Afterdamp: The Winter Quarters and Castle Gate Mine Disasters

By R. Craig Johnson

In the aftermath of his father's death in the railway yard, young John Rossing left the Colorado family farm in search of work to support his mother. The roads traveled took him into the tough, gritty, and dangerous world of late 19th and early 20th century mining in Colorado and Utah and the people who labored in the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Andrews Johnson
• Release date: Dec 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959009009

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AFTERDAMP © 2022, R. Craig Johnson. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission of the publisher. 

AFTERDAMP: The Winter Quarters and Castle Gate Mine Disasters

By R. Craig Johnson

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022915149

ISBN: 978-1-959009-07-8 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-959009-01-6 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-959009-00-9 (Ebook)

Published by Free Spirit Publishing, Park City Utah

Cover Photo: Coal Miners at entry of Winter Quarters Mine No. 1 in 1882 with permission of the Western Mining & Railroad Museum, Helper, Utah.

Contents

Shovel

Preface

Introduction

1 Man of the House

2 Cañon City

3 Glenwood Springs Coke Ovens

4 New Castle Mine

5 Into the Mine

6 Scofield

7 First Entry into the Winter Quarters

8 Meeting Teija

9 A New Religion

10 Life with Tetti

11 First Child and a Panic

12 The Eight-Hour Day and Statehood

13 A Second Son

14 Scofield Explosion

15 Aftermath

Photo Gallery

16 John Joins a Union

17 Post-1901 Strike

18 War and Influenza

19 To Castle Gate

20 Last Explosion

21 Aftermath

Afterword

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix B

Afterword by Carla Kelly, historical fiction author

Preface

Shovel

March 8, 1924 was a warm, spring Saturday morning in the thriving coal mining town of Castle Gate, Utah. Just before 8:00 am, eleven-year-old Ina Lindsay woke up from a bad dream and ran into her Aunt Emily’s arms. Sobbing, she cried: Something’s happened to grandpa.

By the time Ina was two, she had lost both parents. Her father was killed in the Stag Canyon Mine disaster in New Mexico that killed 263 coal miners. Then, her mother had died from tuberculosis. Now, her grandfather, William Morrison, was working with her two uncles, eighteen-year-old Daniel and sixteen-year-old James, in the Castle Gate No. 2 mine. William was working about halfway into the mine and the other two men were working over 1.3 miles deep in the mine at the furthest point from the entrance.

As Aunt Emily was comforting Ina, they felt the earth shudder. As they waited there for a few moments not knowing what had happened, the earth shuddered once more. Almost immediately, the mine rescue whistle began to scream throughout the valley. Wives, fathers, brothers, sons and daughters, as well as other miners, dropped what they were doing and started running uphill toward the No. 2 mine, which was about ½ miles away from their homes. Before they could get near there, another blast exploded out of the portal. Fearing another explosion, they stopped and waited, then some of the braver ones began to inch forwards to the portal. Rounding the corner below the portal, to their horror they saw black smoke boiling up from the entryway and saw that the tan tiled change house, next to the portal, had been blown apart, and its roof obliterated.¹ Miners’ street clothes that had been left in the change house were tossed about, mixed in with the debris that had been blown out of the mine. As the rescue whistle continued its scream, the people began waiting for news, some sobbing, some clutching each other, and some showing the inevitability of what would be found, knowing the rescue teams would be conducting a recovery, not a rescue. None of their loved ones or friends would be coming out alive.

Isabelle W. Ellis, To See the Sky (Carbon County Historical Society, October 2012), p. 18.

Introduction

Shovel

The headwaters of the Price River trickle forth cold and clear in the high Rockies of Central Utah. First called Fish Creek, the small stream meanders past the old coal mining towns of Clear Creek and Scofield. As the stream cascades down Scofield canyon, it joins the White River just east of the ghost town of Colton, there becoming the Price River. Then it continues to wind down Price Canyon past the ghost town of Castle Gate and through the struggling towns of Helper and Price. A few miles to the south the river has largely disappeared after the diversions for domestic water, irrigation, or industrial use. Then, what little remains that has not disappeared in the desert sinks, joins the Green River above the town of that name. The Green River then runs south to join the mighty Colorado River just before it plunges into the 46-mile-long Cataract Canyon with its numerous enormous rapids. ²

The Price River flows past some of the most dramatic landscape in Utah, known as Castle Country. The layers of millions of years of sedimentary rock loom up in castle-like formations, hundreds of feet thick, forming what is now known as the Colorado Plateau. Those formations overlie rich bituminous coal seams laid down by enormous plant beds, during what geologists call the Cretaceous Laramide orogeny beginning some sixty to seventy million years ago.³ After millions of years, Mother Earth’s collection of sand, mud and sediment covered those beds, during which she squeezed the sediment into rock and squeezed the plant remains into coal.

The Price River also links two of the most horrific mine disasters in United States; the May 1, 1900, explosion at the Winter Quarters Mine No. 4, and the March 8, 1924, explosion at the Castle Gate Mine No. 2. In each explosion, hundreds of men were killed. On the morning of May 1, 1900, the Winter Quarters Mine No. 4, sometimes called the Scofield mine, owned by the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, which in turn was owned by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW), exploded killing over two hundred men. Twenty-four years later, on the morning of March 8, 1924, a series of three explosions, one after the other, rocked the Castle Gate Mine No. 2, owned by Utah Fuel Company, likewise owned by the D&RGW. The explosions were a series of cascading blasts so fierce that they blasted the portal doors off their hinges in the mine entryway, blew a mine car and other debris over a mile away as if shot from the barrel of a gigantic shotgun, and obliterated the change house one hundred feet southwest of the portal. One hundred and seventy-one men were killed in the Castle Gate explosions, with one additional man in the rescue crew killed when his rescue equipment failed, and he immediately succumbed to the poisonous ‘afterdamp’ gases that resulted from the explosion.⁴

In 1875, two men were sent into the Winter Quarters area to secure the coal mining claims of the newly formed Pleasant Valley Coal Company. After staking the claims, they spent the winter holed up in what was then called Grizzly Gulch, before heading home. In early 1877, a party of miners from that company started work on the mine, but became trapped there in late fall by early snows until the following February when, out of supplies, they struggled their way through the deep snow to Utah Valley, thus giving the area the name of Winter Quarters.⁵ The high grade coal at Castle Gate was discovered in 1881 by surveyors for the D&RGW railroad looking for a route through the Wasatch Mountains, just to the west of a farm owned by a Mormon polygamous settlor named Teancum Pratt, who had attempted to establish the farm in 1880. Seizing the opportunity to unload his unprofitable farm, in 1883, Teancum sold it to the railroad.⁶

Today, you might decide to take a leisurely drive from Spanish Fork, Utah, east into Spanish Fork canyon along highway U.S. 6 and 50 as it ascends to Soldier Summit.⁷ Soldier Summit was originally used as a train shop and support facility for the D&RGW railway. You may see the foundations of the houses that reflect the once small but thriving community at Soldier Summit. Descending from Soldier Summit, you might decide to turn onto State Route 96, which leads to the town of Scofield and then onto Clear Creek. Entering Scofield, you can turn left to visit the town cemetery, which for a town of the current size, seems rather grossly and obscenely large. The cemetery is located at 39°43’33.64 N, 111°09’25.07 W. Walking amongst the decaying and fallen tombstones, you will see scores of graves testifying to the same catastrophic event, Tuesday, May 1, 1900. These are graves of many of the miners killed in the Winter Quarters explosion. It is unknown exactly how many men were killed on that date. Estimates place the number at a minimum of two hundred but may have been as high as two hundred and forty-six, while some put the number at over three hundred men.⁸

Retreating to the main highway U.S. 6 and 50, and turning east headed towards Price, you will promptly come to Colton, an abandoned town now marked only by a train sign and the abandoned Hilltop Store on the north side of the road. Here, and where Fish Creek and the White River join, the Price River is formed. The main railroad trunk track line is there joined by the side tracks that wind upwards into Scofield, Clear Creek and Winter Quarters. Further down the canyon, as you near the remnants of the large rock formation called Castle Gate, which until the 1960s, stood as the guardian of the lower canyon but whose southern buttress was blasted away by the Utah Department of Highways to widen the highway, you will see small seams of the bituminous coal squeezed between the layers of rock.⁹

Immediately after you pass the Castle Gate formation, you come to the junction of U.S. Highway 191, which winds past the now demolished Utah Power Company power plant, and which is also the site of the dismantled town of Castle Gate, incorporated in 1914. Turning north and driving a short one and a quarter miles on U.S. 191, on the left you will find the entrance to the small dirt road leading down to the Castle Gate cemetery. Most of the headstones and wooden tomb markers are gone. Most of the graves now have only a simple white rebar cross showing a date, March 8, 1924. On these white rebar crosses, there is no other information or even the name of the person buried there. The only indication of those buried under those crosses is a plaque at the cemetery entrance. Here lie many of the 172 men killed in the March 8, 1924, Castle Gate mine explosions.¹⁰ As you stand in the cemetery parking lot with the cemetery on your right, if you turn left and walk down canyon on the trace of an overgrown road that follows Willow Creek, a scant hundred yards later you will come to the actual portal of Castle Gate Mine No. 2. The opening is now barred from entry by iron grating and an earthen fill. The portal, surprisingly small, belies the vast expanse of underground workings beyond, which continue well beyond a mile from the portal. You will feel a solemn presence often felt only at major battlefields, such as Gettysburg, as you realize that this is the very portal through which the one hundred and seventy-two men walked in and from which their broken bodies, often in pieces, were carried out. Standing in front of the portal, if you turn around one hundred and eighty degrees, you will see the canyon wall on the far side, where the blast shot out a mine car and other debris, scattering them on the far hillside — some over a mile away. If you walk over to the banks of Willow Creek itself, the steep bank has small pieces of coal from the mine that are scattered about. Pick one up, roll it in your fingers and then, in respect, leave it where you found it. You may even see some of the burned timbers — likely from the explosion itself — that flank the debris dump that spills into the small creek. Stay for a bit and thank the miners whose lives were lost for what you have now. If you have children, take them with you. Let them see, feel, and learn from that sacrifice. It is a moving experience. Turning back to the mine portal, if you walk another one hundred feet down the canyon, you will see the remains of the change house floor with the tan mosaic tiles still poking out of the dirt, where the men last stood joking and conversing with one another before walking into the mine to start their eight o’clock morning shift, unaware that a few minutes later, they would be torn to bits by the explosions. Their presence can still be felt, guarding the entrance. At the right time of day, you might also hear haunting moaning from deep underground emanating from the mine herself.

Turning back again to U.S. 6 and 50, a few miles past the U.S. 191 turnoff and at the mouth of the canyon, you will daylight into the town of Helper, where once the mighty steam locomotives assembled to form pusher/puller combinations to move freight up through the canyon and where modern diesel/electric trains still add engines to make the grade up to Soldier Summit. You might stop and see the giant coal miner statue or spend a couple of hours in the fantastic Western Mining and Railroad Museum, where several floors of exhibits are filled with information concerning the lives of the early miners and families, to be followed by lunch at the Balance Rock Eatery & Pub with its all-day breakfast and scrumptious burgers.

Bituminous coal had been discovered in the United States near Richmond, Virginia before 1730. Commercial mining of anthracite coal began in Pennsylvania in 1820.¹¹ While today coal is quite disfavored and is the enemy of environmentalists, and is often blamed for pollution, asthma, climate change, and other maladies, in the 1800’s it was a highly prized commodity. Due to its high heat value, transportability, and ease of use, coal became the fuel of choice to feed the growing iron industry in the United States and to power the industrial revolution and to warm businesses and homes.

To produce the coal to meet the demand, large quantities of miners were required, which in turn relied on large amounts of black powder to loosen the coal. By 1860, America was producing some 25,000,000 pounds of black powder, most of which was used in coal mining operations. Black powder is comprised of approximately 10% sulfur, 15% charcoal and 75% saltpeter (nitrate). The nitrate originally was in the form of potassium nitrate mined from India and controlled by the British. In 1857, Lammot du Pont began the production of black powder using sodium nitrate from Chile. Known as B Powder and although it was slightly less powerful and more hygroscopic than the potassium nitrate base, due to its lower cost it quickly became the powder of choice in coal mines.

Black powder is not a detonating or high explosive like dynamite. Rather, it is classified as a low explosive or a deflagrating explosive.¹² It is the slowest acting of the explosives. Black powder generates a large shearing action, which shears the solid coal into large lumps resulting in large fragments that are rather easy to hand load. Dynamite, on the other hand, is much more intense and creates much smaller shattered pieces that was not as desirable for the consumer uses that favored lump coal. Black powder was sold in twenty-five pound wooden-cased kegs that the miners often pierced with the sharp end of their pick to open. It was sold in varying particle size, with the larger particles (f, c, cc) and larger being used for blasting, while the very fine particles (fff and fffg) were being used in black powder firearms. Black powder burns with a very hot flame and produces a high volume of gasses, including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Consequently, its use in underground mines is now restricted by law.¹³ As well-known and described in 1914, the flame from the explosion of black powder lasts 2,500 to 3,000 times longer than the flame from permissible explosives (certain types of dynamite) and is hotter, thus more likely to ignite gas or dust that is present in the mines.¹⁴

Mining today remains one of the most hazardous of all occupations. This is particularly so for underground mining, whether it is hard rock mining¹⁵ or underground coal mining.¹⁶ Every shift that an underground miner starts, with lunch bucket in hand, hard hat and electric light on his head, self-rescuer on his belt and steel-toed boots on his feet, when he walks into a portal, or is lowered down the mine in a cage from the hoist, or rides the man trip down a decline, begins with the knowledge deep in his heart that he may be seeing the outside for the very last time. Every spouse, watching the miner headed down the road to the mines, knows and fears that that may be the last glimpse seen of that miner. They silently pray that today they will not hear the screaming, pulsating emergency whistle from the mine that summons the rescue crews.

Entering an underground coal mine is like being swallowed alive by a living being. The roof is often called the back. The sides of the tunnels are the ribs. Even the working face, where coal is being removed, is the breast.¹⁷ An underground mine is also the domain of the dark. Dark underground is not the same as dark above ground. Underground, the dark is tangible. It is something that the miner feels and breathes. Above ground, even on the darkest of night, there is some light and a feeling of space. Even going to the deepest part of your basement, wrapping yourself in a blanket at night with all lights turned off, the darkness is like day compared to the dark in a mine.

Underground, neither space nor light are present. It is a different kind of dark. It is more like a thick, viscous fluid, permeating into every nook and cranny until there is no space, just the deep eternal darkness. It is cloistering, something that envelopes and surrounds you. It is not just seen, it is felt. It is not merely the absence of light, but rather the presence of something that is almost tangible and omnipresent. It is the dark spirit of the earth herself, jealous of anyone who has dared to enter its domain, which flows inward like an underground sea, filling any void and covering all who enter. The sharp shafts of light from the miner’s lamp may briefly pierce the dark, but as soon as the light shifts direction, the light is no longer tolerated and the dark again flows into the space, chasing the light away.

Death in an underground mine is often sudden and violent. Sometimes it is a slab of rock that, without warning, falls from the back of the mine, crushing a miner. It can be an unexpected explosion from ignited methane gas that was not properly vented. A chance bump that occurs blasting coal from the walls of the mine and killing a miner standing alongside.¹⁸ It can be an underground fire that fills the tunnels with smoke and gas causing the miner to quickly don a self-rescuer to try to buy another thirty minutes of life. But as his lips blister by the heat generated by the self-rescuer as it strips out the carbon monoxide from the air and in so doing, heats the mouthpiece to almost the boiling point, in desperation he may pull the self-rescuer mask off his face and take a gulp of cooler, but deadly air. Immediately, the afterdamp, whose poison, stealthy and unnoticed, is inhaled, renders the miner unconscious. He simply falls and dies, his life stolen by the afterdamp. Sometimes it is decades later after he has quit the mine, when he wretches up his last cough of black sputum and lung, as the consumption and black lung disease from the decades of coal dust, finally squeezes off his ability to breathe as he suffocates lying in bed.

At least in developed countries such as the United States, mining practices have significantly changed since the 1900s. Miners are some of the highest paid people in any blue-collar industry. No longer do miners have to shop at the company store. Miners can keep what they earn, beholding to no one other than the tax man, the bar tab, or the union. Miners generally go to work with the expectation that they will return home to their loved ones at the end of a shift whether they are working in underground mines or open pit mines. Company officials now take pride in winning the Sentinels of Safety Award for the safest underground mines. Government regulations are much more rigorous, and mine owners are held accountable for injury and accidents in the mine. But the miner always needs to remember that these gains were not brought about by accident. A single miner standing alone against greed, economics, or political power has no more voice than the canary held in its cage in the mine and risks being as readily sacrificed. And, like the canary, the lone miner has value only for the measure of his output and not his value as a living person. The progress made in mine safety and living conditions were brought about only by the brave efforts of men and women who gathered together in unions and risked their homes, their livelihoods, often their religion and their safety, by saying enough is enough and by convincing more enlightened companies and politicians that their very existence depends on the health and safety of the miners.

This book has been written to give the reader an insight into the daily lives of the miners and their families, both in good times as well as in times of disaster. This book is dedicated to the coal miners of Carbon County, Utah, and particularly to the over 1300 of them who have died in those mines. Many thanks to my many reviewers, including the efforts of Ms. Susie Headlee, at the Parsons Behle & Latimer, Boise office, who greatly helped to correct my horrible and stilted grammar.

Prior to 1921, the Colorado River above the confluence with the Green was called the Grand River. The name was changed in 1921. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_(Colorado_River_tributary) accessed September 17, 2018.

Mark A. Kirschbaum, Introduction: Geologic Assessment of Coal in the Colorado Plateau, US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1625-B (undated): accessed August 20, 2016, http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1625b/OPEN_FIRST/TitlePage_TOC.pdf.

The Free Dictionary, s.v. afterdamp, accessed August 23, 2016, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/afterdamp/ An asphyxiating mixture of gases, primarily nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, left in a mine after a fire or an explosion. See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firedamp, accessed September 26, 2018. According to Wikipedia, damps is the collective name given to all gases (other than air) found in coal mines in Great Britain. The word corresponds to German Dampf, the name for vapour. Alongside firedamp, other damps include blackdamp (carbon dioxide and other gases), poisonous, explosive stinkdamp (hydrogen sulfide), with its characteristic rotten egg odor, and the insidiously lethal afterdamp (carbon monoxide and other gases) produced following explosions of firedamp or coal dust.

Edward A. Geary, The Proper Edge of the Sky, the High Plateau Country of Utah, (University of Utah Press, 1992), p. 209.

Wikipedia contributors, Soldier Summit, Utah, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed July 11,2016, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_Summit_Utah. Also, Geary, Sky, p. 242. In what perhaps is the ultimate irony, in the summer of 1900, following the Winter Quarters disaster when the mine was hiring replacement miners, Teancum, the son of the seventh wife of the Mormon apostle, Parley P. Pratt, who was murdered when Teancum was six, hired on at the Winter Quarters mine, finally getting a job that he hoped would pull him from a life of misery and poverty. He was killed three weeks later in a roof fall, leaving his two polygamous wives widowed.

Wikipedia contributors, Soldier Summit, Utah, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed August 20, 2016, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_Summit_Utah. Soldier Summit is named for a group of Southern soldiers who in July 1861, while on their way from Camp Williams in Utah to join the Confederate Army at the onset of the Civil War, were trapped in an unexpected snowstorm at the Summit, in which a few died and are buried there.

J. W. Dilley, History of the Scofield Mine Disaster: A Concise Account of the Incidents and Scenes That Took Place at Scofield, Utah, May 1, 1900. When Mine Number Four Exploded Killing 200 Men (South Carolina: Nabu Press, 2010), pp. 181, 182, 192, 196. The miners were contract miners, not employees. Also, because many of the men and boys were immigrants, without families, didn’t speak English, and there was no effective check-in process, it was impossible to determine the actual number of people in the mine. Furthermore, many of the miners in the mine were torn to bits by the explosion or crushed by the resulting cave-ins and roof falls caused by the explosion. Newspaper accounts, notorious for exaggerations, tossed out numbers from 300 to 400 men, including the San Francisco Chronicle (300–400 men), the Malad Idaho Enterprise (300 men), the Rock Springs Miner (250 plus more in the mine). A close estimate was derived from the number of mine lamps, but because of the force of the explosion, bodies were often not intact or could not be identified. Now, all miners going underground must tag in by placing a brass tag on a board set up for this purpose in the dry, or change house, where they change into their mining clothes from their street clothes, which shows they have entered the mine. When they exit, they then reverse the process by tagging out.

Coal is classified in 4 ranks, with lignite at the bottom with the lowest heat value, subbituminous, bituminous and anthracite at the top. The ranks are the result of the degree of time, pressure and alteration from the original plant material that created the bed. Anthracite is very hard coal, with carbon content 86–98% and heat value of 13,500–15,600 Btu/lb., bituminous has a carbon content of 46–86% and heat value of 11,000–15,000 Btu/lb., subbituminous has carbon of 46–60% and heat value of 8,300–13,000 Btu/lb., and lignite has carbon content of 46–60% and Btu of 5,500–8,300 Btu/lb. Certain bituminous coals, with the necessary structural integrity, are highly valued for "coking: for the iron and steel industry. http://theenergylibrary.com/node/12170, accessed August 20, 2016.

Castle Gate Disaster, Sun Advocate, March 11, 2014, http://www.sunad.com/archive/2014/03/castle-gate-disaster-echoes-to-this-day-2/. While most of the historical accounts have an exact number, there is some doubt as to the exact number expressed in some of the accounts. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the change house, where the miners had ‘tagged in’ before going into their shift in the Castle Gate portal, was blown up in the third explosion on March 8, 1924. As such, the tags were knocked off the tag board, resulting in a problem having an exact count from the tags and relying only on recovered bodies.

Du Pont Explosives Department, Blasters’ Handbook: A Manual Describing Explosives and Practical Methods of Use. 15th Ed. (Wilmington, Delaware: E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Inc., 1989). P. 2.

Du Pont Explosives Department, Blasters’ Handbook: A Manual Describing Explosives and Practical Methods of Use. 15th Ed. (Wilmington, Delaware: E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Inc., 1989). P. 2.

Du Pont, Blasters’ Handbook, p. 25.

Du Pont, Blasters’ Handbook, p. 26.

J. J. Rutledge, "The Use and Misuse of Explosives in Coal Mining," Miners’ Circular 7 (1914), Preface.

Hard rock mining is basically mining for metallic minerals such as silver, gold, copper or other base metals which are often found disseminated through a rock matrix, as opposed to coal which is found in layers. Gregg Olsen, The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America’s Richest Silver Mine (Crown,2005). See, for instance, the account of the Sunshine Mine Disaster near Kellogg Idaho, where on May 2, 1972, ninety-one men were killed by an underground mine fire. The account is written in the fine historical account of this most deadly U.S. underground hard rock mine disaster.

Wikipedia contributors, List of Coal Mining Accidents in China, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed July 11, 2016, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coal_Mining_Accidents_in_China. Also see C. Chu, et al., Statistical Analysis of Coal Mining Safety in China with Reference to the Impact of Technology, Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, accessed January 2016, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0038-223X2016000100016&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en. Underground coal mining has suffered the largest number of catastrophic mine accidents of any type of mine. In the United States, the Scofield mine disaster ranks 5th of all time deaths; the Castle Gate ranks 10th. The largest coal mine disaster in the United States occurred in the Monogah Nos. 6 and 8, Monogah, West Virginia, on December 6, 1907, where 362 miners died. In the United States, better mining practices, improved government oversight and modern safety culture has thankfully reduced the mine fatalities to a handful each year. Still too many, but a vast improvement over the past. But even today, outside of the United States, coal mine deaths in other countries, such as China, exceed many hundreds each year. From 2001 to 2012, there were 51,232 fatalities in Chinese coal mines.

Eric Twitty, Blown to Bits in the Mine, A History of Mining & Explosives in the United States, (Western Reflections Publishing Co., 2009) p. 36.

In underground coal mining, the earth is always settling as the coal is extracted. A bump occurs when the ground suddenly settles all at once. These seismic events can be minor or extremely serious. The serious events include rock bursts, in which the coal in a pillar suddenly and unexpectedly blasts outwards, often with sufficient force to kill or injure a miner standing in close proximity. Even more serious is the collapse of an entire working area.

1

Man of the House

Shovel

It was midsummer, 1886. Johnny Rossing was at home working in his mother’s garden in the small but budding town of Denver, Colorado. He hated that work, shoveling and weeding, and he didn’t particularly like the vegetables that she grew. At sixteen, he figured that he should be doing much more manly things, like hunting, or driving a team for wages, or even working on the Denver and Rio Grande Railway ¹⁹ like his father. After all, he was big and strong for his age. They had moved to Denver two years ago after his father got a job in the rail yards coupling cars. To ready a train for departure, it was necessary to strategically organize the order in which the cars were hooked into the engine to make up the train. The cars that would be left at the closest destination were placed at the rear of the train. Those whose delivery would be further, would be closer to the engine. The Denver and Rio Grande Railway track left Denver, then stopped at Colorado Springs, then on to Pueblo, Colorado. It then climbed up the Royal Gorge and into the lead and silver mines and smelters in Leadville, Colorado. Johnny’s father was responsible for ensuring that each car was properly joined, or coupled to the car in front of it. He did that by opening the car coupling on both cars to be joined, then when the engine moved the front car into the coupling of the back car, he would close the coupling with the coupling bar and make sure the manual brakes were open. Sometimes the cars came too soon, or the engine would unexpectedly back up and the car being coupled would be jammed hard against the front car. The coupler had to carefully watch the cars moving into position and stay clear of the coupling itself, especially if a car was arriving too soon or was going too fast. But it had been a good job and one that paid excellent wages for the time. In fact, as a coupler, his father was making almost five dollars a week, cash money. After rent and supplies, he had about a dollar left over a week, which his wife carefully stored into the small box hidden by the fireplace.

Johnny knew that soon he would be out earning his own living. He looked forward to his first real paying job. As he rested on his hoe, he dreamed about even getting a small farm of his own someplace. After all, Denver seemed to grow grain and hay very easily, despite the occasional hail storm. As he sat pondering his grand schemes, he saw a rider coming down the road at a fast trot. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon and a rather strange time for a rider to be coming by. As he drew nearer, he saw that it was Brent Jasper, who Johnny had met a couple of times before. Brent was the foreman of his dad’s rail crew. Brent had a terrible look on his face. Johnny sensed that something dreadful had happened. Seeing Johnny, Brent pulled up his horse and worriedly asked if his mom was at home. Johnny replied she was in the house. Brent handed Johnny the reins and went to the door, knocked. When she answered the door, Brent took off his hat. Johnny could see that the news was bad. Even before he heard it, he saw his mother slump down in the doorway and heard an unearthly scream from her mouth, as Brent tried to hold her. Johnny tied the horse quickly to the hitching post and ran over to his sobbing mother. Confused, Johnny pleaded for Brent to tell him. Brent turned, face ashen, and said, Johnny, your father has been killed in the rail yard. Caught between two cars. Terrible accident. Came right away. You will have to be the man now. Stunned, Johnny slumped down beside his mother and placed his arm around her. Brent slowly backed away and muttered something about Johnny coming down to the station as soon as he could.

After he got his mother inside the house, sitting on the bed and calmed down, she pleaded for him to get to the station and find out what happened. Having no horse or buggy the normal half hour walk seemed to take decades. Johnny half walked but mostly jogged, his stomach feeling sicker the closer he got to the rail yard. As he approached the station, he saw the small crowd of men gathered around the sheet-covered, still body of his father. The darkening still moist red blood had stopped seeping through the sheet but still puddled near the boots that Johnny recognized as belonging to his father. He tried to pull down the sheet, but the men restrained him. You shouldn’t see this, Johnny, said one of the men. We will get him down to the undertaker and cleaned up a bit before you see him. Go home now, son.

How did it happen? Johnny blurted.

Don’t know, said one of the men. Your father had gone over to set up a coupler for a car. There was a second car coming down pretty fast and at the same time, the train started to move backwards a bit to hook the rear car. We heard a scream, and by the time we got there, your father was pinched between the couples and died almost immediately. He was gone before we got the cars uncoupled and got him out of there. Don’t know if he had problems with the coupler and got between the cars or hadn’t anticipated the train backing into the cars, or what. Easy to happen. You get back home, boy, and comfort your ma.

The next few days muddled past. The undertaker had done a great job in cleaning up his father, but the undertaker had covered the lower half of his father’s body, so it could not be seen in the casket. Even covered, it was obvious that the lower half had been crushed. There had been no money in his father’s pockets. Money had never graced the family. But the D&RGR had given them the