Braidwood: The Mine That Named a Town

In eighteen sixty-four, a farmer named William Henneberry was digging a water well on the Thomas Byron farm when his shovel hit rich black coal. Chicago needed fuel, and companies moved in fast. The settlement was originally called Keeversville, but in eighteen seventy-two the owners hired a Scottish mining engineer named James Braidwood to oversee the first deep shaft, and when the city incorporated on March fourth, eighteen seventy-three, it took his name.

Within a decade, several thousand people lived here and the mines were shipping hundreds of thousands of tons to Chicago each year. Braidwood also produced labor leaders: John Mitchell, who became president of the United Mine Workers of America, was born in Braidwood in eighteen seventy. A miners' union existed here as early as eighteen seventy-two, making this small town one of the earliest organized labor strongholds in Illinois.

Route Sixty-Six later passed through, adding one more chapter to a town shaped by digging and organizing.