The St. Paul Echo

Mystery About Snow
Pile Long Preserved

Some years ago at Minersville, in
Schuylkill county. Pa., there was be-
ing operated the Wolf Creek washery.
The business of the operators was to
reclaim the immense banks of culm
that have been deposited on the sur-
face during the Civil war. With the
aid of modern machinery they were
able to obtain thousands of tons of
marketable sizes of anthracite at the
rate of about 2,000 tons a month.

These culm banks were more like
mountains than refuse piles, In some
instances they were 50 feet high and
covered the surface for approximately
a half mile, The culm was taken in
conveyor lines to a breaker, where it
was washed through revolving screens
and the coal reclaimed
One day in the month of June, when
the thermometer registered from 90
to 100 degrees. the operators uncov-
ered in the heart of one of the banks
a large guantity of ice and snow. They
reasoned that this deposit was covered
with culm during the winter. and, thus
protected from the air, had been pre-
served for about 44 years. It seemed
almost incredible that such a condition
was possible in the temperate zone,
and yet no other theory seems satis-
factory, The snow was protected, of
course, from the elements by the tons
of culm 50 feet high and hundreds of
yards wide: and vet. if this theory is
not tenable, then some scientist may
offer a more convincing theory for its
remarkable state of preservation.