Coal, Coke, and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Big Mine
Near Crested Butte, Colorado
For most of its life, Crested Butte was not a resort at all. It was a coal town, one of the most productive in the Rocky Mountains. Efforts to dig the coal here began in the late eighteen seventies, but the industry truly took off when the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, later the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, bought up large tracts of coal bearing land around eighteen eighty one.
By eighteen eighty two, historians say Crested Butte had become the leading mountain coal mining community in the whole state. The company's Big Mine opened in eighteen ninety four, and by nineteen oh two it ranked as the third largest coal mine in Colorado. Between eighteen eighty and nineteen fifty two, the mines here produced more than ten million tons of coal, and nearly one and a half million tons of coke, the hot burning fuel made by baking coal in ovens for the smelters of the region.
Wave after wave of immigrants worked those seams, first from Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, and later Italians, Greeks, and Slavs from southern and eastern Europe. When the Big Mine finally closed in nineteen fifty two, it ended one of the longest running mining communities in Colorado history and nearly ended the town along with it.
