like giant screws on one end.

So I wonder if this is some kind of electrical component.

That kind of makes me think of that.

I don't know.

Again, somebody in the comments, if you know, let me know.

Because this channel is half me sharing stuff and half me getting answers from people who actually know what they're talking about.

So keep heading up this way.

There's bags of stuff under there.

Again, don't know what that is.

And here we go.

The famous tipple of Shoaf.

I don't know if it's famous, but I know about it.

Yeah.

Here's a whole bunch of, presumably Coke over there.

And some noise coming from the background, but not around here.

All right, this is what I'm talking about.

But these old steps, are they sturdy?

We'll find out.

What?

So far, so good.

I love this door.

Just here.

I don't think I'd last very long in a horror movie.

Okay, now.

Okay.

Sturdy so far.

I've got such a tight grip on the handle right now.

Okay, well, people have been up here before, and they've made good use of their creative resources.

I see.

Whoa.

Okay.

There's the first kind of structural deficiency.

Wow.

So as I said, this tipple was, I guess, deconstructed in the anthracite region and brought over here, I guess as an upgrade to the tipple that they had.

I don't know what happened with that tipple, why they couldn't use it anymore, and why specifically this one, why they wanted one from so far away.

Just part of the mysteries of shelf.

But I know that this, functioned until 1972, when the coke ovens shut down.

And to my knowledge, shelf was the last operating coke ovens in the entire country, at least of the beehive variety.

And that's just because of EPA regulations, rules or emissions regulations.

I should say that kind of prevented them from being able to pump out all these noxious gases into the atmosphere anymore.

So I'm going to go down below again.

I don't really feel like moving around up here.

I'm going to go down below again and see if there's steps, maybe somewhere else that I can find something I love about all these abandoned places that I go to.

Is this the kind of the mosaic of years of abandoned stuff?

See if stuff like, okay, oil can, whatever gas can, and you have random pieces of cloth you have like lids from, from, little coolers and thermoses.

You have the old railroad tracks, of course, that have been here the whole time.

You've got schools of wire.

It's like, how many decades did it take to accumulate all of this stuff?

Clearly, it wasn't just in one fell swoop.

It was abandoned.

I mean, things have been stacking up and getting abandoned over time.

And that's what I find so cool about these places.

It's like it's the past frozen in time, but it's also like a mosaic of different years of of people coming here and and checking places out and leaving a little bit behind, which I don't like when it's litter.

But, you know, it adds to the whole the feeling of the whole place, I guess, is my point.

So down here where we are, I think there would have been railroad tracks through here, and these, hoppers would have dumped coal coming out of the mine into the railroad cars.

I think, and there are some old buildings over that way.

And I don't know if we really should go any further that way, but a big pile of presumably Coke here.

Pretty cool stuff.

And I know I used the word cool about 500 times in each video, but I don't know a better adjective to describe all this stuff.

I just, I love it.

I think it's so cool.

I'm gonna make our way over here, see if, we can see anything.

We can even get around this side.

But that little conveyor belt that looks like a cool photo up.

Is the door open?

Hopefully.

No, it isn't so, there's not much to see in there anyway, I. How about this little doggy door on the tipple.

That's not what I was expecting.

There's some stop and start buttons.

There's a lot of conveyor belts.

Actually, the camera is picking this up even better than my eyes are, because it looks dark to me.

Well, that is cool.

I don't know what's underneath that, though, so I'm not going to walk in there.

But that's inside of a tipple for you guys.

All right, you get to see my face again.

Now that at the end of the video, here's the tipple behind me.

The Larry cars.

One row of coke ovens on this side.

I think that we've seen pretty much everything, and it is starting to rain again.

So we're going to head out and, thanks for watching.

Thanks for coming along with me on this adventure.

I like doing these where I kind of go in blind.

I mean, I know a few facts off the top of my head.

Because that's how my brain works.

I can't help it, but otherwise, I don't know what I'm looking at.

So I want to share it with you and see if, you know.

And, so that's that's shoaf.

That is the the tipple and the coke ovens of Shoaf.

And, thanks again for watching.

If you want to see more videos like this, make sure to subscribe.

I'll see you next time.