Skip to main content

Coal Mining in Colorado

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal mining was the most important industry in Colorado. Coal mines served as the crucibles of empire, churning out the fuel needed to power the railroads, precious-metal mines, and smelters that…

Cokedale Historic District

Nestled along Reilly Creek about eight miles west of Trinidad in Las Animas County, the Cokedale Historic District represents an excellent example of an early twentieth-century coal camp in the Raton Basin coalfield. In 1906 the American Smelting and…

Colorado Fuel & Iron

The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a coal and steel company based in Denver and Pueblo. Most of its coal mines were located in southern Colorado. Its only steel mill was located in Pueblo. The firm came into existence as a result of a…

Colorado Fuel and Iron Strike of 1959

In 1959 union members at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) in Pueblo participated in a nationwide strike for better job security. The strike led to a nationwide shortage of American-made steel, while the suspension of mining operations and…

Las Animas County

Las Animas County, the largest county in Colorado, covers 4,775 square miles in the southern end of the state, east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was originally part of a larger Huerfano County that encompassed all of southeast Colorado. Today,…

Ludlow Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre began on the morning of April 20, 1914, when a battle broke out between the Colorado National Guard and striking coal miners at their tent colony outside of Ludlow in Las Animas County. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but the…

Minnequa Steelworks Office

Built by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) in 1901–2, the Minnequa Steelworks office building and medical dispensary in Pueblo are among the best examples of Mission-style architecture in Colorado. The dispensary helped provide healthcare to…

Pueblo County

Pueblo County covers 2,398 square miles in southeast Colorado, from the southern Front Range and Wet Mountains in the west to the Arkansas River valley and Great Plains in the east. It is bordered by El Paso County to the north, Crowley and Otero…

United Mine Workers of America

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) formed in 1890 to fight for better pay and working conditions for the nation’s coal miners. In Colorado the union was most active in the early twentieth century, with thousands of members joining strikes in the…

Vulcan Mine Explosions

Between 1896 and 1918, the Vulcan Mine in Garfield County exploded three times, killing a total of eighty-five workers. The successive blasts prompted action from labor unions and politicians to make coal mines safer. At the site of the Vulcan Mine today…

Western Federation of Miners

Founded in 1893, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was one of the largest and most active labor unions in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West. The union was involved in some of the most important labor disputes in Colorado…