"A Look Back"

The Stories presented here are about people and events during the early days when this corner of Colorado was first settled.

Tragedy At Wadge Mine Part 2
By Chuck Mack

I was acquainted with a lot of the miners who were killed in the Wadge Mine explosion, as some of them had children who were my age. Survivors Joe Gall and Bill Fickle were good friends of my family. I later worked with Jim Fickle at the old Colo-Wyo underground mine. Jim was a brother to Bill. Writing this story gave me the urge to go and walk around this old mine site. A few crumbling foundations and rotting railroad ties were all that remained of the old Wadge Mine site. Walking around the old site and looking at the remains of the old foundations, I realized that the operation was actually much smaller in reality than it was in my memory. I could visualize how everything looked when it was in operation so many years ago, only I had it memorized on a much larger scale. As I let my imagination take me back in time, everything appeared in it's original place. The tipple was there, built high in the air, with the rows of tracks underneath where the railroad cars were loaded. There was the wooden tramway where the mine cars were lowered from the mine portal to the tipple. From the foundations, where the steam boilers were once anchored, the entire boiler room suddenly emerged and there stood my Pop with a sweaty grin on his grimy face and the ever-present coal shovel in hand. There along the road that ran along the base of the hill were the neatly piled stacks of mine props and timbers and there was the wooden stairway that went up the hill. As I climbed the hill, I saw a few scattered remnants of the old wooden stairway and this reminded me of the many trips I had made up and down those stairs on my way to and from school. A few wild bluebells were blooming and I remembered how sometimes I would pick a bouquet for my Mom. The hillside was covered with Oregon grapes. Just thinking of how sour they used to taste, made my mouth pucker. When I reached the top of the hill, the bathhouse, lamp room, and shop building emerged from the remnants of the old foundations and a few familiar faces took shape, as I remembered some of the men who worked there. Looking up the rails, I could see the "Y" in the rails where the mine cars were switched, one branch leading to the mine portal, the other to the mine tipple. From the rails leading to the tipple were two more branch lines, one going to the shop building and one dropping off the hill to where the mine timbers were stacked. As I walked further, I could see signs of where the overhead supports were once mounted and I remembered how the mine hoist rope was suspended on overhead shives and went through a large shive at the far end of the Y in the rails. All the pulling, switching, etc., of the mine cars was done with the mine hoist located in the boiler room. As I approached the mine portal, which is now sealed, I visualized how it looked when it was open. For a moment I could almost smell the damp, musty air that would be coming from the portal. Sadly, this reminded me of all the miners who had entered that hole, never again to see the light of day. As I walked back to my car, I was thinking if we could only have had safety regulations, both government and U.M.W.A. enforced, in the old days, like we modern miners enjoy, that a lot of lives could have been saved, and a lot of the miners who lost their lives needlessly, could be reading this, the same as you and I! The nation's underground coalmines were very dangerous places to work, in the early days. Labor was cheap and plentiful. Mine operators were more concerned with profits than safety. It was not until the Federal Government adopted safety regulations for coal mines and established a safety department to enforce these regulations that the needless slaughter of coal miners began to subside. It has taken years and years to educate the coal companies and coal miners to the fact that coal can be mined economically and safely! "You can't have one without the other!"