Valdez: The Frederick Mine Town

The little cluster of homes you see here is Valdez, and it exists because of coal. In nineteen oh seven, Colorado Fuel and Iron, the Rockefeller-controlled industrial giant based in Pueblo, sank a new mine into the flanks of this valley south of Trinidad. They named the camp Valdez, though why they chose that name is not documented in any surviving company record.

The mine itself was soon renamed Frederick, and it became CF&I's most productive. By nineteen seventeen it was turning out fifteen hundred tons of coal a day, drawn up by five hundred men and twenty-eight mules. Workers came from across Europe and from local Hispanic families who had worked this land for generations.

The seam ran six feet thick for decades. By nineteen sixty it had thinned to three feet, the roof supports were failing, and CF&I closed the works. The total yield across fifty-three years was nearly thirty million tons.

Valdez still stands, a handful of residents in the valley, the mine long silent.