Explosions not a rare phenomenon in local coal mines

As the two most recent tragedies in West Virginia and China show, coal mining is a dangerous occupation and local-area mines of the early 1900s were not immune. The following excerpts are from two books authored by Carolyn Conarroe, “The Louisville Story” and “Coal Mining in Colorado’s Northern Field.”

Mining was hard work for long hours. The early mining was done without the benefit of mechanized, labor saving equipment. Men worked with skill, not fear, although there were dangers.

Mine accidents were recorded in ledgers in offices at the mines. After 1909 when Colorado Governor John Shafroth ordered inspections in the coal mines, the accidents became a matter of state record. Injuries and deaths were statistics, a consequence of working with the danger. A fall of coal or rock from the ceiling of a room caused many deaths and injuries. Coal cars in motion had to be avoided. Coal dust and gas caused explosions.

For decades operators held miners responsible for accidents: they had been careless. An inquest into a fatal mine accident would rule the cause as unavoidable and the operator had no liability.

Explosions were a danger to which miners were always alert. Newspaper reports in 1902 told of Louisville’s Sunnyside Mine having four gas explosions in one month. The last one killed a miner and another was burnt badly.

The Simpson Mine at Lafayette also experienced explosion and fire in 1902. The Denver Times reported that gas exploded Nov. 20 at the mine. Men and mules were evacuated. Air was turned to force the fire toward the shaft and water was then poured onto the fire. The mine was reopened Nov. 24.

The worst mine explosion in the Northern Field was at Monarch Mine, south of Louisville, in the early morning of January 20, 1936. A crew of 10 men had entered the mine to do prep work for the 100 day-shift workers. (Notation: Miracle of miracles, they were not in the mine at the time.) The fire-boss was inspecting because coal dust had been accumulating on the mine floor. The force of the explosion shattered mine timbers and rock falls filled in an area where two passageways came together. It was speculated that two coal cars had collided at the intersection during the pre-shift work and sparks from the collision ignited the coal dust.

Two men in the mine escaped: Nick Del Pizzo and William Jenkins Jr. were able to reach an airshaft and climbed 300 feet to safety.

Losing their lives were Steve Davis, the fire boss; Ray Bailey, Oscar Baird, Tom Stevens, Tony DeSantis, Kester Novinger, Leland Ward, and Joe Jaramillo, mule-driver, whose body was never recovered. A monument to his memory, which was placed over the approximate site of the explosion has been moved and is now in a park area on the north side of FlatIron Crossing Mall.

Monarch Mine was reopened for mining as soon as the debris could be cleared. As in every case of explosion, fire or mine accident, whether fatal or not, the miners returned to their work at the first signal of their mine’s whistle.

Addendum:

One of the signal pleasures of my life when my family and I published the Louisville Times from 1965 to 1998 was to take a few minutes away from my work nearly every morning to join the conversations at Joe Colacci’s Blue Parrot coffee club, just down the street from my office. Almost any topic was fair game, but I always considered it a privilege to listen whenever the old coal miners who happened to be there would open up about their experiences, not only the “close calls” but some of the humor they shared as well.

Joe himself started out to be a miner, but gave it up. Traditionally, fathers took their sons into the mines at a tender age to teach them the skills. Joe (who is now deceased) said he was working alongside his dad Mike in a room when they heard a crack snap across the roof. Ready for lunch anyway, the two decided to go into another room to eat. Crash, the ceiling where they had just been working collapsed. It would have buried them alive. A similar event claimed the life of Rome Perrella’s dad only a few days earlier, Joe said.

John Madonna Jr. told of his dad taking a job at the Columbine Mine near Erie, a distance that appears to be about five miles from his Louisville home. No matter the nasty weather or physical exhaustion, he walked both ways every day.

On a lighter note, John Jr. (now 91 years old) was working in a mine when the anvil in the mine’s machine shop turned up missing. Weighing a guesstimated 250 pounds, it was traced to a burly miner who confessed to just picking it up and carrying it home after dark. The boss told the absconder to return it. And he did, carrying it back.