A History of Coal Mining 5
In Las Animas County, Colorado

Ludlow Memorial

Seventy percent of the tent dwelling miners were non-English speaking. The Irish potato famine and the crash of the Greek currant market had led to an increased flood of these nationalities into the U.S. in the late 1900's and early teens. For 290 days, until the day after Easter, this melting pot bubbled away. Hot-headedness on the part of the single Greek men in the tent colony, and an exaggerated sense of fear on the part of the militiamen, led to a general trading of gunfire which sent women and children either out of the tents and into the adjoining sandy draws, or into pits dug beneath the tents. A young boy was shot through the throat. True disaster was initiated with the burning of the tents by the militiamen. Many people escaped into the draws, but one group was trapped in their smoky hole. All but one of the dozen or so women and children eventually died of suffocation and smoke inhalation. Late in the afternoon, the Greek leader of the strikers, Louis Tikas, returning to the smoldering colony and was captured with another man. Both were shot to death and their bodies were left lying on the ground for days.

The strikers went berserk and began shooting up and dynamiting mine properties all through the area. Federal troops were called in to calm the inflamed situation and they remained until December 7, 1914, when union leaders called an end to the strike. The mine operators had not given in: the unions had simply run out of resources. The following year saw construction of a monument to the dead at Ludlow, erected by the UMW, around the death pit. The memories of that time are bitter.

But tragedy did not end with the end of a strike. As production was increased during the years surrounding WWI, mines which had lain idle for years were reopened. Frederick and Cornell and Quinto were reopened, having hardly been started in the first decade of the century. In the midst of this resurgence, another disaster. On April 27, 1917, smoke thundered out of the Hastings Mine entrance. The Bureau of Mines report contains the following synopsis: Two fire bosses made their rounds preparatory for the day shift on that morning and made written reports that the mine was clear of gas. A trip of cars on the rope going in after 9 o'clock had reached a point 1,300 feet in from the mouth when the explosion occurred. The trip rider neither heard nor felt anything unusual, but the explosion caused the signal wires to cross and rang the bell to stop the trip. He then saw smoke coming up the drift and ran out to sound the fire alarm. He was the only man in the mine who escaped. Smoke issued from the main slope and the south manway, and an investigating party of officials followed fresh air until the affected area was reached. Oxygen breathing apparatus crews were then required, as practically all stoppings in the "B" seam were totally wrecked and heavy falls had occurred. Gas and dust had spread the explosion to every section of the mine. One apparatus wearing man died under the severe strain, and another collapsed from over-exertion but recovered. The explosion was caused by a mine inspector striking a match to relight his safety lamp about 120 feet from the face of the South entry...The total loss of life: 121 men.

Following the temporary resurgence of coal mining spurred by the war, the district went through a major withdrawal. Even during the war, by the end of 1918, all of CF&I's coking operations were closed except the Segundo ovens, which continued to supply coke until they burned in 1929. Most of the coking operations had been moved to the Pueblo Steelworks, where modernized “bi-product” ovens allowed the capture of coking gases, yielding naphtha and benzol. CF&I closed thirteen mines in the decade of the twenties, six of these in the Las Animas District. Starkville, Engleville, Sopris, Berwind, Tabasco and Primero were all closed, leaving only the Frederick and Morley Mines operating.

Mr. Talico L. Cher was contracted to demolish many of these mines left idle by the retrenchment of the coal industry (for safey reasons and also to deny accommodation to potential “squatters”). With a bulldozer and a large supply of dynamite, he closed many of the openings from Walsenburg to Trinidad. Mine buildings and tipples, washers, trams and tracks were all scrapped. Even a locomotive left on Osgood's Colorado and Southern spur up to Hastings coke ovens was “blown to hell.”

But Cokedale was thriving. ASARCO was gathering abundant ores from Mexican mining operations, keeping its El Paso smelter in high demand. The twenties were seen as a “fun” decade by the people of Cokedale. By then the number one mine had been exhausted. Rooms and pillars had been fashioned in the coal seam all the way to the property boundary. The pillars were pulled out as they worked their way back. This led to the death of a Chinaman on whom the roof collapsed a bit too quickly, an event which inspired the nicknaming of the draft as the Chinese tunnel. (This account may be off in one detail: a Bureau of Mines map labels the exit as the “Japan opening.”)

The Cokedale number 2 mine was opened, also close to town but on the east rather than the west side of Reilly Canyon. By the late teens, this mine too, was not yielding enough coal, so ASARCO looked farther up the creek. There, nine miles up, they bought out the Thompson-Mitchell Coal Company's Mine, on which development work had just been completed. The mine became known as the Bon Carbo Mine and it was the major producer for the Cokedale ovens for some thirty years.

The depression hit hard in the early 30's. Even Cokedale had to struggle. Miners all over the county were opening their own little wagon mines, trying to supplement their pay and trying to provide personal heating needs. Small, low quality deposits were mined along the stream banks and high up among the cliff banks of sandstone which bound the eastern edge of the basin. It is said that the Cokedale Mine officials helped open up one of the upper seams in the abandoned Number Two Mine to aid the local population with its heating needs.

Many miners went to work as stone cutters and masons constructing major public works such as the Rugby and Brodhead Schools, the Trinidad Plaza, bridges and so on. Through WWII, the Frederick, Morley and Cokedale Mines all prospered. But soon afterward ASARCO decided to close the Bon Carbo Mine and the Cokedale ovens, a move which was forced by safety problems in the mine, union pressures to be paid for "dead work" (of which there was plenty in the dirty coal seam being worked), and the basic economics of running a mine so far back underground. The 12 square miles of mined-out area left the working faces and rooms up to 6 miles from the portal. So in 1947, having given the town a month's notice, the property and all its machinery was sold to Florence Machine Company. In a move unique to the county, the residents of Cokedale bought back their houses at rates averaging $100 per room and $50 per lot, thus saving the site from a company town's most common fate: becoming a ghost town, shortly to be bulldozed.

But CF&I was not done in the Trinidad coalfield. With the continued need for good coking coal for its' steelworks, the corporation decided to open the Allen Mine farther west along the middle fork of the Purgatoire. In 1951, the tracks were picked up from the Tercio spur, and new track was laid out to the new mine site. As Morley closed in 1956 and Frederick in 1960, the Allen Mine became the sole Las Animas producer of CF&I coal. It was a highly mechanized mine, employing modern coal cutting equipment and extracting far more per man hour than the previous mines in the district. In the early 70's, CF&I opened its Maxwell Mine, near the Allen.

In 1996, the Allen and Maxwell Mines, by then known as the Golden Eagle and New Elk Mines, were closed because of unprofitability. A couple of years later a strip mining operation began in Lorencito Canyon but was bankrupt within six months, leaving a large hole and little else. At that point, the railroad tracks running west from Jansen to Stonewall were removed.