%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en Coal Mining in Colorado http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/coal-mining-colorado <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Coal Mining in Colorado</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2021-02-16T13:06:10-07:00" title="Tuesday, February 16, 2021 - 13:06" class="datetime">Tue, 02/16/2021 - 13:06</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/coal-mining-colorado" data-a2a-title="Coal Mining in Colorado"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fcoal-mining-colorado&amp;title=Coal%20Mining%20in%20Colorado"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>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, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/precious-metal-mining-colorado"><strong>precious-metal mines</strong></a>, and smelters that helped develop the region. They were also contested sites of worker resistance and rebellion where the power dynamics of industrial capitalism were acted out in tragic ways.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Although it is no longer mined in Colorado at the rates it once was, coal has maintained its relative importance to the state’s energy economy through the present. Today, coal mining remains an important industry in the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/moffat-county"><strong>Moffat County</strong></a>, and coal-fueled power plants provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of residents along the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/front-range"><strong>Front Range</strong></a>. These coal mines and power plants are sources of air and water pollution, and the industries coal helped fuel are equally pollutive.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Formation of Coal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>About 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period, much of Colorado was covered by a shallow, tropical sea. When the uplift of the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rocky-mountains"><strong>Rocky Mountains</strong></a> began about a million years later, it pushed up the inundated land, giving rise to many swampy bogs. It was in these bogs that Colorado’s coal began to form as millions of years of the sun’s energy became trapped in vegetation that died and decomposed on top of itself. The plant material was gradually compressed into a primordial muck that eventually hardened into coal.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When engineer <strong>Ferdinand V. Hayden</strong> surveyed the geology of Colorado in the late 1860s and early 1870s, he identified several areas that held vast coal reserves. These included the Raton Basin in southern Colorado, whose coal Hayden described as being “inexhaustible and of excellent quality,” as well as the northwest part of what was then <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-territory"><strong>Colorado Territory</strong></a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>The Advent of Industrial Coal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The earliest coal mining in Colorado took place in the late 1850s near the fledgling town of <a href="/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>, but industrial development of the state’s coal resources awaited the arrival of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/william-jackson-palmer"><strong>William Jackson Palmer</strong></a> in the late 1860s. Over the next two decades, Palmer turned coal into Colorado’s most important commodity. In addition to founding the tourist town of <a href="/article/colorado-springs"><strong>Colorado Springs</strong></a> in 1871, Palmer opened dozens of new coal mines in southern Colorado, and his <strong>Denver &amp; Rio Grande Railroad</strong> (D&amp;RG) brought that coal to market in Denver. To manage his new coal empire, Palmer started Colorado Coal &amp; Iron, which eventually became <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Fuel and Iron</strong></a> (CF&amp;I), arguably the state’s most powerful coal company. The southern Colorado towns of <strong>Trinidad</strong> and <strong>Walsenburg</strong> became important hubs of coal mining and transport, with the latter known as “The City Built on Coal.”</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Coke and Industry</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal mining in Colorado developed alongside precious-metal mining. In addition to providing the fuel needed to transport gold and silver ore, coal also warmed the homes of residents in Denver and other mushrooming Front Range cities.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By the 1860s, as gold and silver miners left behind panned-out streambeds and began extracting more metal-bearing ore from the mountains, it became apparent that extreme heat was needed to separate gold and silver from the rock that held it. Coal would provide that heat, but not just any coal would do. Smelters, the heat-driven facilities that melted gold and silver ore to extract the metals, required coal that would burn hot enough to melt rock. This type of coal, a densely layered type called <em>coking coal</em>, was formed by the supercompression of underground coal seams. When heated without oxygen, coking coal turns into <em>coke</em>, a fuel that burns hot enough to melt rock and forge steel.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the 1880s, coke became even more essential in Colorado, as it fueled William Jackson Palmer’s <strong>steel mill</strong> in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pueblo"><strong>Pueblo</strong></a>. Coking coal was most commonly found in Colorado’s southern coalfields, making those fields even more important to the state’s industrial economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Major Coal Mining Locations</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>As Palmer’s southern coalfields coalesced in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county"><strong>Las Animas</strong></a> and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/huerfano-county"><strong>Huerfano</strong></a> Counties, railroad expansion allowed other parts of the state to become major coal producers as well. In 1881 the D&amp;RG reached <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/crested-butte"><strong>Crested Butte</strong></a>, in northern <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/gunnison-county"><strong>Gunnison County</strong></a>, which would contain some of the most productive mines in the state; it was also the site of the grisly <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jokerville-mine-explosion"><strong>Jokerville Mine Explosion</strong></a> that killed fifty-nine workers in 1884. Toward the end of that decade miners began tapping coalfields in <a href="/article/boulder-county"><strong>Boulder County</strong></a>, which fueled the growth of towns such as <strong>Louisville</strong> and <strong>Lafayette</strong> in the 1890s.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/garfield-county"><strong>Garfield County</strong></a> in western Colorado also held productive mines, including the volatile Vulcan Mine, which suffered <strong>three deadly explosions</strong> between 1896 and 1918. In the early 1900s, thanks to the completion of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-northwestern-pacific-railway-hill-route-moffat-road"><strong>Moffat Road</strong></a> rail line, a relatively smaller coal industry developed in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/routt-county"><strong>Routt County</strong></a> in the northwest part of the state. After the Moffat Road reached Craig in 1913, the coal beds of Moffat County could be tapped, too.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By 1917 Colorado had 238 coal mines operating throughout the state, most of which were divided between three companies: CF&amp;I, <strong>Rocky Mountain Fuel Company</strong>, and <strong>Victor American Fuel Company</strong>. That year, the state’s coal mines produced a total of some 12.5 million tons of coal, an increase of nearly 2 million tons from the previous year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Even as it gradually lost market share to oil and natural gas, coal mining continued throughout the twentieth century in Colorado. In Moffat County, for instance, production reached more than 100,000 tons annually between 1943 and 1951. Mining in the state also shifted during this period from deep mining, the kind that sent miners far belowground, to open-pit mining, where heavy machinery is used to excavate shallower coal seams. By the 1960s, coal production had dwindled to the point where the industry had only a small fraction of its earlier power and influence.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Work in the Coal Mines</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Working in coal mines was dirty and dangerous, and labor conditions were dismal and underregulated. Most coal mines grouped together men from more than a dozen different nations and backgrounds, including Austria, Britain, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Poland, and the United States. In the 1880s, coal miners worked from fourteen to sixteen hours per day for paltry wages that were often paid in scrip, a kind of currency that could be used only at company stores. Since many coal camps were remote, these stores were often the sole local source of food and supplies, keeping miners tethered to the company. Moreover, coal companies such as CF&amp;I often built whole company towns, where workers paid rent to live. Along with company stores, company housing ensured that most wages were returned to the company.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the mines, workers inhaled coal dust all day long, which led to the devastating respiratory disease known as black lung. Mine shafts could collapse or flood. Rock slides and fires were also common; in 1917 the state mine inspector reported that sixty-six miners died from routine accidents, including “falls of rock, falls of coal, mine cars and motors, explosives,” and “electricity.” In addition, methane and other flammable gases released from coal beds often built up in the mines, and each morning an inspector had to check the air quality before work could begin. Employed since the early 1800s, safety lamps, whose flames burned differently when held close to flammable gases, helped determine whether a mine’s air quality was safe. Davy lamps with longer wicks were also used to burn off harmful gases.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Most mines employed inspectors to monitor safety conditions, but even a slight mistake could spell instant death for dozens of miners. This was the case in the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/hastings-mine-explosion"><strong>Hastings Mine Explosion</strong></a>, Colorado’s deadliest mining disaster, which occurred north of Trinidad in 1917. For unknown reasons, the mine inspector took apart his safety lamp and attempted to relight it with a match, triggering a gas-fueled explosion that killed 121 workers. In addition, some mines exploded despite being declared safe; this occurred in the Jokerville Mine blast of 1884, which killed fifty-nine miners. A total of eighty-five workers perished during the three explosions of the Vulcan Mine between 1896 and 1918. These disasters reflected the troubling trend of Colorado miners dying at a rate of twice the national average between 1884 and 1912.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Labor Strife</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal miners were victims of owner exploitation and hazardous working conditions, and they often tried to improve their lot. As early as the 1870s, they organized strikes and walkouts, and later they joined unions such as the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america"><strong>United Mine Workers of America</strong></a> (UMWA), formed in 1890. The first UMWA local in Colorado was formed in the Boulder County town of Erie that year, and the union organized its <strong>first major strike</strong> during the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/panic-1893">financial calamity</a> </strong>of 1893-94. Thousands of coal miners across the state walked off the job, hoping to produce a coal shortage that would force owners to meet their demands of abolishing company stores and paying workers in cash. In the end, however, there were not enough walkouts to produce a shortage, so miners went back to work under prestrike conditions. By 1900 similar actions had earned some hard-won improvements, including a state law mandating an eight-hour workday, but coal miners had to pressure companies such as CF&amp;I to follow the laws.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Recognizing the power of strikes, mine owners and companies took them seriously, employing both economic oppression and violence to stop them. Owners fired striking workers and hired strikebreakers to work for lower wages than strikers were demanding, hoping to end the strikes. When these approaches failed, mine owners and companies raised citizen militias or petitioned the state to call in the National Guard to force miners back to work.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In Colorado the UMWA was most active in the early twentieth century, with thousands of members joining strikes in the southern coalfields of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fremont-county"><strong>Fremont</strong></a>, Huerfano, and Las Animas Counties. A <strong>strike in 1903–4</strong> again called for the abolition of scrip and company stores, as well as implementation of the state’s eight-hour workday law. The failure of that strike led to rising tensions that exploded again in the spring of 1913. The UMWA led a strike in the southern coalfields that involved about 90 percent of the state’s coal workers and resulted in the <a href="/article/ludlow-massacre"><strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong></a> when National Guard members fired on striking miners and set the strikers’ tent colony on fire. It was the deadliest labor conflict in state history.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal mining conditions were hardly improved for miners by the time another major conflict broke out in the late 1920s. In 1927, during a strike in the northern coalfields of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/weld-county"><strong>Weld County</strong></a>, the Colorado State Police (then known as the Colorado Rangers) <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/columbine-mine-massacre-0"><strong>opened fire on strikers</strong></a> and their wives at the Rocky Mountain Fuel company town of Serene, killing six and wounding twenty.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Strikes and labor conflict became less common after the passage of the federal Wagner Act in 1935, which recognized workers’ rights to unionize. Still, there remained periods of strife, such as in 1978, when miners at the Allen and Maxwell Mines in Las Animas County walked off the job for three months as part of a national strike organized by the United Mine Workers.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Environmental Effects</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In addition to the injuries and health hazards to workers, coal mining has produced a number of negative environmental effects that Coloradans continue to deal with today. Air pollution is the largest environmental cost of coal production. To make the air in coal mines breathable, methane and other harmful gases are vented out into the atmosphere, contributing to local smog and global climate change. The West Elk Mine in Gunnison County is the largest methane emitter in Colorado, belching out emissions in 2017 that equaled those of 98,000 cars. Abandoned coal mines also release methane. Nationwide, coal mines account for almost 10 percent of all methane emissions.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In addition, mines often need to be expanded to maintain their profitability, which leads to deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction. As such, environmental groups often take the coal industry to court over mine expansion as well as pollution. At the West Elk Mine, for example, a proposed expansion into a designated roadless forest resulted in years of litigation before it was ultimately blocked in 2020—but only after the company illegally bulldozed a road through the area.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal-fueled power plants are another major source of pollution. In 2020 <strong><em>The Denver Post</em></strong> named Colorado’s six coal-fired power plants among the state’s top ten greenhouse gas emitters. Coal-fired power can contaminate water sources, too; in 2019 an investigation by the <strong>Platte River Power Authority </strong>found that groundwater near the Rawhide Energy Station in <a href="/article/larimer-county"><strong>Larimer County</strong></a> was contaminated with selenium, a chemical that can harm both humans and wildlife. Aware of coal’s ongoing potential to harm air and water quality and wildlife, environmental groups such as the <strong>Sierra Club</strong> and <strong>WildEarth Guardians</strong> have repeatedly sued to stop the expansion of the coal industry in the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Today</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Despite its environmental effects, coal mining continues in Colorado today. In Moffat County, coal still underwrites the local economy. As much as 46 percent of the total property value in the county is generated from its two major coal mines, the Colowyo and Trapper Mines. The Craig Station power plant, completed in the early 1980s and operated by the <strong>Westminster</strong>-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission company, provides hundreds of jobs in Moffat County and supplies power to some 250,000 square miles in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Despite its importance to local economies in places like Craig, Tri-State has decided to shut down the company’s coal-fired plants in Colorado and New Mexico by 2030.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Even though production has declined almost every year since 2012, Colorado remains the eleventh-largest producer of coal in the country, with nearly one-quarter of its coal exported to other countries. The West Elk Mine remains one of the state’s largest, employing around 220 people and producing nearly 4 million tons of coal in 2016. Coal from within and beyond the state provides more than half of Colorado’s net electricity generation. This means that coal will play a part in Colorado’s economy for at least the next decade, even as state and industry leaders move toward less pollutive and renewable energy sources.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining" hreflang="en">coal mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining-colorado" hreflang="en">coal mining in colorado</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-miners" hreflang="en">coal miners</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal" hreflang="en">coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mines" hreflang="en">coal mines</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/moffat-county" hreflang="en">Moffat County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/craig" hreflang="en">Craig</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/energy" hreflang="en">energy</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/smelter" hreflang="en">smelter</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/railroads" hreflang="en">railroads</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colowyo" hreflang="en">colowyo</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/routt-county" hreflang="en">routt county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/west-elk-mine" hreflang="en">west elk mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/crested-butte" hreflang="en">crested butte</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/jokerville-mine" hreflang="en">jokerville mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/garfield-county" hreflang="en">Garfield County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/vulcan-mine" hreflang="en">vulcan mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hastings-mine-explosion" hreflang="en">hastings mine explosion</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/boulder-county" hreflang="en">boulder county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/weld-county" hreflang="en">weld county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county" hreflang="en">Las Animas County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-massacre" hreflang="en">Ludlow Massacre</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow" hreflang="en">ludlow</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/pueblo" hreflang="en">pueblo</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coking-coal" hreflang="en">coking coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/huerfano-county" hreflang="en">huerfano county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/walsenburg" hreflang="en">walsenburg</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lafayette" hreflang="en">Lafayette</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/louisville" hreflang="en">louisville</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/strike" hreflang="en">Strike</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-history" hreflang="en">labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mineworkers-america" hreflang="en">united mineworkers of america</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/umwa" hreflang="en">umwa</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/unions" hreflang="en">unions</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/columbine-mine-massacre" hreflang="en">columbine mine massacre</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>John Aguilar, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/06/18/west-elk-mine-court-ruling-poania/">State Orders Coal Company to Cease Expansion of West Elk Mine Into Roadless Area Near Paonia</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, June 18, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War </em>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Aspire Mining Limited, “<a href="https://aspiremininglimited.com/what-is-coking-coal/">What Is Coking Coal</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Allen Best, “Amid the Pandemic, Can Colorado Still Lead on a Just Transition From Coal?” <em>Energy News Network</em>, August 5, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Sam Brasch, “<a href="https://www.cpr.org/2020/03/05/craig-colorado-believes-in-coal-now-it-needs-a-plan-to-reinvent-itself/">Craig, Colorado Believes in Coal. Now It Needs a Plan to Reinvent Itself</a>,” <em>Colorado Public Radio</em>, March 5, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Center for Biological Diversity, “<a href="https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/lawsuit-launched-over-illegal-air-pollution-colorado-coal-mine-2019-12-17/">Lawsuit Launched Over Illegal Air Pollution at Colorado Coal Mine</a>,” December 17, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Tessa Cheek, “<a href="https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2015/05/14/environmentalists-are-targeting-colorado-coal-successfully/">Environmentalists Are Targeting Colorado Coal, Successfully</a>,” <em>Colorado Independent</em>, May 14, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Tamara Chuang, “<a href="https://coloradosun.com/2019/03/19/colorado-coal-ash-water-contamination/">Chemical Contamination From 7 Colorado Coal-Fired Power Plants Found During Groundwater Monitoring</a>,” <em>Colorado Sun</em>, March 19, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>City of Lafayette, Colorado, “<a href="https://www.lafayetteco.gov/DocumentCenter/View/152/Coal-Mining-Heritage-of-Lafayette?bidId=">The Coal Mining Heritage of Lafayette</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.craigdailypress.com/news/craig-station-works-to-supply-the-demand/">Craig Station Works to Supply the Demand</a>,” <em>Craig Press</em>, October 14, 2014.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>James Dalrymple, <a href="https://spl.cde.state.co.us/artemis/nrserials/nr930010internet/nr9300101917internet.pdf"><em>Fifth Annual Report of the State Inspector of Coal Mines—1917</em></a> (Denver: Eames Brothers, 1917).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/08/feds-approve-west-elk-mine-expansion/">Feds Approve Expansion of West Elk Mine in Western Colorado Against Environmental Group Objections</a>,” <em>Grand Junction Daily Sentinel</em> (via <em>The Denver Post</em>), September 8, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ferdinand V. Hayden, <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/0384/report.pdf"><em>Preliminary Field Report of the United States Geological Survey of Colorado and New Mexico</em></a> (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1869).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Bruce Finley, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/01/19/colorado-air-pollution/">What’s Polluting Colorado’s Air? 125 million Tons a Year of Heat-Trapping and Hazardous Gases</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, January 19, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Mark Jaffe, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2015/05/11/colorado-mine-approvals-failed-to-look-at-environmental-impacts/">Colorado Mine Approvals Failed to Look at Environmental Impacts</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, May 11, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/05/lawsuit-targets-arch-coal-s-illegal-air-pollution-colorado-coal-mine">Lawsuit Targets Arch Coal’s Illegal Air Pollution at Colorado Coal Mine</a>,” Sierra Club, May 14, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Noré V. Winter et al., <a href="https://www.treadofpioneers.org/pdf/Routt_County_Historic_Context_1994.pdf"><em>Historic Context of Routt County</em></a> (Boulder, CO: Winter and Company, 1994).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Kelsey Ray, “<a href="https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2016/05/03/colorados-worst-methane-polluter-is-an-arch-coal-mine-west-elk-john-hickenlooper/">Colorado’s Worst Methane Polluter Is an Arch Coal Mine</a>,” <em>Colorado Independent</em>, May 3, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Christopher J. Schreck, “<a href="https://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-colorado-fuel-and-iron-company/strikes-and-other-labor-disputes">Strikes and Other Labor Disputes</a>,” Labor Relations in the Industrial West, updated December 14, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Brian K. Trembath, “<a href="https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/remembering-colorados-coal-warsand-coal-miners">Remembering Colorado’s Coal Wars  . . . And Coal Miners</a>,” Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Department, September 2, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>University of Denver, “<a href="https://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfhist.html">A History of the Colorado Coal Field War</a>,” Colorado Coal Field War Project, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Energy Information Administration, “<a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/mining-and-transportation.php">Coal Explained: Mining and Transportation of Coal</a>,” updated October 28, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Energy Information Administration, “<a href="https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=CO">Colorado: Profile Analysis</a>,” updated March 19, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Environmental Protection Agency, “<a href="https://www.epa.gov/cmop/sources-coal-mine-methane">Coal Mine Methane Sources</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Bian Zhengfu et al., “Environmental Issues From Coal Mining and Their Solutions,” <em>Mining Science and Technology </em>20 (2010).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Earthjustice.org, “<a href="https://earthjustice.org/features/colorado-forests-and-coal">Coal’s Toll on Colorado’s Forests</a>,” updated June 8, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ferdinand V. Hayden, <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70038931"><em>Seventh Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, embracing Colorado</em></a> (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1873).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Fawn-Amber Montoya, ed., <em>Making an American Workforce: The Rockefellers and the Legacy of Ludlow</em> (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>F. Darrell Munsell, <em>From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood’s Struggle Against the United Mine Workers of America </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Randall H. McGuire and Paul Reckner, “<a href="https://users.clas.ufl.edu/davidson/Historical%20archaeology%20fall%202015/Week%204/McGuire%20&amp;amp;%20Reckner%202003.pdf">Building a Working-Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project</a>,” <em>Industrial Archaeology Review</em> 25, no. 2 (2003).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Jonathan H. Rees, <em>Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Tue, 16 Feb 2021 20:06:10 +0000 yongli 3536 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org United Mine Workers of America http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">United Mine Workers of America</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2021-01-21T14:09:27-07:00" title="Thursday, January 21, 2021 - 14:09" class="datetime">Thu, 01/21/2021 - 14:09</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america" data-a2a-title="United Mine Workers of America"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Funited-mine-workers-america&amp;title=United%20Mine%20Workers%20of%20America"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>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 southern coalfields of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fremont-county"><strong>Fremont</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/huerfano-county"><strong>Huerfano</strong></a>, and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county"><strong>Las Animas</strong></a> Counties. In the spring of 1913, the UMWA led a strike there that resulted in the <a href="/article/ludlow-massacre"><strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong></a> and the ensuing <strong>Coalfield Wars</strong>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The UMWA’s involvement in the Coalfield Wars made it one of the most famous unions in Colorado history. Unlike Colorado’s other famous union, the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/western-federation-miners"><strong>Western Federation of Miners</strong></a> (WFM), the UMWA still exists today; it serves about 70,000 workers across seven districts in the United States and Canada. Colorado is part of the union’s western district, which serves about 4,000 members, most of whom belong to the <strong>Navajo Nation</strong>.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>With coal fueling most of the nation’s industry during the late nineteenth century, coal companies accumulated great wealth and political power. In Colorado, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/william-jackson-palmer"><strong>William Jackson Palmer</strong></a>’s <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Fuel and Iron</strong></a> was among the largest corporations in the nation, consisting not only of coal mines throughout the state but also <strong>railroads</strong> and a <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/minnequa-steelworks-office"><strong>steel mill</strong></a> in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pueblo"><strong>Pueblo</strong></a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Meanwhile, nineteenth-century coal miners held one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. They worked fourteen or sixteen hours a day in dirty, cramped conditions. Mine shafts could collapse, flood, or fill up with flammable gas and explode, like when the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jokerville-mine-explosion"><strong>Jokerville Mine</strong></a> blew up near <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/crested-butte"><strong>Crested Butte</strong></a> in 1884. Companies paid miners not in cash but in scrip, a kind of company currency that could be used only at company stores, which were often the sole local source of tools and food. This practice ensured that most wages were returned to the company. Miners also paid the company to live in “company towns,” corporate-controlled villages that reflected companies’ desires to keep their workforce close and under control.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In this arrangement, workers held little power. Before the 1890s, miners were often fired or jailed for trying to improve their situation by organizing and striking. These brutal corporate reprisals created fertile ground among workers for the formation of labor unions.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Formation</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The United Mine Workers was forged in the battlegrounds of the Midwestern coalfields, where workplace accidents and punishment for labor activism were common. The UMWA began on January 25, 1890, when two Ohio-based unions, the Knights of Labor and the National Miners’ Federation, joined forces in Columbus. Their constitution called for a strategy of “conciliation, arbitration, and strikes” to improve pay and working conditions for miners. Among their initial demands was an end to company stores and the outlawing of “non-resident police officers” who were often deployed against striking miners. Dues were set at five cents per month.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The union’s initial membership consisted mostly of British immigrants. The UMWA was among the first unions to explicitly allow African American miners in its ranks, though they were not treated equally and were often relegated to more menial jobs. The union also included workers who fought on both sides of the <strong>American</strong> <strong>Civil War</strong> and later brought together various groups of European immigrants, breaking down language barriers with solidarity based on common problems. Over the years, the UMWA’s inclusive approach to organizing became its hallmark, allowing the union to outlast other, more exclusive unions.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1897 the union scored its first victory when it earned an eight-hour work day from mine operators after a strike that involved 150,000 coal workers across the Midwest. Later, in 1902, the UMWA became the first union to be recognized by the federal government when President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the end to another strike in the Midwest. Companies, however, were reluctant to recognize the union, so labor strife persisted throughout the twentieth century.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>First Activity in Colorado: Strike of 1894</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The UMWA made early inroads in Colorado, which was the heart of the western coal industry at the time. In 1890 two colliers from Erie, on the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/front-range"><strong>Front Range</strong></a>, founded the state’s first UMWA chapter. By 1892 there were some 800 members throughout the state, including Italians, Austrians, Greeks, Britishers, Latino, and others.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1894 miners in Fremont County participated in the UMWA’s nationwide strike, the first activity associated with the union in Colorado. Groups of strikers traveled to Las Animas and Huerfano Counties, encouraging other coal miners to join in the strike. A depressed regional economy—reeling from the <strong>Panic of 1893</strong>—hurt the union’s recruiting efforts, but the strikers persevered. They reorganized into larger groups and continued marching for solidarity in the southern coalfields, even as they witnessed company-hired thugs beating union members in some of the camps. Strikers numbered some 1,200 strong by the time their procession reached <strong>Trinidad</strong>. Miners from Crested Butte walked out in solidarity as well.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Among the strikers’ demands was a fairer pay system that included a semimonthly payment in cash instead of scrip, as well as abolition of the company store. But the strikers could only hold out for so long, living off food and other donations from friendly farmers and townspeople. In August 1894, 400 strikers from Fremont County narrowly voted to return to work at prestrike wages, a decision echoed by the other UMWA groups in Colorado. Although the 1894 strike was unsuccessful, it proved that southern Colorado was fertile ground for union activity and that unions had community support.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Strike of 1901</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>By the turn of the twentieth century, the power of coal bosses and companies such as CF&amp;I created a terrible situation for Colorado coal miners. When they attempted to organize for a redress of grievances such as pay and work conditions, local authorities jailed, fired, or assaulted them on behalf of companies. Huerfano County Sheriff Jefferson Farr was particularly known for his violent raids on union gatherings. One observer referred to this expression of corporate power in the southern coalfields as “a reign of terror.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Under these conditions, in January 1901, UMWA workers in southern Colorado organized a strike against CF&amp;I in solidarity with other company workers in Gallup, New Mexico. This time, CF&amp;I chief <strong>John Osgood</strong> gave in to some of the miners’ demands, including revision of the unfair compensation system that paid miners by weight of coal mined. This system often created unsafe work environments, as it drove miners to spend more of their time gathering coal instead of shoring up safety features. Osgood agreed to several changes that made the weight system fairer but did not dispose of it. The strike also failed to win concessions from bosses on things such as scrip or company stores.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the wake of the 1901 strike, the state of Colorado created a legislative committee to investigate the working and living conditions of coal miners. When the committee’s work was published, its account of miners living in rudimentary housing on paltry wages and enduring beatings by sheriffs turned public sentiment against companies like CF&amp;I and generated sympathy for unions. The investigation prompted CF&amp;I to set up a “sociological department” in 1901 to improve living conditions in company towns, many of which lacked basic necessities such as clean water. In this way, the UMWA’s partially successful 1901 strike laid the groundwork for future labor gains.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Labor Wars of 1903–4</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>After a brief lull in 1902, Colorado was again rocked by labor conflict in 1903–4. The Western Federation of Miners led walkouts in the metal mining districts of <a href="/article/telluride"><strong>Telluride</strong></a> and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/cripple-creek"><strong>Cripple Creek</strong></a>, while in September 1903 the UMWA again organized a strike among southern coalfield workers. The strikers made many of the same demands as in 1894, including semimonthly payments in cash, higher wages, and adherence to laws that required proper ventilation in mine shafts. Again, they were defeated, as Governor <strong>James Peabody</strong> was an antiunionist who sent in the National Guard to crush the strikes.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Ludlow and the Coalfield Wars</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Even though companies like CF&amp;I had promised to shorten workdays and reform company towns, historian Clare V. McKanna notes that “town life had improved little” by 1913. That fall, UMWA coal miners in southern Colorado again went on strike to demand better wages and improvements to working and living conditions. Again, they were met with force from mine owners and the government. On behalf of mine owners, who had already bought such union-busting tools as an armor-plated car, Governor <strong>Elias M. Ammons</strong> deployed the National Guard to the coal camps in Las Animas County. On April 20, 1914, guardsmen opened fire on armed miners at the Ludlow tent colony, about fifteen miles north of Trinidad. Guardsmen then lit the encampment on fire, and thirteen women and children—families of the miners—burned to death while taking shelter in a pit beneath a mattress in one of the tents.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When other miners in the area learned of the guard’s actions, they went on the warpath. Dozens of people were killed on both sides over the next week, until President Woodrow Wilson sent in the US Army on April 28. The strike did not end until December 10, 1914.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The <em>Rocky Mountain News </em>referred to the incident that started the Coalfield Wars as the “Ludlow Massacre,” and the guard’s callous disregard for miners’ families won the union public sympathy. UMWA leaders leveraged the tragedy into a successful public relations campaign that turned even more Americans against the companies. In response, CF&amp;I owner John D. Rockefeller, Jr., sought to forge a middle route by creating a company union. Although this signaled a tolerance for worker organization that scarcely existed before Ludlow, the formation of the company union dealt a blow to the UMWA because it did not gain the recognition it sought during the strike.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Post-Ludlow Activity</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The 1920s saw more labor disputes across the state, especially in the northern coalfields in <a href="/article/boulder-county"><strong>Boulder County</strong></a>. Tensions remained high in the south, too. In 1921 CF&amp;I cut miner pay by thirty cents, prompting independent mines in southern Colorado to do so as well. In response, the UMWA organized another strike, doling out $800 to striking miners and their families during the work stoppage. After this unsuccessful strike, mining demographics began to shift, as about 60 percent of new hires in the mining industry were of Mexican or other Spanish-speaking ancestry. Other strikes occurred again in 1922 and 1927, neither of which afforded workers much respite from their ongoing plight. Instead, the strikes of the 1920s, combined with changes in federal law, helped convince CF&amp;I to abandon its company union in 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Labor and industry were both decimated by the <strong>Great Depression</strong> of the 1930s, but the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a prolabor Democratic Congress in 1932 was a shot in the arm for the nation’s struggling labor movement. In 1933 Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which banned company unions and allowed collective bargaining. Two years later, the Wagner Act compelled businesses to bargain with unions that had majority employee support. With two scrawls of his pen, Roosevelt accomplished what the UMWA had sought for more than three decades—union recognition.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By the 1940s, Colorado’s UMWA chapters had more Latino members, as the Spanish-speaking working class expanded through immigration and guest-worker programs like the <strong>Bracero Program</strong>. In April 1946, UMWA President John L. Lewis organized a nationwide strike to win union-sponsored healthcare, another aspect of miners’ lives that remained under company control. Company doctors had incentives to downplay conditions such as black lung, a deadly respiratory disease caused by breathing in coal dust. The 1946 strike involved 400,000 miners from twenty-six states, including Colorado, where coal mines in Routt County went “idle” and railroads from <strong>Steamboat Springs</strong> to <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/aspen"><strong>Aspen</strong></a> ran fewer trains on account of the coal shortage. Eventually, President Harry Truman saw the strike as a threat to the nation’s postwar economic recovery, so he ended it by presenting UMWA leadership with an agreement that created the UMWA health and welfare fund, which still serves union members today.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Over the ensuing decades, the power of coal companies waned as oil began to overtake coal as the nation’s preeminent fossil fuel. This translated into fewer strikes and direct actions by unions like the UMWA.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Today</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The UMWA survived President Ronald Reagan’s union-busting campaign and endures today. The union serves not only coal miners but also workers from the manufacturing, health care, and corrections industries. It has more than 70,000 members from all fifty states as well as Canada.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In an era marked by widespread divestment from coal, Navajo coal miners in the UMWA’s western district are among the strongest advocates for continuing coal production. In 2013 the UMWA helped organize Navajo miners to support a new lease that would have kept their nation’s coal plant operating until 2044. Although the new lease passed, the plant’s parent company, Salt River Project, decided to abandon the lease after finding cheaper energy elsewhere.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In Colorado, the legacy of the UMWA is tied to the Ludlow Massacre. Union leaders voted to put up a monument to the victims of the massacre in 1916, and in 2014 Governor <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/john-hickenlooper"><strong>John Hickenlooper</strong></a> included UMWA representatives on his team tasked with commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the tragedy.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mineworkers-america" hreflang="en">united mineworkers of america</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mine-workers" hreflang="en">United Mine Workers</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-history" hreflang="en">labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-labor-history" hreflang="en">colorado labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/union" hreflang="en">union</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-unions" hreflang="en">labor unions</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow" hreflang="en">ludlow</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county" hreflang="en">Las Animas County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining" hreflang="en">coal mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-miners" hreflang="en">coal miners</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal" hreflang="en">coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/william-jackson-palmer" hreflang="en">william jackson palmer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/john-d-rockefeller-jr-0" hreflang="en">john d rockefeller jr</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/rockefeller" hreflang="en">rockefeller</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/trinidad" hreflang="en">Trinidad</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-massacre" hreflang="en">Ludlow Massacre</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coalfield-wars" hreflang="en">coalfield wars</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and Dave McComb, <em>Colorado: A History of the Centennial State </em>3rd ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1994).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War </em>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=STP19460404&amp;e=01-04-1946-----en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-strike-------0-----">Coal Mines Idle as New Contract Is Being Debated</a>,” <em>Steamboat Pilot</em>, April 4, 1946.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=ADT19460509.2.7&amp;srpos=74&amp;e=01-04-1946-----en-20--61-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-strike-------0-----">Coal Strike Stops Aspen Daily Train</a>,” <em>Aspen Daily Times</em>, May 9, 1946.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.dispatch.com/article/20120125/NEWS/301259720">Columbus Mileposts——Jan. 25, 1890: United Mine Workers Form; Daily Wage Low</a>,” <em>Columbus Dispatch</em>, January 25, 2012.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=STP19460530.2.41&amp;srpos=131&amp;e=01-04-1946-----en-20--121-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-strike-------0-----">Commenting on Current Events</a>,” <em>Steamboat Pilot</em>, May 30, 1946.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Alan Derickson, “The United Mine Workers of America and the Recognition of Occupational Respiratory Diseases, 1902–1968,” <em>American Journal of Public Health</em>, 81, no. 6 (June 1991).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Herbert Hill, “Myth-Making as Labor History: Herbert Gutman and the United Mine Workers of America,” <em>International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society </em>2, no. 2 (Winter 1988).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Independent Mines Close,” <em>Herald Democrat </em>(Leadville, CO), December 5, 1921.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Library of Congress, “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/labor-unions-during-great-depression-and-new-deal/">Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Clare V. McKanna, <em>Homicide, Race, and Justice in the American West, 1880–1920 </em>(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Fawn-Amber Montoya, ed., <em>Making an American Workforce: The Rockefellers and the Legacy of Ludlow </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>F. Darrell Munsell, <em>From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood’s Struggle Against the United Mine Workers of America</em> (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>United Mine Workers of America, “About,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>UnionFacts.com, “<a href="https://www.unionfacts.com/union/United_Mine_Workers">United Mine</a> Workers,” updated November 15, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>UnionFacts.com, “<a href="https://www.unionfacts.com/lu/58575/UMW/22">United Mine Workers<strong>,</strong> District 22</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=CTR18940314.2.14&amp;srpos=3&amp;e=-------en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22united+mineworkers%22-------0--">Washington Notes</a>,” <em>Colorado Transcript</em>, March 14, 1894.</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Keith Gildart, “Two Kinds of Reform: Left Leadership in the British National Union of Mineworkers and the United Mineworkers of America, 1982–1990,” <em>Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas</em> 3, no. 2 (2006).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>UMWA Union, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nzONL68Rs">: 125 Years of Struggle and Glory</a>,” YouTube, April 21, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://umwa.org/">United Mine Workers of America</a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>University of Denver, “<a href="https://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfhist3.html">A History of the Colorado Coal Field War</a>.”</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Thu, 21 Jan 2021 21:09:27 +0000 yongli 3475 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Las Animas County http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Las Animas County</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-article-image.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-article-image.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div id="carouselEncyclopediaArticle" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="true"> <div class="carousel-inner"> <div class="carousel-item active"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2048--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2048.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/las-animas-county"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Las_Animas_County_0.png?itok=TJ9NkRIw" width="1024" height="741" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/las-animas-county" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Las Animas County</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Las Animas County, the largest county in Colorado, was established in 1866.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-11-14T16:20:10-07:00" title="Monday, November 14, 2016 - 16:20" class="datetime">Mon, 11/14/2016 - 16:20</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county" data-a2a-title="Las Animas County"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Flas-animas-county&amp;title=Las%20Animas%20County"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Las Animas County, the largest county in Colorado, covers 4,775 square miles in the southern end of the state, east of the <strong>Sangre de Cristo Mountains</strong>. It was originally part of a larger Huerfano County that encompassed all of southeast Colorado. Today, it is bordered by <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/huerfano-county"><strong>Huerfano County</strong></a> to the northwest, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pueblo-county"><strong>Pueblo</strong></a> and <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/otero-county"><strong>Otero</strong></a> Counties to the north, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/bent-county"><strong>Bent County</strong></a> to the northeast, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/baca-county"><strong>Baca County</strong></a> to the east, the state of New Mexico to the south, and <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/costilla-county"><strong>Costilla County</strong></a> to the west.</p> <p>Las Animas County encompasses a number of important geographic features, including (from west to east) the <strong>Spanish Peaks</strong>, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/raton-pass-0"><strong>Ratón Pass</strong></a>, and the <strong>Purgatoire (purgatory) River</strong>, a tributary of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/arkansas-river"><strong>Arkansas River</strong></a>. <em>Las Animas </em>is Spanish for “souls,” a reference to the lost souls of sixteenth-century Spanish soldiers allegedly killed along the Purgatoire River. The North, Middle, and South Forks of the Purgatoire flow east out of the Sangre de Cristos and converge to form the main river near the small community of <strong>Weston</strong>. Shadowed by State Highway 12, the river continues east through the industrial ghost town of Segundo, the former coal-mining town of <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/cokedale-historic-district"><strong>Cokedale</strong></a>, and the county seat of <strong>Trinidad</strong>. Flowing northeast out of the foothills, the Purgatoire takes a southward bend near Hoehne before continuing northeast again, cutting a canyon through the plains of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/comanche-national-grassland"><strong>Comanche National Grassland</strong></a>.</p> <p><strong>Interstate 25</strong> runs along the foothills in eastern Las Animas County, connecting the town of <strong>Aguilar</strong> and the city of Trinidad before continuing north to <strong>Walsenburg</strong> and south to Raton, New Mexico. US Highway 160 runs east from Trinidad to the small town of <strong>Kim</strong>. South of US 160 lay the small communities of Trinchera and Branson, the southernmost town in Colorado. US Highway 350 runs northeast from Trinidad into Otero County and passes through the unincorporated communities of Model, Tyrone, Thatcher, and Delhi.</p> <p>Historically, the Las Animas County area was inhabited by various indigenous peoples, including the Nuche (<strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/search/google/Ute">Ute</a></strong>), <strong>Apache</strong>, and<strong> Comanche</strong>. The first Anglo-Americans arrived in 1821, when trade with Mexico was opened up via the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/santa-f%C3%A9-trail-0"><strong>Santa Fé Trail</strong></a>. In 1866 Las Animas County was established as part of the <a href="/article/colorado-territory"><strong>Colorado Territory</strong></a>. By the early twentieth century its coal mines were among the most productive in the nation. The county was the site of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ludlow-massacre"><strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong></a>, a deadly conflict between striking miners and state militia in the coalfields north of Trinidad on April 20, 1914. Today Las Animas County has a population of 14,058, with more than 9,000 living in Trinidad.</p> <h2>Native Americans and Spaniards</h2> <p>The land south of the Spanish Peaks and east of the Sangre de Cristos has a long history of human occupation, beginning around 11,500 years ago with <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/paleo-indian-period"><strong>Paleo-Indian</strong></a> groups and continuing through the Middle <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/archaic-period-colorado"><strong>Archaic</strong></a> period (3,000–1,000 BC), the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/sopris-phase"><strong>Sopris</strong></a> culture (AD 950–1200), and the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/apishapa-phase"><strong>Apishapa</strong></a> culture (AD 1050–1400). Most of these groups were hunter-gatherers who lived off <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rocky-mountain-elk"><strong>elk</strong></a>, <a href="/article/mule-deer"><strong>mule deer</strong></a>, and other game. The Apishapa culture left behind <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rock-art-colorado"><strong>rock art</strong></a>, images of human and animal figures carved into boulders or cliff faces.</p> <p>By the time the Apishapa left the area in the 1400s, Ute people began arriving from the west. What is now western Las Animas County was originally home to a band of Utes called the Muache, or “cedar bark people.” Their territory lay east of the Sangre de Cristos, extending north into the Wet Mountain Valley and along the Front Range and south into New Mexico. The Utes had particular reverence for the Spanish Peaks, which they referred to as <em>Huajatolla</em>, roughly translated as “breasts of the earth.” Like other indigenous people before them, the Utes were hunter-gatherers, but unlike some, they did not build permanent dwellings. Instead, they lived in temporary or portable structures such as <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/wickiups-and-other-wooden-features"><strong>wickiups</strong></a> and <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/tipi-0"><strong>tipis</strong></a>. In 1640 the Utes obtained horses from Spanish Santa Fé, affording them greater mobility.</p> <p>The Jicarilla Apache, a semi-sedentary people who fished, hunted, and farmed, also occupied what is now Las Animas County by the seventeenth century. This brought them into conflict with the Ute, who began attacking their settlements. The Apache’s plight did not improve with the arrival of the Comanche, a horse-mounted people who came from the north and conquered Colorado’s southeastern plains in the early eighteenth century. The Muache Ute and Comanche formed an alliance, and by about 1730 they had driven the Apache from the Purgatoire and Arkansas Valleys. With their common enemy gone, Ute-Comanche relations soured, and by the 1750s the Muache were joining the Spanish in battle against the Comanche.</p> <p>It was once thought that Spanish explorers, namely a party led by Francisco Leyva de Bonilla in 1593, were the first to visit the Purgatoire River in the sixteenth century. An attack by Native Americans killed all but one of the Bonilla party at some point after it left New Mexico and reached the <a href="/article/colorado%E2%80%99s-great-plains"><strong>Great Plains</strong></a>. The attack was initially thought to have occurred on the Purgatoire; the river was so named because of the unblessed Catholic souls that were allegedly sent to <em>el purgatorio—</em>purgatory—along its banks. The name stuck (its current version is French), but the river may be named for the souls of men who never reached it—the location of the Bonilla expedition’s demise remains uncertain.</p> <p>By the mid-eighteenth century the northern boundary of Spanish New Mexico lay near the northern edge of present-day Las Animas County. However, for more than 100 years Ute and Comanche raids had prevented Spanish settlement north of Taos. The Spanish Era in North America came to an end with Mexican independence in 1821.</p> <h2>Mexican Era</h2> <p>Spanish authorities had previously barred trade with Americans, but a newly independent Mexico quickly opened trade with the United States in the 1820s. The Santa Fé Trail, which connected Missouri and Santa Fé, became the most important trade route in the nineteenth-century southwest. The trail had two branches, one of which—the Mountain Branch—took traders through present-day Las Animas County. From Missouri, the route followed the Arkansas River west to the Purgatoire, where it turned south to Ratón Pass and on to Santa Fé. Mexicans, Native Americans, and European Americans all traded along the trail. In 1833 the American trader <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/william-bent"><strong>William Bent</strong></a> established <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/bents-forts"><strong>Bent’s Fort</strong></a> on the Arkansas River, which then marked the border between Mexico and the United States. The <a href="/article/nineteenth-century-trading-posts"><strong>post</strong></a> soon became the center of trade along the Santa Fé Trail, worrying some Mexican officials who thought the Americans might try to encroach on their northern territories.</p> <p>In an effort to affirm ownership of that area, the Mexican government began issuing <strong>land grants</strong> in what is now New Mexico and Colorado in 1832. In 1841 Mexico gave the Canadian trader <strong>Charles Beaubien</strong> and Mexican official Guadalupe Miranda the Maxwell grant, which included land in present New Mexico as well as what is now the southwest corner of Las Animas County. Two years later, Mexico awarded a land grant to Cornelio Vigil and <strong>Ceran St. Vrain</strong>, a naturalized Mexican citizen and partner of William Bent. This massive grant covered the western half of present-day Las Animas County, stretching between the Purgatoire and Arkansas Rivers and into the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/san-luis-valley"><strong>San Luis Valley</strong></a>. Conflict with white Texans and Comanches, however, delayed Mexican settlement of the land grants, and any hope Mexico had of retaining its northern territories disappeared in 1846, when US General <strong>Stephen W. </strong><strong>Kearny</strong>’s Army of the West clambered over Ratón Pass and invaded Mexico.</p> <p>As the Mexican-American War raged in 1847, John Hatcher, an employee of the Bent, St. Vrain &amp; Company, set up a farm in the Purgatoire Valley, intending to supply Bent’s Fort with corn and other produce. Hatcher built log cabins, completed the area’s first irrigation ditch, and planted fields, but Utes drove him off the land before the crops could be harvested.</p> <h2>Early American Era</h2> <p>The United States acquired the Las Animas County area as part of the land ceded by Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. By then the regional <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fur-trade-colorado"><strong>trade in furs</strong></a> and bison hides had declined; in 1849 William Bent was forced to abandon his post on the Arkansas. After the trader-turned-scout <strong>Richard Wootton</strong> passed through the Purgatoire Valley in 1858, several Hispano families (former Mexican citizens who became Americans after 1848) set up ranches in the area.</p> <p>A regional market for food and other supplies was created when the <a href="/article/colorado-gold-rush"><strong>Colorado Gold Rush</strong></a> of 1858–59 spurred the development of <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>. In 1860 the New Mexicans <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/don-felipe-baca"><strong>Don Felipe Baca</strong></a> and Pedro Valdez loaded four wagons with corn and other goods and headed north for Denver. On their way to and from the new mining town, they camped along the Purgatoire near the site of present-day Trinidad. Baca envisioned a prosperous settlement there, and decided to return with his family in 1861.</p> <p>Also in 1860, another group of New Mexican traders led by Albert and Ebenezer Archibald passed through the Trinidad area on their way to sell sauerkraut and onions in Denver. When the brothers returned to the area to start a farm in March of the following year, they found Baca and two other men, William Frazier and Riley Dunton, building log homes. These modest structures became the foundation for modern Trinidad.</p> <p>As Baca and others built homes on the Trinidad site, Congress established the <a href="/article/colorado-territory"><strong>Colorado Territory</strong></a>. However, the area was still largely the domain of the Utes and their native allies. Despite the US government’s earlier attempts to remove the Utes by treaty, in 1865 there was still a significant population of Muaches near the Spanish Peaks who refused to abide the Anglo/Hispano encroachment on their homelands. That year, Wootton completed a toll road over Ratón Pass, increasing the amount of white traffic through the region. This led to conflict between Utes and whites over livestock theft along the roads. Amid growing distrust and discord between federal Indian officials and the Utes in 1866, Muaches led by Kaniache began attacking white and Hispano ranches and other settlements in the Purgatoire Valley. US cavalry arrived, and with the help of local volunteers, defeated the Utes in battle.</p> <h2>County Development</h2> <p>Trinidad incorporated on February 6, 1866, and three days later the territorial legislature formed Las Animas County out of the southern part of what was then Huerfano County. In 1868 the legislature amended the boundaries again, shrinking Huerfano County to its current size and creating what are now the western boundaries of Las Animas County. Eastern Las Animas County stretched to the Kansas border until <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/baca-county"><strong>Baca County</strong></a> was created in 1889.</p> <p>When the town was founded, the only stage lines connecting Trinidad to Denver went by way of Bent’s Fort, remnants of the once-burgeoning Santa Fé Trail. In 1867 Abraham Jacobs and William Jones established the Denver and Santa Fe Stage &amp; Express Company, which started a direct line south from Denver to Trinidad. The stage line led to the creation of dozens of stations between the two destinations, including many in northern Las Animas County. It also fed the development of Trinidad, which by 1867 had a general store, Catholic church, and schools, as well as one of two drug stores in the 400 miles between Denver and Santa Fe.</p> <p>Las Animas County’s industrial future also began to take shape in 1867, as <a href="/article/william-jackson-palmer"><strong>William Jackson Palmer</strong></a> explored rich coal deposits near Trinidad. Palmer, who dreamed of a grand railroad line chugging south from Denver through utopian cities, became convinced that Las Animas County coal would fuel his industrial empire in the West.</p> <p>As Trinidad developed along the Purgatoire, Hispano settlement commenced along the Apishapa River farther north. In 1866 farmer Julian Gonzales built the first irrigation ditch in the area, and in 1867 Agapito Rivali built a trading post catering to Hispano farmers and Indians. As more Hispanos set up farms and ranches in the area, a small adobe town developed where the Apishapa flows out of the foothills onto the plains; this town was the beginning of present-day Aguilar.</p> <h2>Early Social Strife and Cooperation</h2> <p>By 1870 there were a number of small Hispano and Anglo settlements in western Las Animas County. These settlers brokered an uneasy coexistence with the Utes, who resented the encroachment on their land. In the <a href="/article/ute-treaty-1868"><strong>Treaty of 1868</strong></a>, the Ute leader <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ouray"><strong>Ouray</strong></a> and several others agreed to move to a large reservation on the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/western-slope"><strong>Western Slope</strong></a>, but many Utes continued to travel to traditional hunting grounds, including the Purgatoire Valley. As late as 1873 the <em>Denver News </em>reported that “Kanneache [sic] and his band, which have never yet obeyed the treaty of 1868 . . . have been in the habit of annoying the settlers of the valleys of the Cucharas and the Huerfano.” The paper opined that this activity “should be stopped—peacefully, if possible, forcibly, if necessary.”</p> <p>Such forcible action, however, did not come to southern Colorado but rather to northwest Colorado in 1879. After the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/meeker-incident"><strong>Meeker Incident</strong></a> there in September, Utes living in northern Colorado were removed to Utah. Meanwhile, the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/brunot-agreement"><strong>Brunot Agreement</strong></a> of 1873, also negotiated by Chief Ouray, gave the United States the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/san-juan-mountains"><strong>San Juan Mountains</strong></a> and created a reservation for southern Colorado’s Utes near present-day <strong>Durango</strong>. By the 1880s most of the Muache Utes had left Las Animas County for the reservation.</p> <p>If there were tensions between Native and non-native people in early Las Animas County, there were also divisions between Anglo and Hispano settlers. Their heads filled with notions of an Anglo-centric “<strong>Manifest Destiny</strong>,” many Anglos in southern Colorado saw Hispanos as a lower class of people. After visiting the Purgatoire Valley, Anglo observer <strong>William E. Pabor</strong> captured this sentiment in an 1883 agricultural publication, writing that “Mexicans” were “rude” and “uncultivated husbandmen” and that “their method of raising wheat is slovenly, and without signs of thrift.”</p> <p>Tension between Anglos and Hispanos in Trinidad was on display far earlier than 1883, however. On Christmas Day, 1867, an Anglo man had shot a Hispano man in Trinidad and was jailed. When other Anglos tried to free the shooter, Las Animas County Sheriff Juan Gutiérrez, a Hispano, raised the alarm, and the town’s Hispanos took up arms against the Anglos. Eventually, US troops were called in to help diffuse the standoff. Local Utes offered to help Gutiérrez, but the sheriff rebuked them, so they watched the gunfight from the surrounding hills. Hispano politician <strong>Casimiro Barela</strong> also witnessed Anglo-Hispano tension on multiple occasions while serving as county sheriff from 1874–75.</p> <p>Though tension between Anglos and Hispanos produced conflict, for the most part both groups managed to coexist. Hispano ranchers sold wool and other goods at Anglo shops in Trinidad, and in the 1860s both Anglos and Hispanos served as county commissioners, county clerks, sheriffs, judges, and other government positions.</p> <p>Las Animas County also produced some of the first Hispano members of the Anglo-dominated territorial and state governments. Baca and Barela were among the first Hispanos to serve in the territorial legislature in the 1870s, and Barela even helped draft the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-constitution"><strong>Colorado Constitution</strong></a> just before the territory became a state in 1876. Barela also led the push for a resolution that required Colorado laws to be published in Spanish as well as English for twenty-five years.</p> <h2>Coal Mining and Labor Conflicts</h2> <p>While Hispanos and Anglos were busy establishing Las Animas County’s early towns and ranches, William Palmer was busy turning his dreams of a Colorado empire into reality. By 1875 he had extended his <strong>Denver &amp; Rio Grande Railroad</strong> (D&amp;RG) south from Denver, founding the towns of Colorado Springs and South Pueblo. The line also extended west into the coalfields of <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fremont-county"><strong>Fremont County</strong></a>, where Palmer built collieries in 1872.</p> <p>In 1876 the D&amp;RG reached Aguilar, and later that year it reached the Purgatoire River northeast of Trinidad. There Palmer’s railroad built the town of El Moro, disappointing residents in Trinidad who anticipated an economic boom with the railroad’s arrival. To manage his new coal mines and other industrial endeavors, Palmer formed the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Coal &amp; Iron Company</strong></a> (CC&amp;I) in 1880. In 1881 the company completed the Minnequa Works in Pueblo, the nation’s first steel mill west of the Missouri River.</p> <p>Coal shipped from mining camps around Trinidad and Aguilar fueled Palmer’s steel works, as well as the many smelters in Pueblo and Denver that extracted gold and silver from raw ore. By the 1890s Las Animas County mining camps included Grey Creek, Engleville, Starkville, and Sopris near Trinidad, as well as Hastings, Delagua, and Berwind south of Aguilar. The camps drew workers of more than a dozen nationalities, including Mexicans, British, Italians, Swiss, Germans, African Americans, and Greeks. With the influx of workers and families tied to the coal industry, the county’s population surged from 4,276 in 1880 to 21,842 in 1900.</p> <p>Coal miners in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked between ten and twelve hours per day in extremely dangerous conditions for meager wages. Often they were paid in scrip, company cash that could only be redeemed at a company store in exchange for necessities such as tools and food. Knowing that Colorado’s economy depended on their labor, many miners joined unions such as the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america"><strong>United Mine Workers of America</strong></a> (UMWA) and organized strikes to demand better pay, shorter work days, and safer working conditions.</p> <p>In 1894 more than 1,200 striking coal miners from across southern Colorado converged in Trinidad in an attempt to stage a strike that would suspend coal production and force companies such as <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Fuel &amp; Iron</strong></a> (CF&amp;I)—the descendant of Palmer’s CC&amp;I—to address their grievances. Companies like CF&amp;I and the Trinidad Coal and Coke Company responded to union pressure by hiring strikebreakers, firing strikers, and closing off other camps to prevent union influence. The strikers failed to shut down the industry, however, and so eventually had to return to work at pre-strike wages and conditions.</p> <p>Though it failed to achieve its goals, the 1894 strike nonetheless demonstrated the growing power of the labor movement in Las Animas County. But it pales in comparison to the Coalfield Wars, which cast a shadow of death and destruction over the county in 1913–14. Conditions and pay had changed little since the 1890s, and the UMWA again found traction in the southern coalfields. In the summer of 1913, several thousand mineworkers, their families, and sympathizers convened in Trinidad and declared their intent to strike.</p> <p>The strike began in September and continued throughout the fall, and as attempts to reconcile the two sides failed, Colorado officials grew anxious at the possible fuel shortfall for the winter. Governor <strong>Elias M. Ammons</strong> sent in the National Guard to suppress the strikers, ratcheting up tension. Sporadic conflict between the National Guard and strikers continued throughout the winter. The powder keg finally exploded on April 20, 1914, when gunfire erupted between the National Guard and strikers near the union’s Ludlow tent colony north of Trinidad. Many of the miners’ families fled the tent colony once the fighting began, so the National Guard believed the camp to be empty when they set it on fire. Hidden in a pit underneath one of the tents, however, were thirteen women and children, who died of smoke inhalation.</p> <p>After hearing about the events at Ludlow, other miners went on a rampage across the southern Coalfields, killing mine operators and guards. It is still not known how exactly how many people died during the entire conflict, but at least nineteen died at Ludlow, making the event the deadliest labor conflict in American history. In 1918 the UMWA built a statue at the Ludlow site to honor those killed in the massacre. Coal mining continued in Las Animas County until the 1920s, when demand tapered off due to the availability of other fuels.</p> <h2>Today</h2> <p>Today, the Las Animas County economy, especially in the eastern part, reflects its pastoral and agricultural heritage. In 2012 it had 602 farms and a total of nearly 42,000 cattle and calves, and it ranked near the middle of the state’s sixty-four counties in corn and wheat production.</p> <p>Tourism is also a major part of the county economy. Every year, thousands of outdoor enthusiasts visit the <strong>Spanish Peaks Wilderness</strong> to climb, camp, hike, bike, and fish around the prominent twin mountains. Trinidad’s historic district, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/el-corazon-de-trinidad-national-historic-district"><strong>El Corazón de Trinidad</strong></a> (“the heart of Trinidad”), was created in 1972 and attracts heritage tourists with its eclectic mix of Anglo and Hispano architecture. The city is also home to a thriving creative district and arts community, as well as <strong>Trinidad State Junior College,</strong> which was established in 1925 and has an enrollment of 2,219 as of 2013.</p> <p>Trinidad Lake State Park surrounds the 800-acre <strong>Trinidad Lake</strong>, a reservoir built for flood control purposes in the late 1950s. The lake is well-stocked with fish, making it a popular destination for anglers, while the surrounding park offers camping, an archery range, and ten miles of hiking trails, among other amenities.</p> <p>After the <a href="/article/dust-bowl"><strong>Dust Bowl</strong></a> of the 1930s, the federal government bought 440,000 acres of cultivated land in southern Otero and northeast Las Animas Counties and returned it to native grassland. In 1960 this land was designated as the Comanche National Grassland. In 1991, after staging tank drills in the area for twenty years, the US Department of Defense added <strong>Picketwire Canyon </strong>to the Comanche National Grassland (“picketwire” is the Anglo mispronunciation of “purgatoire”). The canyon is the site of 150-milion-year-old dinosaur tracks as well as parts of the historic Santa Fé Trail. Picturesque landscapes and native prairies draw hikers, birdwatchers, and other outdoor enthusiasts.</p> <p>In 2009 the Ludlow Massacre site was declared a National Historic Landmark, and April 20, 2014, marked the hundredth anniversary of the tragedy. To commemorate the massacre, Governor <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/john-hickenlooper"><strong>John Hickenlooper</strong></a> organized a commission that planned a slew of activities, including a speakers’ series, symposia, a play, museum exhibits, and a Sunday church service at the Ludlow site.</p> <p>In 2016 the Colorado Economic Development Commission added Las Animas County to its rural Jump-Start Program, which offered tax breaks to approved businesses for locating to the state’s most distressed areas. Las Animas County officials have said that industrial hemp and self-driving cars are among the industries they are attempting to attract with the incentives.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county" hreflang="en">Las Animas County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county-history" hreflang="en">las animas county history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-massacre" hreflang="en">Ludlow Massacre</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/william-jackson-palmer" hreflang="en">william jackson palmer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/trinidad" hreflang="en">Trinidad</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/spanish-peaks" hreflang="en">spanish peaks</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/aguilar" hreflang="en">aguilar</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/comanche-national-grassland" hreflang="en">comanche national grassland</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hoehne" hreflang="en">hoehne</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/purgatoire-river" hreflang="en">Purgatoire River</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow" hreflang="en">ludlow</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining" hreflang="en">coal mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/raton-pass" hreflang="en">raton pass</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/felipe-baca" hreflang="en">felipe baca</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/casimiro-barela" hreflang="en">casimiro barela</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and David McComb, <em>Colorado: A History of the Centennial State </em>3rd ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1995).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Apishapa Valley Historical Society, “<a href="https://www.aguilarhistory.com/html/jraguilar.htm">The Jose Ramon Aguilar Story</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Apishapa Valley Historical Society, “<a href="https://www.aguilarhistory.com/html/history.htm">History</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War </em>(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Richard Carrillo, Abbey Christman, Kathleen Corbett, Lindsay Joyner, and Jonathon Rusch, <a href="https://issuu.com/coloradopreservation/docs/historic-context-study-ranching"><em>Historic Context Study of the Purgatoire River Region</em></a> (Denver: Colorado Presevation, Inc., 2011).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Phil Carson, <em>Across the Northern Frontier: Spanish Explorations in Colorado </em>(Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1998).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Colorado Parks &amp; Wildlife, “<a href="https://cpw.state.co.us/placestogo/parks/TrinidadLake/Pages/default.aspx">Trinidad Lake</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>José E. Fernández, <em>The Biography of Casimiro Barela</em> (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Pekka Hämäiläinen, <em>The Comanche Empire </em>(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Janet Lecompte, <em>Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn</em> (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>William E. Pabor, <a href="https://mountainscholar.orgbitstream/handle/10217/46927/Colorado_As_An_Agricultural_State.pdf?sequence=1"><em>Colorado As An Agricultural State</em></a> (New York: Orange Judd, 1883).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Martha Quillen, “<a href="https://www.cozine.com:8443/2001-december/mexican-land-grants-in-colorado">Mexican Land Grants in Colorado</a>,” <em>Colorado Central Magazine</em>, December 1, 2001.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Virginia McConnell Simmons, <em>The Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Army Corps of Engineers, “<a href="https://www.spa.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Recreation/Trinidad-Lake/">Trinidad Lake Project</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Department of Agriculture, “<a href="https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2012/Online_Resources/County_Profiles/">2012 Census of Agriculture County Profile: Las Animas County Colorado</a>,” National Agricultural Statistics Service.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Morris F. Taylor, <em>Trinidad, Colorado Territory </em>(Pueblo, CO: O’Brien Printing &amp; Stationery, 1966).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/cgi-bin/colorado?a=d&amp;d=TEP18730912.2.43&amp;srpos=2&amp;e=-------en-20-TEP-1-byDA-txt-txIN-utes-------0-"><em>Trinidad Enterprise</em>, September 12, 1873</a>.</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Colorado Preservation, Inc., “<a href="https://coloradopreservation.org/programs/endangered-places/endangered-places-archives/el-corazon-de-trinidad/">El Corazón de Trinidad</a>.”</p> <p><a href="https://vlsicad2022.org/">Corazón de Trinidad Creative District</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.historictrinidad.com/tourism.html">Historic Trinidad</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.lasanimascounty.net/">Las Animas County</a></p> <p>Rocky Mountain PBS,&nbsp;<a href="https://video.rmpbs.org/video/2365918089/">"Trinidad,"</a>&nbsp;<em>Colorado Experience</em>, December 22, 2016.</p> <p><a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/psicc/recarea/?recid=80758">Spanish Peaks Wilderness</a></p> <p><a href="https://trinidad.co.gov/">Trinidad</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.trinidadstate.edu/">Trinidad State Junior College</a></p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Mon, 14 Nov 2016 23:20:10 +0000 yongli 2049 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Ludlow Massacre http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ludlow-massacre <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Ludlow Massacre</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-article-image.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-article-image.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div id="carouselEncyclopediaArticle" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="true"> <div class="carousel-inner"> <div class="carousel-item active"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2514--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2514.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/ludlow-strikers-1914"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Ludlow-Massacre-Media-1_0.jpg?itok=Mp5N7wJf" width="1000" height="687" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/ludlow-strikers-1914" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Ludlow Strikers, 1914</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Striking coal miners and their families gather at the Ludlow tent colony during the United Mine Workers' strike of 1914. Governor Elias Ammons deployed the National Guard to quell the strike, and a pitched battle between strikers and guardsmen broke out on April 20. Guardsmen burned the tent colony, and nineteen people, including more than a dozen women and children, were killed before day's end.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="carousel-item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2515--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2515.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/ruins-ludlow-tent-colony"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Ludlow-Massacre-Media-2_1.jpg?itok=cm-7SsnY" width="1000" height="734" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/ruins-ludlow-tent-colony" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Ruins of Ludlow Tent Colony</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Smoldering frames and debris were all that remained of the Ludlow tent colony after National Guardsmen burned it down during the Ludlow Massacre on April 20, 1914. The colony had housed coal miners and their families, and more than a dozen women and children suffocated during the conflagration.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="carousel-item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2516--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2516.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/memorial-service-ludlow-victims"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Ludlow-Massacre-Media-3_0.jpg?itok=y9TnHerg" width="1000" height="701" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/memorial-service-ludlow-victims" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Memorial Service for Ludlow Victims</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Coffins carrying the victims of the Ludlow Massacre are brought to the Catholic Church in Trinidad as hundreds of mourners look on. At least nineteen people, including thirteen women and children, were killed in the massacre.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="carousel-item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2517--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2517.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/national-guardsmen-ludlow-colony"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Ludlow-Massacre-Media-4_0.jpg?itok=RgS_xV3b" width="1000" height="559" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/national-guardsmen-ludlow-colony" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">National Guardsmen at Ludlow Colony</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Two National Guardsmen pose with rifles in the burned tent colony of Ludlow shortly after the massacre in 1914. The guardsmen, who were sent in by Governor Elias Ammons to keep peace during a strike between the United Mine Workers and Colorado Fuel &amp; Iron, instead helped instigate the massacre on April 20 and burned the colony. Thirteen women and children died in the blaze.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <button class="carousel-control-prev" type="button" data-bs-target="#carouselEncyclopediaArticle" data-bs-slide="prev"> <span class="carousel-control-prev-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span> <span class="visually-hidden">Previous</span> </button> <button class="carousel-control-next" type="button" data-bs-target="#carouselEncyclopediaArticle" data-bs-slide="next"> <span class="carousel-control-next-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span> <span class="visually-hidden">Next</span> </button> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-09-29T16:39:03-06:00" title="Thursday, September 29, 2016 - 16:39" class="datetime">Thu, 09/29/2016 - 16:39</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ludlow-massacre" data-a2a-title="Ludlow Massacre"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fludlow-massacre&amp;title=Ludlow%20Massacre"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The Ludlow Massacre began on the morning of April 20, 1914, when a battle broke out between the <strong>Colorado National Guard</strong> and striking <strong>coal</strong> miners at their tent colony outside of <strong>Ludlow </strong>in <a href="/article/las-animas-county"><strong>Las Animas County</strong></a>. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but the incident is remembered as a massacre because the miners and their families bore the brunt of the casualties. At least nineteen people died, including one guardsman, five miners, and thirteen women and children who suffocated as they hid from the gunfire in a pit. More died in violence throughout southern Colorado over the next few days. No matter how the casualties are counted, the Ludlow Massacre is one of the bloodiest events in American labor history.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The massacre was the culminating event of the 1913–14 Colorado coal miners’ strike. The strike had two main goals: getting coal operators to follow state of Colorado mining law and gaining representation by the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america"><strong>United Mine Workers of America</strong></a> (UMWA) for Colorado’s coal miners. The dispute was bloody from the outset, with deaths on both sides. The state’s largest private employer, the <a href="/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Fuel and Iron Company</strong></a> (CF&amp;I), employed most of the striking miners. Since it had more resources than the miners, its efforts to intimidate union members into ending the dispute resonated most in the public mind. For example, on October 17, 1913, an armor-plated car (quickly dubbed the “Death Special”) shot up the miners’ tent colony at Forbes, killing one and scaring many. As a result of such tactics, every miners’ tent colony was heavily armed. In response to that, Colorado Governor <strong>Elias M. Ammons</strong> deployed the National Guard to keep the miners under control.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The Guard was supposed to maintain the peace, but since mine owners had already worked out a deal with the state to pay for the cost of the deployment, the troops actually caused more trouble. The battalion also included many veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection who were conditioned to think of the multi-ethnic miners as their inferiors.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>No matter which side fired first on April 20, the battle began as a result of mutual distrust and fear. With a history of violence on both sides, any minor incident could have blown up to be a major conflict. Once that conflict started, most of the residents of the Ludlow colony evacuated. Thinking the colony had been abandoned, Guardsmen burned the tents to the ground. Nobody knew about those thirteen women and children and the pit until their bodies were found the next morning, suffocated by the fumes rather than shot down in cold blood, as the miners alleged. However, an accurate indicator of the Guard’s unbridled hostility toward the miners was the cold-blooded execution of three leaders under a flag of truce. <strong>Louis Tikas</strong>, a Greek-American leader of the striking miners, was shot three times in the back.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ramifications from the Massacre began instantly. When other miners heard of the events at Ludlow, they went on a killing spree across the region. Mine supervisors and guards were shot. Mine property was destroyed. Innocent people were killed on both sides. It is impossible to determine how many people died in the days after the Massacre, although it was certainly more than the number of the people who died in the initial tragedy. Rumors of a slaughter by the National Guard ran rampant, fueled by the outside world’s inability to confirm what happened. On April 28, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched the US Army to Colorado, thereby ending the violence and restoring order to the region.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The 1913–14 Colorado coal strike ended in December 1914 with the union achieving none of its stated objectives. Nevertheless, the deaths of the women and children in the “death pit” captured the public imagination. In an era that can still be described as “Victorian” in outlook, killing unarmed women and children (even if done by accident) was completely unacceptable to the American public. Therefore, despite the hostile press that striking miners had received before the Massacre, media outlets attacked the mine owners with gusto afterwards. It was Denver’s <strong><em>Rocky Mountain News</em>,</strong> rather than the miners, that coined the term “Ludlow Massacre” shortly after the event. A clever media campaign by the UMWA that included a nationwide speaking tour by female survivors of the massacre won further support for the union cause. An investigation of the strike and subsequent massacre by the US Commission on Industrial Relations under Chairman Frank Walsh kept the tragedy in the news for years after it happened. The primary object of union and public hostility after the Ludlow Massacre was John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the oil baron’s son and primary stockholder of CF&amp;I. Shortly after the tragedy, the writer Upton Sinclair and others protested outside Rockefeller’s New York City office.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Sinclair was also part of a mock trial of Rockefeller for murder near the industrialist’s hometown in upstate New York. As a result, Rockefeller hired the future Prime Minister of Canada (then a former Labor Minister), W. L. Mackenzie King, to design the so-called Rockefeller Plan, an employer representation plan (or “company union” to critics) that was designed to give miners just enough rights and privileges in order to avoid future tragedies. In 1918 the UMWA erected a statue commemorating the Ludlow Massacre on the site of the tent colony. The union continues to commemorate the event each year to this day.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 2009 the US Department of the Interior declared the site a National Historic Landmark, one of only two such sites in the country related to American labor history. April 20, 2014, marked the hundredth anniversary of the massacre. Governor <a href="/article/john-hickenlooper"><strong>John Hickenlooper</strong></a> convened a Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission to plan commemoration events across the state. Commemorative activities included a speakers’ series, symposia, a play, museum exhibits, and a Sunday church service at the Ludlow site.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/rees-jonathan-h" hreflang="und">Rees, Jonathan H.</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-massacre" hreflang="en">Ludlow Massacre</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow" hreflang="en">ludlow</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county" hreflang="en">Las Animas County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-tent-colony" hreflang="en">ludlow tent colony</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coalfield-wars" hreflang="en">coalfield wars</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coalfield-strikes" hreflang="en">coalfield strikes</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-history" hreflang="en">labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-coal" hreflang="en">colorado coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mine-workers-america" hreflang="en">united mine workers of america</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mine-workers" hreflang="en">United Mine Workers</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal" hreflang="en">coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/elias-ammons" hreflang="en">Elias Ammons</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/national-guard" hreflang="en">national guard</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War</em> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Scott Martelle, <em>Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West</em> (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>George S. McGovern and Leonard F. Guttridge, <em>The Great Coalfield War</em> (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1996).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a href="https://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfphoto.html">Colorado Coal Field Project</a>, University of Denver.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Anthony DeStefanis, “<a href="https://www.chieftain.com/opinion/2494511-120/ludlow-massacre-colorado-miners/">100th Anniversary Observance: Ludlow Was a Massacre</a>,” <em>Pueblo Chieftain</em>, April 27, 2014.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://ludlow100.wordpress.com/">Ludlow Centennial Commemoration</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ben Mauk, “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-ludlow-massacre-still-matters">The Ludlow Massacre Still Matters</a>,” <em>The New Yorker</em>, April 18, 2014.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Alan Prendergast, “<a href="http://features.westword.com/ludlow-massacre-anniversary/">Bloody Ludlow</a>,” <em>Westword</em>, April 17, 2014.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Rocky Mountain PBS, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qIHN68YNXw">The Ludlow Massacre</a>,” <em>Colorado Experience</em>, 2013.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>George P. West, “<a href="https://ia600300.us.archive.org/33/items/reportoncolorado00unit/reportoncolorado00unit.pdf">Report on the Colorado Strike</a>,” US Commissions on Industrial Relations (Chicago: Barnard &amp; Miller, 1915).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Thu, 29 Sep 2016 22:39:03 +0000 yongli 1898 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org