Heritage and legacies run deep in small coal towns.

Some are buried beneath streets, sidewalks and homes in mines where men and boys toiled for endless hours in dark and dank conditions.

Others rise skyward, carrying the hopes and dreams of poor immigrants toward heaven, while still others expose the underbelly of men living with pure evil and hatred in their hearts.

Carbon County’s Borough of Lansford has all those stories — and more.

A four-hour trolley tour put together by the Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau in collaboration with local organizations and businesses aims to delve into the rich past of the small borough, which began as a collection of coal patches.

The narrated tours embark from the No. 9 Coal Mine and Museum on three Saturdays in December, including today, but community leaders had a glimpse into borough’s storied past in late November.

The visitors bureau launched the tours as a pilot program, gauging interest, garnering feedback and serving as a starting point for continued tours that build on the Panther Valley’s coal mining heritage.

“The No. 9 Mine is so popular; it’s one of the best attractions on our website,” said Mariann Rustad, education community relations coordinator with the visitors bureau. “But Lansford has more stories to tell.”

The bureau partnered with the No. 9, the Lansford Historical Society, the Borough of Lansford, the Jim Thorpe Trolley Co. and others to share those stories with residents and Carbon County visitors for the first time.

“This is really for us to be able to start something for people who love history from around the area and outside of the area,” said visitors bureau Marlyn Kissner, who was instrumental in putting the tour together.

“That’s what this tour is really about.” she said. “To shine a really positive light on all the places in Lansford.”

Bill Harleman, historical society president, said they’re excited and grateful to partner with PMVB to tell the borough’s story.

“Coal is number one here and has been for years and years,” he said, standing inside the No. 9 museum before the tour pulled out. “We’re lucky to have places like this that still exist and were persevered. We want to keep that alive.”

People milled about the museum, once a wash shanty where miners used pulleys to hang their dirty work clothes overhead.

Alex Shereba, vice president of Panther Creek Valley Foundation, which operates the mine and museum, said the miners changed out of their dirty, wet work clothes and hung them to dry each day.

Clean clothes weren’t important to the men who worked in the mine, he said, but dry clothes were.

Shereba spoke briefly, allowing people to explore the varied coal mining displays and also inviting them to walk over to the newest exhibit building, where the historic Dorrance mine ventilation fans are housed.

Notorious character

From there, the tour boarded a 30-passenger trolley for a journey through Lansford’s past — including the plotting and execution of an infamous murder that sealed the fate of the Molly Maguires.

The first stop was the home and tavern of Alex Campbell on West Ridge Street, where he grew and nourished his deep-seated hatred for mine boss John Jones, with whom he had words years earlier.

“This guy was just no good; he was responsible for at least three murders,” Bruce Markovich, historical society vice president, said while holding up a photo of Campbell. “He was just plain evil.”

Markovich explained how Campbell watched Jones’ every move from his home and about town from a cupola atop his own home, where the workings of the bar remain to this day.

“Inside that house they planned at least three murders,” Markovich said. “The Molly Maguires were in and out of here all the time. At least 15 of them were known to visit.”

This is also where Campbell, who would later profess his innocence before dying on the gallows in Mauch Chunk, made plans to murder Jones, according to Markovich.

The tour continued to the Jones home on West Bertsch Street, and then on to the Old Welsh Congregational Church, which dates to 1850.

Houses of worship

The wooden structure perched on a hillside along West Abbott Street served its community as a place of worship, a hospital during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a school and even a U.S. Army headquarters during the Great Coal Strike of 1902, Markovich said.

He told how one of the parson’s children died trying to jump a wrought iron fence that once enclosed the property, and how past ghost tours always turned up something at the church and unmarked graves that lie behind it.

“We figure there were about 70 people buried back there,” Markovich said. ”This place is very, very active. I work in this church a lot and there are times you just get that feeling that you’re not alone.”

From the church, the tour moved to the Lansford Historical Society on East Bertsch Street, where memorabilia from the borough’s heyday takes center stage and music from the Dorsey Brothers played in the background.

“The most famous people from town were the Dorsey brothers,” Markovich said of musician siblings and band leaders Jimmy and Tommy, who rose to fame in the big band era. “Anytime they were in driving distance of home, they were driving to Lansford — and they’d bring the entire band with them.”

Frank Sinatra was a featured singer, and people came from throughout town to hear the band and popular crooner perform, but even Old Blue Eyes didn’t have the clout to get a drink in town on a Sunday, Markovich said.

Across the street from the historical society, St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church opened its doors for visitors as part of the tour to view its gilded iconostasis and gleaming, crystal chandeliers.

“Miners built this church,” parishioner Susan Seavers said. “Families were assessed $100 to pay for this church.”

Founded in 1892, this is the parish’s third church, built in 1911 at a cost of $60,000 after its second church — constructed of brownstone and built in 1907 — burned four months after it opened, she said.

Parishioners salvaged stones from the destroyed church and hauled them up Route 902 to Summit Hill, where a chapel was built from them.

Miners’ families also funded the ornate stained glass windows and the large, imported crystal chandelier suspended in the middle of the church, she said.

“We’re very proud of it,” Seavers said of the chandelier, which she said was replicated for the 1939 film “Gone with the Wind.”

Scene of the crime

Lunch at The 80s Bar, a PMVB member, followed the stop at the historical society, where Dave Matsinko performed coal region folk songs.

The trolley later rolled down Patterson Street to the Old Jail, a small, two-story stone building designed and built with an eye to instilling a sense of law and order in a town where at least one person died at the hands of another each month, Markovich said.

The last stop was along Dock Street, near the original train station and where the telegraph office once stood. This was where mine boss Jones met his end at the hands of three Mollies that tavern owner Campbell paid $10 each to exact his vengeance, Markovich said.

“When the shooting started, Campbell was supposedly hiding up here behind a tree,” Markovich said, pointing to the nearby hillside. “He wanted to make sure that Jones was dead.”

Campbell returned to his tavern, donned a tall black hat and danced a jig atop his bar, Markovich said. He later claimed innocence in the murder, leaving his handprint on the wall of the county jail in Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, Markovich said.

“He cried from the time they took him out of his cell that morning, up until the gallows,” Markovich said. “He cried even though he had previously killed three people.”

Campbell hung on June 21, 1877, along with four others in Carbon County, and six others in Schuylkill County on what became known as “The Day of the Rope,” local historian Dale Freudenberger said.

“That was the largest mass hanging in U.S. history,” he said.

The tour concluded at the No. 9, and guests completed surveys to help shape future tours.

The visitors bureau would like to see more tours showcasing the rich history of area towns, and hand the Lansford tours over to a nonprofit organization, Kissner said.

Tickets for the remaining tours on Dec. 13 and 20 are available on the PMVB’s website, Stories of Lansford: A History Trolley Tour.