Historical Survey Report 1992 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Although coal mining didu.g.t involve the high cost of ore processing which gold and silver mining had assumed, it did suffer from peculiarities which placed upper limits upon the economic activity attainable by Louisville and the other surrounding coal towns. The coal could not be stored for long periods because of the danger of spontaneous combustion. In addition, it could not be transported successfully during the summer months because it tended to dry out and disintegrate. Mining was therefore restricte, to the winter and cooler months of fall and spring, (roughly seven months). The five month lay-off period, during which the miners survived on odd jobs and the credit extended by the merchants, significantly kept the local economy in a depressed condition. Very little industry developed in the vicinity which could have sustained year-round coal mining operations. A 1909 promo- tional pamphlet for the town urged industrial investment in the area to alleviate this problem. It cited the benefits of the Northern Colorado Power Company between Louisville and Lafayette which supplied electricity from its own coal mine; ("the first coal generated plant to transmit current to the center of distri button in the country.")5 The area was promoted as a logical ' site for manufacturing and industries requiring large amounts of electrical energy. This development never seems to have ma- terialized, as Denver and Pueblo continued to attract industrial` investment. Besides providing domestic lighting for the area, the plant's major contribution was to power the Denver and Inter- urban electric railway which provided passenger service on the "Kite Route" from Denver to Boulder via Louisville and Marshall. Ironically, the interurban foreshadowed the day when the auto would take Louisville's inhabitants out of town to jobs in its neighboring metropolises. If the seasonal nature of mining in the northern coal fields can be•shown to have a direct bearing on the economic attainment of Louisville, perhaps an even greater influence was the effect of strike activities. As early as the fall of 1878, a party of sixty miners from Erie attempted to prevent miners from working the Welch Mine. Although averted without violence, the event pointed to a fact of life in the coal areas, north and south,