8/19/2019
Hastings Colorado
Mine Disaster Memorial, Hastings Colorado
Hastings is one of three close-by places I visited in 2018 that are memorialized in very different ways. The Ludlow Massacre Memorial and the town of Ludlow are the other two. Hastings was the site of a large coal mine and associated company owned worker housing. The Hastings mine was the site of the worst mine disaster in Colorado history. On April 27, 1917, 121 miners died in an underground gas explosion. Hastings is part of a larger coal field that stretches from south central Colorado into north central New Mexico that was active in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The coal in this area entraps a large amount of methane. Thousands of miners died in explosions in the area's mines. Dawson New Mexico was the site of the district's worst disaster when 263 miners died in an explosion in 1913. The coal field was first developed in the 1870s by railroads that needed a source of fuel for routes that crossed the country. By the turn of the century, the mines were also producing coal for metallurgical coke which was used in precious metal smelters and the massive steel works in Pueblo Colorado. Hastings has the second best preserved coke furnaces in the district that I am aware of. The best preserved are in Cokedale Colorado.
At time of the 1917 disaster, Hastings had close to a thousand residents including miners and their families. The mine and the entire town was owned by the Victor-American Fuel Company. It was common throughout the southern Colorado coal district for the mining company to own the housing the miners lived in, the stores they shopped in, their schools and churches and everything else. Abuse of this system led to the great strike of 1913-1914 which culminated in the Ludlow Massacre. The site of the Ludlow Massacre is about 3 miles east of Hastings. Miners from Hastings would have moved to the site of the massacre after being evicted from their company owned houses. When the mines closed permanently in the 1940s and 1950s, the companies that owned the land and the houses the miners lived in couldn't be troubled to divide large parcels into lots and sell the miners their homes individually. The companies evicted the miners, cleared the land, and sold off the land to investors in very large parcels. Almost all of the many dozens of mining towns and coal camps in the southern Colorado district were obliterated in this manner. Cokedale is a unique survivor. The material remains of the mining period and the tens of thousands of miners that toiled in the mines consist largely of thousands of home foundations in the canyons on the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Nothing marks the site of the town of Hastings. There are no signs directing travelers, no plaques or monuments. There is one small, recently placed, stone monument commemorating the 1917 disaster. But nothing that mentions the hundreds of other miners that died in other, smaller accidents. This contrasts with the large memorial for the victims of the Ludlow Massacre. Memorials cost money. Memorials can't be placed if the landowner isn't cooperative. The Hastings site is three miles up a good gravel road away from the freeway. It's not far to go but there are no signs identifying or directing to it. The coke ovens are a unique historic resource. They are deteriorating and unprotected. There is very little left of the mine works and nothing visible remains of the miners homes.
All content on these pages Copyright Mark Hedlund 2012-2019. All rights reserved. Use in school projects and with links on social media is always okay. Please send me an email to request permission for any other use: hedlunch@yahoo.com Non-exclusive commercial publication rights for most photos is $25 per image.