Closed lignite mine in the Pescăreasa suburb of Câmpulung Muscel, part of the former Câmpulung coalfield, in conserved but inactive condition.
Mina Pescăreasa is a former lignite mine situated in the Pescăreasa neighbourhood, which forms the southern part of the municipality of Câmpulung Muscel in Argeș County. It was one of the constituent mines of the Câmpulung coalfield (bazinul carbonifer Câmpulung), a lignite-bearing zone extending through the Muscel sub-Carpathian region. Mining in this basin began in the late nineteenth century with small private operations, and Pescăreasa was among the mines worked by the Concordia company in the early twentieth century.
Following nationalisation in 1948, the mine was mechanised and modernised under successive state enterprises, becoming part of Întreprinderea Carboniferă Câmpulung in 1954 and renamed Întreprinderea Minieră Câmpulung in 1965. New concrete-lined shafts were sunk during the 1960–1965 modernisation programme. The mine produced lignite in two grades: a finer fraction for thermoelectric power stations and a coarser grade for domestic heating.
Closure came in the post-1989 restructuring period; one former employee recalled leaving in 1997 with redundancy compensation. The site subsequently entered a state of conservation, and government funds have been allocated on at least one occasion for conservation maintenance works alongside those at Mina Poienari and Mina Valea Îndărăt.
Mina Pescăreasa is located in the Pescăreasa district of Câmpulung Muscel, a municipality in the northern part of Argeș County in the sub-Carpathian Muscel region. Pescăreasa is today an integral suburb of Câmpulung; the mine and its associated colony of workers' apartment blocks were central to the development of this southern part of the town during the Communist era.
The Câmpulung coalfield (bazinul carbonifer Câmpulung, also referred to as the Schitu Golești coalfield) extends across the sub-Carpathian hills from the Slănic area in the west to Boteni in the east, crossing the territories of several communes. Lignite deposits of Dacian geological age were present throughout this zone, and small-scale private mining began at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1890 the basin was generating initial commercial interest, and the enterprise that would become known as Societatea Lignitul began operating in the area from around 1902.
By the 1930s several of the Câmpulung basin mines, including those at Pescăreasa, Jidava, Grădiștea, Jugur-Bărăția, and Godeni, had been consolidated under the Concordia company. On 23 October 1938 Concordia merged with the Lignitul and Schitu Golești societies to form the Cărbuni section of the Electrica department, which supplied three-quarters of its production to Bucharest. The 2,870 hectares of carboniferous ground then controlled by this entity included Pescăreasa among its mines.
By 1944 the mines of the Schitu Golești zone, including those operated by the Concordia group at Pescăreasa, were producing a combined 300–400 tonnes per day. Following nationalisation on 11 June 1948, the assets were brought into state ownership. The year 1948 saw the installation of the first mechanised longwall face with oscillating trough conveying equipment at Mina Pescăreasa, representing the beginning of modern underground haulage methods at the site.
In 1954 the state enterprise Întreprinderea Carboniferă Câmpulung was established under the direct authority of the Ministry of Coal Industry. Mina Pescăreasa was one of the founding constituent mines alongside Berevoiești, Godeni, Poienari, and Jugur. The enterprise headquarters were located at Pescăreasa. In 1965 the enterprise was renamed Întreprinderea Minieră Câmpulung and placed under the General Directorate of Coal within the Ministry of Mines; in 1969 it passed to the Centrala Cărbunelui Ploiești and in April 1973 to the Centrala Cărbunelui Petroșani.
Between 1960 and 1965 a major programme of modernisation and systematisation was carried out across the Câmpulung basin mines. At Pescăreasa this included the sinking or lining of new concrete-walled extraction and ventilation shafts. The programme also installed high-capacity funicular cable systems to transport production to CFR railway loading stations, and a sorting and storage facility capable of handling 5,000 tonnes of lignite in sixteen hours was built for the basin as a whole. A reinforced-concrete prefabrication workshop was also established for underground support elements.
The mine produced two grades of lignite: a 0–30 mm fraction for thermoelectric power stations, and a 30–400 mm fraction sold through the Combustibilul retail network for domestic and commercial heating. At its height the wider enterprise employed workers across six mines. A workers' colony was developed at Pescăreasa, with nine residential blocks of twelve apartments each constructed in the years around 1970. A medical section of Câmpulung Unified Hospital with thirty beds was established at Schitu Golești to serve the mining workforce.
The mine was in operation as late as the mid-1990s. At least one former employee recalled leaving Mina Pescăreasa in 1997 following the redundancy compensation programme (salarii compensatorii) that accompanied the post-1989 restructuring of the Romanian mining industry. The wider Câmpulung basin had produced 2,754,000 tonnes of lignite in 1988, and the subsequent closure of its mines was regarded locally as an economic catastrophe, reducing employment sharply and leaving the former mining infrastructure in decay.
Following closure the site entered conservation status. Government funds, including an allocation of 2.03 million lei by the Ministry of Energy, were at one point directed to conservation activities at Mina Pescăreasa alongside those at Mina Poienari and Mina Valea Îndărăt. The former Liceu Minier (Mining Lyceum) in the Pescăreasa area remained a reference point for the district's industrial heritage. A proposal to establish a small museum of mining at Schitu Golești to commemorate the wider basin was reported as being in preparation, though the former mine site at Pescăreasa itself had no evidenced heritage listing or museum function as of the consulted sources.