Lynn: A Name on the Coal Map
Colorado
You are in the northern reach of the Trinidad coalfield, one of the most productive bituminous seams in the American West. A scattering of buildings here carries the name Lynn. Honestly, the record is thin.
No founding deed, no company charter, no named operator has surfaced for Lynn specifically, though it sits squarely in the landscape that by the eighteen nineties held a hundred coal camps stretching from Trinidad north toward Walsenburg. The camps drew workers from more than a dozen countries: Italians, Greeks, Mexicans, African Americans, Slavs, and British miners, all following the seams. What became of most of them was the same story: the coal gave out, the company moved on, and the town shrank to almost nothing.
Today eleven people live here. The coalfield remembers them all.
