11/03/2026
When I first started posting these pictures that's really all they were to me. I would edit them and I would post them. Not really thinking too much into their lives. But now I have an understanding of what it was like to not only be alive during those days, but to be a miner as well. It really gives the photos a whole different meaning.
The miners here were hard-working, religious, frugal people. Family and church came first. They valued what little they had because nothing came easy. But they were human so
like any mining town, there were saloons on every corner, and that was where a lot of social life happened. That's how you get stories like "Dead Man's Alley" between Millie and Vulcan Streets — named for a murder and several stabbings that happened there. There was a lot of riff raff that went on in most of all the alleys around here.
The reality of being a miner is that almost every man who worked underground for any length of time ended up with what they called miner's consumption. We know it now as silicosis. The air underground was thick with rock dust from drilling and blasting, with almost no ventilation. They breathed it in, day after day, year after year. It scarred their lungs, left them with a deep, rattling cough, and took many of them before 45 yrs old. The old-timers said they were treated like animals. Labor was cheap and expendable. If one man went down, another took his place.
Every story Ive read about them my takeaway is how hard they worked, how little they had, and how much they still valued.
Now when I see photos of them I take a minute and think about what it must have been like to be alive at that time. And how their efforts built this town.
