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Dawson No 1 & 2 Tipple about 1900, courtesy Denver Public Library
Dawson Number 7 Tipple, 1920's, Myers
Collection, NMSU
Though coal was discovered on the property as
early as 1870, no development of the mines occurred until the ranchers who
owned it sold
most of the property to the Dawson Fuel
Company for $400,000. The company was founded with the help
of Charles B. Eddy, a railroad promotor from El Paso,
Texas. A 137-mile-long railroad was built from the mine
to Tucumcari,
New Mexico linking the spot with the Rock Island Lines. By
August 1, 1901, a crew of fifty miners was ready to work. A sawmill
was busy turning out lumber for houses, coke ovens were smoking and by the
end of that first year,
Dawson was well on the way to becoming a city and
the center of the largest coal mining operation in
New Mexico. Later, the company built a hundred cottages for 500 more people and
erected additional coke ovens. Off to a quick start, the town began to
prosper.
In 1906 the Phelps Dodge Corporation bought
the Dawson mines and, sparing no expense, began to develop both the mines
and the town, eventually becoming one of the largest coal mining
camps in the United States.
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Though the mines would be wracked with mining disasters over the years,
Phelps Dodge strove to make the mines as safe as possible. They
did such a good job with one of their mines that it attracted the
eyes of coal-mining experts in 1913, who described it as "the highest
achievement in modern equipment and safety appliances that exists in
the world."
However, over the decades, dependence upon coal declined and in April,
1950, the mine was shut down and the whole town was sold to a salvage
company and was mostly razed. From 1899-1950, the Dawson mines produced
some 33 million salable tons of coal, almost half the total for
Colfax county during this period.
©
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America, updated October, 2008.
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