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PRESENT-DAY PHOTOS OF SAMPLE RUN
Lower Sample Run. Instead of seven houses there now exists a business; Torrell's Auto Sales & Service at 37 Hines Street.
Across the street from Torrell's Auto Sales is the Clymer Borough Municipal Authority Sewage Plant.
Dixon Road coming into First (Upper) Sample Run. The home of Koches Is directly on the right.
Fifteenth Street connecting Route 286 with Dixon Road (atop the small hill), leading to the middle of Upper Sample Run. The small street to the left and right is Willow Avenue.
The lone willow tree in Lower Sample Run was planted as a seedling by John M. Shingledecker when he and his family moved there In 1953.
Photo courtesy of Jerry Hetrlck. All that remains of the old Sample Run Mine are a few old dilapidated buildings atop a huge mound of old boney coal. Though many mining operations in the Clymer area have closed, a large mine continues to operate just outside of town. What was known for many years as Mear's Tipple is now owned and operated by the Amfire Mining Corporation. Though some surface mining is done, most of the coal for export is trucked in from other mines and loaded into box cars at the tipple. Some of the coal is used at a nearby electrical generating plant, but most of it is exported to Japan.
The coal train is
operated by Corman of Nicholasville, Kentucky, and the company runs
two trains through Clymer per month at 105 cars per trip. (It takes 416 loads of
coal bought by trucks about six hours to fill these cars.) A coal train is being
loaded at the tipple in the above picture, and the unseen cars at the end are
awaiting their load.
The (Mear's)
Amfire coal tipple just outside of Clymer. Now closed, Sutter's Chemical Plant used to be the Clymer Roller Rink, Many boys and girls from Sample Run joined boys and girls from Clymer to spend hours going In circles in rhythm to Rock 'n Roll music on Friday and Saturday evenings. Admittance cost a quarter. Most skates then were the kind that clamped onto one's shoes, and invariably they would come off several times during the evening. There were some boot-like shoes available, but they were expensive. The above structure, however, was originally Dixon's Garage.
"The past is behind us, the present
is where we stand, the future lies
ahead- and though we can't see the end of the line, we forge eageriy on...,"
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