Bleak Reclamation: Anthracite Mining Moods

abstract:In the late 1960s, the hills and valleys of Pennsylvania’s anthracite region came alive via two imaginative responses to the devastation of strip-mined landscapes. Paramount Pictures’ The Molly Maguires and a multiyear Penn State landscape architecture study both attempted to make something new of gouged, abandoned land. This article argues that these reclamation attempts relied upon the attraction of melancholic landscapes. The filmmakers and landscape scholars assumed that places of ruin provoked emotional reactions in viewers and visitors, producing ambiguous moods of pastness. Part contemplation and part sensation, these moods were intended to make people feel their way into new, complex relationships with the land. This article analyzes these projects within scholarly conversations about the historical dimensions of landscape tourism, the narrative framing of Appalachia, and the cultural significance of moods.