Pictou, The Coal Camp Named for Nova Scotia

Just south of Walsenburg, Pictou was a coal mine and camp that operated for nearly seven decades. The Southern Colorado Coal Company opened the first shafts here in eighteen eighty-seven under the name Sulphur Springs. Two years later, in eighteen eighty-nine, Colorado Fuel Company bought the operation, and superintendent Thomas Lawther renamed it Pictou, after the town of Pictou in Nova Scotia, likely his home.

When Colorado Fuel merged into Colorado Fuel and Iron in eighteen ninety-two, the mine became part of the giant CF and I empire that dominated southern Colorado's coalfields. By nineteen twenty-five, about one hundred and seven workers were employed here. The underground mine suspended in nineteen thirty-one, shifted to surface mining, and finally closed for good in nineteen fifty-four.

Over its life, Pictou produced nearly five million tons of coal. The camp is gone now; the name survives mostly in old company records and on historical mining maps of Huerfano County.