For the first 70-some years of its history, Jerome's landscape was dominated by this black, man-made mountain of coal mining wastes. The "bony pile," as it was called, loomed from the hillside south of Penn Avenue and east of Cross and Fifth Avenues.[http://www.coalcampusa.com/westpa/windber/jerome/jerome.htm] Only a few plant species were hardy enough to survive the hot, dry, nutrient-deficient conditions on the pile. Heavy metals, including arsenic and mercury, leached from the pile into the immediately adjacent area. The pile was removed in the 1970s, when local electric generating stations found cost-effective ways to render additional coal out of the pile. A much smaller scar remains on the hillside.