Victor-American Fuel Company
Victor-American Fuel Company, also styled as the Victor Fuel Company, was a coal mining company, primarily focused on operations in the US states of Colorado and New Mexico during the first half of the 20th century. Prior to a 1909 reorganization, the business was known as the American Fuel Company.[1]
Company history
[edit]Company president John C. Osgood took lead of the company in 1903 after being forced out of another company he had founded, Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, by future part-owner John D. Rockefeller.[2] Behind the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Victor-American Fuel Company was the second-largest coal company in the state–and the wealthiest owned by Coloradans–during the first decades of the 20th century.[3] During the 1913-1914 Colorado Coalfield War, strikebreakers and mine guards working for Victor-American that had been hired in response to the United Mine Workers of America-led labor uprising were targeted in attacks.[4]: 247
Operations
[edit]Like other Colorado coal mining companies of the era, Victor-American operated company-owned mining towns that housed its workers across many sites. Victor-American acquired mining sites throughout Colorado, establishing towns to support operations. These mines include Bowen, Chandler, Delagua, Hastings, Pinnacle Mine in the Oak Creek fields, and Wadge Mine.[5][3][6][7][8] Some of these mines were home to significant Asian-American populations, which occasionally were utilized as strikebreakers against collectivizing White miners, especially at Chandler.[9]
By 1987, Victor-American had registered itself as a corporation in Maine.[10]
List of mining disasters
[edit]At the Bowen Mine near Trinidad, Colorado, an explosion of dust ignited by giant powder on 7 August 1902 killed 13 people.[11][12]
On 8 November 1910, at Delagua, an explosion at the Victor-American coal mine killed 76 miners. A group of recovery parties were gathered from the nearby mining communities at Hastings, Berwind, and others.[7] Miners from Primero and Starkville, both CF&I towns that had suffered a major disaster earlier that year (the latter exactly a month earlier), rushed to send help.[13]
The Hastings Mine Disaster took place on 27 April 1917, killing 121 miners at the Victor-American mine.[14] The Hasting mine was not far from Ludlow, site of the Ludlow Massacre, the most violent point in the 1913-1914 Colorado Coalfield War that saw some Victor-American property damaged by armed striking miners.
At Delagua on 27 May 1927, six miners were killed in an explosion of the No. 3 shaft, the same that had collapsed in 1910.[15]
On 27 January 1942, 34 miners were killed at the Victor-American Wadge Mine on Mount Harris in Routt County.[16]
References
[edit]- ^ Nickelson, Howard B. (1988). One Hundred Years of Coal Mining in the Saint Juan Basin, New Mexico (PDF). Socorro, NM: New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. p. 20. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
- ^ "Historic Resources of Redstone, Colorado and Vicinity" (PDF). 9 July 1989. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 March 2016. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ a b "VICTOR-AMERICAN COMPANY IS NEW OWNER OF PINNACLE MINE". Oak Creek Times. Vol. VII, no. 38. Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. 11 March 1915. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ Andrews, Thomas G. (2010). Killing for Coal. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-73668-9. OCLC 1020392525.
- ^ Sherard, Gerald E. (2006). "Pre-1963 Colorado Mining Disasters" (PDF). Denver Public Library. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
- ^ Dalrymple, James; King, Henry P. (1916). "Fourth Annual Report of the State Inspector of Coal Mines". Colorado Coal Mining Department. p. 26. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ a b "Death at Delagua". World Journal. Huerfano, Las Animas. 15 November 2015. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ Sis, Scott; Whitmore, Chad (Winter 1988). "Life of a Routt Coal Miner: Bill Lee". Three Wire Winter. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ Eaton, M. Kathleen (10 April 2010). "Now & Then: Asian Americans in Fremont County – Laundries, Chandler Coal Mine Strike, and State Prison, 1880-1933". Now and Then. Royal Gorge Regional Museum & History Center. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ "Victor-American Fuel Co. v. Wiggins". US Law. Justia. 8 October 1987. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ Sherard, Gerald E. (2006). "Pre-1963 Colorado Mining Disasters" (PDF). Denver Public Library. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
- ^ "Mine Disaster at Bowen, Colo". Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News. 8 August 1902. p. 1. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
- ^ "1910 Explosion at the Starkville Mine Killed 56 Men". The Denver Post. 24 August 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ "Mine Explosion". The Examiner (DAILY ed.). Launceston, Tasmania. 21 June 1912. p. 5. Retrieved 12 August 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ "Six Killed in Colorado Mine". New York Times. 28 May 1927. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
- ^ "Tragedy Stalked At Mt . Harris And 34 Killed In Explosion At Coal Mine". The Steamboat Pilot. Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. 29 January 1942. Retrieved 20 February 2020.