Tide/Tidesdale

Tide/Tidesdale was founded as a small coal patch town adjacent to Lucernemines.  Company homes, owned by the Tide Coal Mining Company, flank Tide's only street. Tide mines 1, 2, and 3 opened in the first decade of the 20th century under the supervision of George A Cokely. Tide Coal Company was among the many Indiana County coal companies acquired by or a subsidiary of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company. 

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 From "A Brief History of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Compay": "Because there were not enough local native-born men to work in the mines, the Coal Company looked to Europe as a source of inexpensive labor. A 1902 letter written by Lucius W. Robinson, an executive of the Coal Company, to an agent, states, 'We want mainly good Italians, Polanders and Hungarians. We do not want any colored help, or Irish, under any circumstances, nor do we want any hard coal strikers.' "

By the late 1940s many Indiana County mines, including those of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company were nearly exhausted, although large quantities of coal were now obtained through strip mining. Underground mining continued for a while in the Company’s towns. The first of McIntyre’s two mines closed in 1952, and the second one in 1963. It was clearly becoming obvious that strip mining was more profitable than mining underground. Because surface or stripmining no longer required company housing, in 1947 seventeen remaining towns including McIntyre, and their water rights, were sold by the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company to the Kovalchick Company in Indiana, Pennsylvania, for $890,000. The names of the seventeen towns, located in Indiana, Armstrong, Clearfield, and Cambria counties were: McIntyre, Coal Run, Iselin, Waterman, Lucernmines, Aultman, Ernest, Tidesdale, Coy, Luciusboro, Fulton Run, Nu Mine, Yatesboro, Margaret, Helvetia, Twin Rocks, and Yatesboro Lots.

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