New Castle: The Mountain That Won't Stop Burning
Colorado
New Castle was born from coal. In eighteen eighty-eight, the Grand River Coal and Coke Company opened mines in the Grand Hogback ridge above town, and within a few years the population surged past two thousand. The coal was shipped to smelters in Aspen and Leadville, cooked down into coke to pull silver from ore.
The Vulcan Mine was the largest, and also the most deadly. On February eighteenth, eighteen ninety-six, a massive explosion killed forty-nine men. The mine reopened. On December twelfth, nineteen thirteen, it exploded again, killing thirty-seven more.
But the strangest legacy is the mountain itself. An underground coal fire, likely ignited during that first eighteen ninety-six disaster, has been burning ever since. Snow melts faster on Burning Mountain's slopes in winter; vegetation struggles to grow above the hidden heat. In two thousand two, a flare-up tied to these same smoldering seams ignited the Coal Seam Fire, which burned nearly thirty homes in nearby Glenwood Springs, not in New Castle itself. The mountain above New Castle has been on fire for over a century, and it is still burning today.
