It all started in 2006, when the county asked for proposals to replace the heating systems and Honeywell was the only company to respond. Honeywell also offered to pay for the difference if its cost-saving estimates were incorrect.

Image Schuylkill County officials are considering using natural gas to heat the prison and courthouse instead of locally mined coal. Credit... Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Even if the price is not better, Mr. Rhoades said, an anthracite company should get the county contract if it is close to competitive, to ensure that the jobs, taxes and heritage stay in the county. He declined, however, to set a number on how “close” the anthracite bid should be.

Mr. Rhoades said it would not be the first time the county had considered local culture in making financial decisions. He cited the recent sale of a historic building to Pennsylvania State University, rather than to the highest bidder, because the university could better preserve the building’s history.

Nearly all of the nation’s anthracite deposits are in eight counties in eastern Pennsylvania between the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. The coal is prized because it burns longer and produces less acid-rain pollutants since it has a high carbon and low sulfur content.

But what makes this brittle and lustrous rock, often known as black diamond, so hard and pure is that it is often deeper and under greater pressure than other forms of coal, which also explains why it is expensive and dangerous to extract.

The anthracite mines in this area have seen more than 30,000 deaths since 1870, and were the site of the great anthracite strike of 1902, which propelled the United Mine Workers of America to ascendancy and required the intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt as most of the East Coast’s major cities were on the brink of losing heat.