The mining industry was a fundamental element of Colorado’s history in the late nineteenth century and played an extremely important role in the economic and industrial development of the United States at the time. Following the Civil War, economic interests refocused on Colorado’s hidden resources that first drew attention in the 1858 Pikes Peak Gold Rush. Where mining before the Civil War had previously been predominantly placer mining, which involves separating ores from sediment, often on river beds, new discoveries encouraged the use of hardrock mining, which extracts ores directly from veins buried in the mountains. Pioneered by William Jackson Palmer, Colorado’s coal industry would experience rapid growth in the 1870’s to meet the needs of the burgeoning mining industry as well as the nation as a whole.

First drawn to the mines were immigrants with past experience mining. Working in metal or coal mining, these immigrants were predominantly white and generally British, Irish, Belgian, French, German, and Polish. Other immigrants, arriving in smaller numbers yet still bringing varieties of prior experience with mining, included Italians, Hungarians, Serbs, Russians, Bohemians, Poles, and more. Hispanos were also present in Colorado mines and consisted of experienced and inexperienced labor.

Faced with tremendous threat to life from the nature of work within the mines, most European immigrants or other white male miners and colliers lived in relative harmony, bolstering each other in their larger struggle for survival and economic prosperity. While ethnic animosities did create some conflict, multiethnic laborers – immigrant or not – generally created cooperative and supportive communities.

Coal mining followed tiers of skilled labor that brought boys and men further into the mines. Outside the entrances, young boys or inexperienced arrivals separated the coal from bits of rock as they were pulled out of the mines. Once they were around 13 or 14 years old, boys would work to open and close doors within the mines, carefully controlling the flow of air throughout the mine, a crucial job that could have disastrous consequences if they were not careful. Slightly older, more experienced boys drove the mules that pulled trains of coal and men throughout these underground cities. Eventually, as boys or new arrivals grew to understand life underground and could read the signs of danger in the mines, particularly falling rock, they joined the most experienced miners in digging coal out of the rooms. If they survived long enough without injury or death, they would gradually become experts themselves, passing knowledge to waves of new arrivals.

While miners worked to earn wages to support their families, it was their wives and women in the camp who performed every other labor, often working longer hours than the men with less opportunities for social contact. A typical day for a woman entailed long hours of housekeeping chores (made even harder by the ever-present coal dust) and preparing food. In a time before laundry machines, women had to manually wash grimy clothing manually using water they had to carry long distances from a well or river. When preparing meals, it was also to the women to produce most of the food themselves.