Erie, Colorado
Near Boulder, Colorado
Erie was once the most important coal town in Colorado. Locals were digging coal here by the late eighteen sixties, and Captain Ira Austin opened the first official underground mine in eighteen seventy-six. Around eighteen sixty-seven, R.
J. Van Valkenburg arrived with his family and named the place after his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. He is still called the Father of Erie.
The original town plat followed in eighteen seventy-one, and when the Boulder Valley Railroad laid track the same year, Erie's fate was sealed as a coal shipping hub. For decades the mines powered Denver's growth. Today the town has transformed into a fast-growing suburb, but remnants of the coal era still surface in backyard digs and the names on the oldest streets.
