"The Bosses Never Go Where The Coal Turns Black To Red": The Castle Gate Mine Disaster.

Castle Gate is now a ghost town located in Carbon County in eastern Utah, United States, 90 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. However, in the late 1800's to the early 1900's it was a booming mining community known for the April 21st, 1897, robbery of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company by Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay in broad daylight. 

They made of with an estimated at $8,800

Employees of the mine first lived in old boxcars provided by the railroad. In time, homes and buildings were built as more people came. 

Men earned 60 cents for every ton of coal removed from the mine. Working alongside their fathers, boys as young as six-years-old loaded the ore into coal cars, carefully removing any rocks.

Castle Gate Mine #1, opened around 1886, after the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad constructed its Utah Division over the Wasatch Plateau, from the town of Springville. The mine produced high-quality coal for the steam trains. 

In November 1903 miners in Carbon County went on strike, protesting the dangerous working conditions of the Utah coal mines and sought better wages and hours.

The Utah Fuel Company didn't like this and restricted credit payments to the strikers and evicted them from their homes. The company then recruited local farmers to work in the mines. The Utah government also sent in the Utah National Guard.

A tent colony for the striking miners had been established between Helper and Castle Gate. In April 1904 labor organizer Mother Jones arrived in Utah which led to a confrontation between local law-enforcement officers and the strikers. On April 25, the sheriff and a 45-man posse entered the camp and arrested 120 Italians who were herded into boxcars and sent to a makeshift jail in Price to await trial. Eleven were found guilty of various offenses and the rest were set free.
Castle Gate Mine #2 opened in 1912, and was found to have the finest coal in the region. In 1914, Castle Gate was incorporated as a town, which was owned and tightly controlled by the Utah Fuel Company and the D&RGW. A third mine opened in 1922.

March 8, 1924, was a cold Saturday morning. Sometime before 7:00 a.m., 171 miners entered Castle Gate Mine #2. At 7:30 a.m., less than an hour later,  a fire boss had discovered some gas near the roof of the mine tunnel. When he climbed up to investigate, his carbide light went out. When he attempted to relight his lamp, the flame from his match ignited the gas.

The gas and the coal dust set off a gigantic explosion that ripped through the mine with such force that wreckage was spewed nearly half a mile across the canyon.The explosion blew out the carbide lamps of all the men in the mine. When the men tried to light their lamps, they set off another explosion that took out the wall of the mine's fan house. Twenty minutes later, a third explosion sliced the mine's steel doors from its concrete frame.

The mine entrance and main tunnel caved in. Rail lines twisted. Roof supports snapped. Ventilation controls were destroyed, and the air and escape shafts filled with gas.

Rescue workers came from all the surrounding areas to help. The leader of the rescue crew, died from carbon monoxide inhalation while attempting to reach the victims shortly after the explosion. Women cooked for bereaved families, tended children, and sew mourning clothing.

Anguished, grieving wives and children waited to hear whether their husbands and fathers had been found. Five-year-old Maria Tagliabue looked through a pile of clothing until she found her father’s socks. A newspaper reported that when she realized “she had really found her daddy, little Maria’s eyes filled with tears and muffled sobs racked her.”

One of Archie Henderson's children went gone back to the mine to get the hat his father had worn.

It took nine days to recover all of the bodies, not one soul survived.

The mourning widows and children of the Castle Gate tragedy received up to $15 a week for six years. Also, for 12 years after the disaster the state paid for a welfare worker, Annie D. Palmer, to visit and help the widows and their children.

The Castle Gate mine disaster currently ranks as the 10th worst mining disaster in United States history and the second worst mining disaster in the history of the state of Utah.

Miners Killed in the Castle Gate Mine Explosion