Westmoreland Coal Co history

On December 20, 1917, it merged with the Penn Gas Coal Company and the Manor Gas Coal Company.

The company's best year of the decade was 1923, when it earned $1.5 million or $7.58 per share on sales of $2.53 million.

In 1929 President E. B. Leisenring reorganized Westmoreland, creating a new company, Westmoreland Inc., to hold the land and the ten Pennsylvania coal mines, which then had a total daily capacity of 15,000 tons.

Surprisingly, however, Leisenring was able to return Westmoreland to the black by 1934 when the company sold 1.74 million tons of coal and made $42,000.

The company had bituminous reserves in West Virginia and, in 1947, Leisenring leased West Virginia coal lands from Westmoreland Inc. and began constructing a mine in Logan County that would have a capacity of 2,500 tons per day.

In 1961, Edward B. (Ted) Leisenring, Jr., succeeded his father as Westmoreland's president.

Bigger than Westmoreland--in 1962 it produced 2.3 million tons of coal and had sales of $11.8 million--it was in poorer shape financially.

The merger was a success and, in 1964, the new, larger Westmoreland made two million dollars on sales of $25 million.

In 1969, he purchased another new mine with a yearly capacity of 1.5 million tons.

In 1974, he completed the $13 million Ferrell mine in West Virginia.

By 1982, 82 percent of Westmoreland's sales were in steam coal.

Unfortunately, cutting tool prices fell and American Carbide ceased operation in 1987. It had a thriving coal brokerage business and in 1983 it created American Carbide Corporation to manufacture and market the carbide-tipped cutting tools used in coal mining and mine roof drilling.

In 1984 Westmoreland joined with four other producers to develop the Dominion, the most modern and efficient coastal coal terminal on the East Coast.

By 1986 Westmoreland Energy president Chuck Brown had garnered commitments to three projects including one at the United States Army's Fort Drum in New York State.

In the spring of 1988 it sold a portion of its Kentucky reserves.

Despite efforts such as these, results for the first two quarters of 1992 were disappointing.