Fort Morgan Public Library

Came a day when I wanted to get married and needed a stake. To my youthful optimism, geared as it was to the 'thirty-a-month-and- found' wages paid cowboys the vast affluence of five dollars a day in the gold mines seemed to offer the quickest solution.

Lesser known than the gold and silver mines of Western lore, Southern Colorado's extensive coal mines fueled the engines for Western industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of the numerous companies operating the mines, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was king. With a total of 62 mines, the majority of them in Colorado's Las Animas, Huerfano, and Fremont Counties, CF&I ruled the lives of countless miners in company towns...