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The
history of coal mining in Utah is one of outside economic
domination which has created a distinctive ethnic mix
in the central southeastern area of predominantly Mormon
Utah. The area was first controlled by major railroads,
and, since World War I, increasingly by international
energy companies.
However, Utah's coal industry began under the aegis of
the LDS Church, which reserved valuable local timber for
building lumber, not fuel. This helped create demand for
coal that was emphasized when the 1854 territorial legislature
offered a cash prize (apparently never collected) for
the first usable coal deposits found within forty miles
of Salt Lake City. Initial discoveries ranged farther
afield, usually in conjunction with infant iron industries
encouraged by the Saints' drive toward self-sufficiency.
From the 1850s through the 1870s several coal prospects
opened: one in the southwestern corner of the state, others
in centrally located Sanpete County, and one at Coalville,
Summit County, forty miles from Salt Lake City. The Mormons
built a connecting railroad to the Coalville deposit,
which (along with most other Mormon railroads) was quickly
acquired by the Union Pacific (UP) after it entered Utah
Territory in 1869. The UP then monopolized Utah's coal
supply. Its only completion came from wagon mines or "country
banks," where farmers would drive a wagon up to an
exposed vein and load enough for their personal needs.
The UP's monopolistic practices prompted Utah's Mormons
to cheer the construction of the competing Denver and
Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW or Rio Grande),
built from 1881 to 1883. This new railroad traversed the
foot of the Book Cliffs, soon discovered to be Utah's
richest coal deposit. In 1881 a railroad geologist pinpointed
a deposit suitable for locomotive fuel which soon became
the Castle Gate Mine. In 1882 the D&RGW acquired the
Pleasant Valley Coal Company and Railroad, founded by
Sanpete Mormons in 1875. It completed its Book Cliffs
coal and transportation combination with the acquisition
of Sunnyside--the only Utah deposit of quality coking
coal (a derivative used in smelting) in 1899.
However, this impressive industrial growth proceeded in
the face of three major challenges. The first was labor.
Most railroad workers were immigrants, lured by labor
agents with false promises of wealth from Italy, China,
Finland, Greece, the Balkans, Japan, and Mexico. Often
brought in as strikebreakers, most remained, eventually
joined the union, and helped give the area its distinctive
ethnic mix. Miners complained about short weights (the
basis for their pay); the necessity of living in company
town and trading at the company store (where appreciably
higher prices prevailed); safety concerns (in which the
company was consistently exonerated by a pro-business
judiciary); and the need for company recognition of the
union. All these complaints led to repeated strikes.
The first local labor disturbance took place at Scofield
(Winter Quarters) in 1883, a year after the D&RGW
took control; this was followed by an 1899 walkout on
the eve of Sunnyside's opening. The recurrent demand for
safer working conditions proved especially poignant as
terrific explosions shook the Utah coal fields, beginning
with the horrific Scofield Mine Disaster of 1900 in which
approximately 200 men and boys were killed. There was
a strike in 1901, followed by another unsuccessful miners'
attempt to gain the protection of a national union in
1903-04. A localized strike shook Kenilworth, Utah's first
independent mine, in 1910; and Utah's coal miners joined
another national strike in 1922. However, management prevailed,
and local miners had to suffer another terrific loss of
life in the Castle Gate Explosion of 1924, despite repeated
warnings and basic safety practices initiated by the state
coal mine inspector. Unionization by the United Mine Workers
of America and the end of major abuses was finally achieved
only after another national strike in 1933.
The second threat to railroad hegemony was legal. Until
the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, United
States law allowed a maximum coal land ownership of 640
acres. This unrealistic amount was regularly exceeded
through the use of "dummy" entrymen and the
abuse of the state selections process. Federal trust-busting
litigation against the Rio Grand consortium in 1906 through
1912 resulted in an out-of-court settlement that confirmed
the land titles of the railroad and its subsidiaries,
the Pleasant Valley Coal Company and the Utah Fuel Company.
Several "independent" (non-railroad affiliated)
developers, who had began new coal operations on the assumption
that the Book Cliffs railroad-coal monopoly was over,
were also indicted. The independents' developments included
mines initiated by brothers Arthur and Frederick Sweet,
first at Kenilworth (near Castle Gate) and later on the
Black Hawk vein in southwestern Carbon County, which proved
a developers' magnet from 1910 to 1917. A case involving
the latter area still stands as the national precedent
for state selection of mineral lands (U.S. v.
Sweet, 245 U.S. 563 [1918]).
The richness of the Book Cliffs areas attracted other
developers. Mormon businessman "Uncle" Jesse
Knight began work in the Spring Canyon district in 1912,
where several others followed in the period up through
World War I. This burgeoning growth--and later bust--exemplified
the third challenge to the Utah coal industry: periodic
production cycles triggered by outside economic dislocations.
Expansions created by the heightened demands of World
War I affected pre-established Book Cliffs areas. Meanwhile,
the development of known deposits in Emery County to the
south lagged behind because of the lack of railroad transportation.
Despite a nationwide mining depression beginning in the
1920s, a new mine opened east of Sunnyside and the Gordon
Creek district also entered production. However, the depression
deepened as railroads switched to diesel fuel and homeowners
changed to natural gas. A few new owners acquired mines
in the thirties to power industries still run on coal.
Two decades of depression were relieved only when World
War II demands caused Utah coal production to reach its
zenith.
However, another economic setback struck Utah coal in
the 1950s and 1960s. It was relieved only when the combination
of the Arab oil embargo and the original Clean Air Act
in the seventies resulted in coal mine acquisition by
energy companies which use coal to generate electricity.
Utah coal production reached an all-time high in the early
1980s, a trend that has again been reversed.
The recession of the 1990s, exacerbated by environmental
concerns and growing mechanization, has increased local
unemployment despite fairly steady production levels.
The last coal company, Hiawatha, is falling to bulldozers.
Paradoxically, Utah coal's strengthening economic ties
to the region and nation have lessened industrial involvement
in Utah's coal district, ending the local reign of "King
Coal."
Nancy J. Taniguchi
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