The Dawson Mine Disasters
On Wednesday, October 22 1913, people on the streets of Dawson, New Mexico, heard a sharp report resembling a rifle shot, followed by a muffled rumbling and vibrations of the ground and buildings. They then saw, from the mouth of the Stag Canyon mine number 2 more than two miles away, a column of smoke and flame erupting into the air. Rescue teams raced to the mine, where they found 23 men staggering around the shattered portal. There had been 286 men working in the mine when an explosion ripped through it, 263 did not survive the blast. Two rescue workers were killed by collapsing shoring timbers as they searched for bodies.
Stag Canyon Mine Number 2 was operated by the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Phelps Dodge sent a special train carrying doctors and nurses to the site, but there were few survivors to treat. A total of ten mines operated in the region around Dawson, a company town which was populated largely by recently arrived immigrants. As Phelps Dodge investigated the cause of the explosion in Stag Canyon Mine Number 2 the other mines remained in operation. It was eventually determined that the explosion had been caused by the detonation of dynamite when the mine had not been properly ventilated to clear coal dust, which was ignited by the blast of the dynamite.
Despite the explosion in Stag Canyon Number 2 being found to be a violation of safety regulations, the other mines continued to operate as before. On February 8, 1923, another of the Phelps Dodge Mines, Stag Canyon Number 1 was rocked by an explosion which killed 123 miners, some of whom were relatives of the men killed in 1913. In the investigation which followed the second explosion it was found to be caused by the ignition of coal dust from sparking caused by the wheels of a coal tram which derailed after knocking into a misaligned support timber. The tram had been moving at a higher than allowed rate of speed.
Combined, the two Dawson mine disasters killed 486 miners, the majority of them Italian immigrants or the descendants of Italian immigrants. Phelps Dodge continued to operate both mines following the explosions, as well as the others in the Dawson complex until the end of the Second World War, when demand for coal began to decline. The mines were shut down gradually, and as they did the town of Dawson declined with them. Demand for coal declined steadily, as the railroads shifted to diesel fuel for their locomotives, including the remaining steam locomotives, which were converted to burn fuel oil as their heat source.
Phelps Dodge provided the coal used by a short branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, mostly trains which were used to haul coal, until its contract expired in 1950. With the expiration of the contract Phelps Dodge closed the remaining mines, with Stag Canyon Number 6 being the last of the mines to close. The former company town was abandoned, and the company owned miner’s homes were razed, as well as the company store, recreation facilities, schools, and administrative buildings. The town cemetery, where the bodies of many of the miners killed in the mines were buried, remained, with rows of iron crosses marking the graves.