The Coal Wars of Huerfano County
You're rolling through the heart of what was once one of Colorado's most violent labor battlegrounds. Walsenburg sits at the center of Huerfano County's coal empire, where some of the richest seams in the West met some of the most brutal working conditions in American industrial history.
Coal was king here from the 1870s through the 1950s. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, controlled by the Rockefeller family, dominated these fields. At peak production around 1910, thousands of miners worked the seams around Walsenburg, pulling out over two million tons a year. The workforce was a United Nations of labor: Italian, Greek, Mexican, Japanese, Slavic immigrants, each group speaking their own language, all breathing the same coal dust. They lived in company towns with names like Cameron, Pictou, Pryor, and Walsen, paying rent to the company, buying from company stores, their children attending company schools.
The conditions were medieval. Miners earned maybe two dollars for a ten hour shift, but only got paid for coal loaded, not the dead work of timbering or laying track. Company scrip kept them perpetually in debt. Cave ins and gas explosions were regular killers.
In September 1913, eleven thousand miners across southern Colorado walked out, demanding union recognition, better pay, and enforcement of state mining laws. The coal companies evicted entire families from company housing. The United Mine Workers set up tent colonies, the largest at Ludlow, just north of here.
For months, tensions simmered. Then on April 20th, 1914, Colorado National Guard troops and company gunmen attacked the Ludlow tent colony. They raked it with machine gun fire and set it ablaze. When the ashes cooled, thirteen people were dead, including eleven children and two women who'd suffocated in a pit they'd dug beneath their tent to escape the bullets.
The Ludlow Massacre sparked a ten day war. Miners armed themselves and attacked mines and camps across these hills. Federal troops finally restored order, but the violence had exposed the savage reality of industrial Colorado to the nation.
Keep your eyes on those hills ahead. Somewhere up there, the ghosts of tent colonies still whisper in the wind.
| 01 | You're rolling through the heart of what was once one of Colorado's most violent labor battlegrounds. Walsenburg sits at the center of Huerfano County's coal empire, where some of the richest seams in the West met some of the most brutal working conditions in American industrial history. Coal was king here from the 1870s through the 1950s. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, controlled by the Rockefeller family, dominated these fields. At peak production around 1910, thousands of miners worked the seams around Walsenburg, pulling out over two million tons a year. The workforce was a United Nations of labor: Italian, Greek, Mexican, Japanese, Slavic immigrants, each group speaking their own language, all breathing the same coal dust. They lived in company towns with names like Cameron, Pictou, Pryor, and Walsen, paying rent to the company, buying from company stores, their children attending company schools. | 0:57 | |
| 02 | The conditions were medieval. Miners earned maybe two dollars for a ten hour shift, but only got paid for coal loaded, not the dead work of timbering or laying track. Company scrip kept them perpetually in debt. Cave ins and gas explosions were regular killers. In September 1913, eleven thousand miners across southern Colorado walked out, demanding union recognition, better pay, and enforcement of state mining laws. The coal companies evicted entire families from company housing. The United Mine Workers set up tent colonies, the largest at Ludlow, just north of here. For months, tensions simmered. Then on April 20th, 1914, Colorado National Guard troops and company gunmen attacked the Ludlow tent colony. They raked it with machine gun fire and set it ablaze. When the ashes cooled, thirteen people were dead, including eleven children and two women who'd suffocated in a pit they'd dug beneath their tent to escape the bullets. | 1:00 | |
| 03 | The Ludlow Massacre sparked a ten day war. Miners armed themselves and attacked mines and camps across these hills. Federal troops finally restored order, but the violence had exposed the savage reality of industrial Colorado to the nation. Keep your eyes on those hills ahead. Somewhere up there, the ghosts of tent colonies still whisper in the wind. | 0:21 |