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…

Founded in 1878, Crested Butte is a former coal-mining town turned ski resort nestled in the Elk Mountains of northern Gunnison County. The town lies about twenty-eight miles north of the county seat of Gunnison and about the same distance south of Aspen…

Gunnison County, named for the American explorer John W. Gunnison, is a large, mountainous county in west-central Colorado. A sparsely populated county of 3,260 square miles, it includes some 1.5 million acres of national forest and wilderness lands,…

On January 24, 1884, the Jokerville Mine outside of Crested Butte was full of methane gas and exploded, killing fifty-nine workers. As the third-deadliest mine disaster in Colorado history, the Jokerville explosion demonstrated the dangers of coal mining…

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…