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"Old Town" Louisville Historical Building Survey Page 3
<br />3.0 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
<br />While gold and silver mining led to the settlement of western Boulder County, it was the
<br />discovery of coal that created new settlements in the southeast part of the county. The
<br />communities of Superior, Marshall, Louisville, Lafayette, Erie, and others, all had their
<br />start with the discovery of Colorado's Northern Coal Field. In the mid-1860s, William
<br />Kitchen located a coal deposit at present-day Marshall. Initially called Kitchen's Bank,
<br />the outcropping was quickly exploited by entrepreneurial pioneer Joseph W. Marshall.
<br />Marshall built the area's first blast furnace to manufacture pig iron, and soon acquired
<br />title to some 1400 acres, including Kitchen's Bank. In the late 1860s he opened the
<br />prolific Marshall and Black Diamond coal mines, and within a few years the town of
<br />Marshall, with 800 residents, three saloons and a school, had been established.' By the
<br />turn of the twentieth century, several coal mines had been opened in the vicinity of
<br />Marshall, including the Peerless, Graham, Red Ash, Black Diamond, Fox, Peterson,
<br />Cracker Jack, and Mitchell.
<br />The completion of the Colorado Central Railroad branch line across Coal Creek in 1873
<br />facilitated transporting coal to market, and further spurred production.2 In the mid-
<br />1870s, Charles Clark Welch, a Vice -President of the Colorado Central, determined to
<br />further tap the region's potential to yield coal. Believing that coal seams in the Marshall
<br />and Superior area extended further east along Coal Creek, Welch obtained mineral rights
<br />in the vicinity of present-day Louisville. In 1877, Welch and Louis Nawatny discovered
<br />a new seam under wheat fields owned by David and Anne Kerr. Welch and Nawatny
<br />established the Welch Mining Company, and in 1878, Nawatny platted the town of
<br />Louisville, naming the 40-acre site after himself. Within two years, the town boasted
<br />some 500 residents, the result of the coal boom which would sustain the area's economy
<br />for the next seventy years. Coal mines established in the Louisville area included the
<br />Welch (1877), the Hecla, Ajax, and Caledonia (all 1890), Acme (1895), Rex #s 1 and 2
<br />(1898), and Sunnyside (1900). Nearby coal mines included the Rob Roy Mine at Canfield
<br />(1874), the Simpson Mine at Lafayette (1887), and the Industrial Mine at Superior.
<br />In the late 1800s, and into the early 1900s, immigrant coal miners from Italy, Poland,
<br />Greece and France arrived in the region. They joined the predominantly Welsh, Cornish,
<br />and Scottish hard -rock miners, as well as farmers from Sweden and other countries, to
<br />create a unique cultural mix in the region. Within Louisville, various ethnic groups
<br />initially settled into different neighborhoods with names like Frenchtown, Kimbertown,
<br />'Phyllis Smith, A Look at Boulder From Settlement to City, (Boulder: Pruett Publishing
<br />Company, 1981), p. 54.
<br />2The Colorado Central Railroad was a subsidiary of the Union Pacific.
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