Historical Survey Report 1992 - Laserfiche WebLink

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1 store and I.O.O.F. headquarters. The other, a saloon located on Front St., was gone by 1908. The Miner's Trading Comp. began to subside in the early 1900's and was condemned by 1909. The lesson must have been learned early that whereas none of tha structures were safe from danger, constructing a brick building, (especially on a two story scale), was courting disaster. Subsi- dence was a regular occurence around the turn of the century. Boulder Daily Camera headlines on Oct. 12, 1893 read, "The City of Louisville Rapidly Sinking Through the Earth". Such sensa- tionalism could not have greatly pleased LouisvilleIs promoters who had to also contend with a certain amount of elitist condes- cension towards their coal town by the Boulderites. However, the fact remained that buildings were settling two to three feet overnight, and nearby wells ran dry as the water flowed into the mines from the resulting fissures. Because of the resulting "drop" in reaOstate, builders seemed content to continue constructing frame buildings. Repairs and underbracing could be more easily carried out. The threat of subsidence has apparently been sub- stantiallg reduced in recent yeas. Ironically, two of Louisville's newest buildings are massive brick structures, City Hall and the First National Bank building, yet they have shown no visible evi- dence of subsidence. As previously pointed out, the rate of construction seems to have directly parallelled the opening of new mines and the overall level of mining activity. Although the Welch Mine was an early success and became one of the largest producers in the northern coal fields, a mad rush to populate Louisville does not seem to have occurred as was so typical of the mountain boom towns. Coal mining did not attract "prospectors" who sought individual fortunes, but rather salaried workers whose income depended on such variables as the mildness of winters effecting heating demands, the seasonal limitations of work, and the effectiveness of strikes. The initially slow rate of growth was evidenced by a newspaper item of 1881, "Eighteen months ago this town had but fifteen houses, ...but was growing rapidly".8 Many of the first miners lived in boarding houses, some built by the mine companies, which also