Colorado Coalfield War

Not to be confused with the 1864–1865 Colorado War or 1903–1904 Colorado Labor War.

Colorado Coalfield War
Part of the Coal Wars
Clockwise from top left:
  • Armed strikers at Ludlow before the massacre
  • National Guard artillery practice early in the strike
  • Colorado National Guardsmen riding atop railcars, Ludlow, 1914
  • Federal troops arrive at Ludlow
  • Trinidad under striker control, April 1914
  • Strikers stand near dead National Guardsman killed during Ten Days War
DateFirst stage:
September 23, 1913 (1913-09-23) – April 20, 1914 (1914-04-20)
Ten Days War:
April 20, 1914 (1914-04-20) – April 30, 1914 (1914-04-30)
Final stage:
April 29, 1914 (1914-04-29) – December 1914 (1914-12)
Location
Southern Colorado, United States
Resulted inStrike failed
  • Federal disarmament of strikers
  • Union abandons strike following exhaustion of funds
  • The Rockefeller Plan introduced to internally improve corporate-miner relations
Parties
Lead figures
Number
10,000–12,000 striking miners[4]
Peak Strength:
75 armed detectives
695 enlisted
397 officers[4][a]
Casualties and losses
32 strikers killed[5]: 222–223 
400+ arrests
37+ deaths[5]: 223–224 
Several troops court-martialed[6][b]
Total deaths, including Ludlow Massacre: 69–199[7]
This article is part of
a series about
Woodrow Wilson
28th President of the United States
First term
Second term
Woodrow Wilson's signature
Seal of the President of the United States

The Colorado Coalfield War[c] was a major labor uprising in the southern and central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of deadly working conditions and low pay. The strike was marred by targeted and indiscriminate attacks from both strikers and individuals hired by CF&I to defend its property. Fighting was focused in the southern coal-mining counties of Las Animas and Huerfano, where the Colorado and Southern railroad passed through Trinidad and Walsenburg. It followed the 1912 Northern Colorado Coalfield Strikes.[10]: 331 

Tensions climaxed at the Ludlow Colony, a tent city occupied by about 1,200 striking coal miners and their families, in the Ludlow Massacre on 20 April 1914 when the Colorado National Guard attacked. In retaliation, armed miners attacked dozens of mines and other targets over the next ten days, killing strikebreakers, destroying property, and engaging in several skirmishes with the National Guard along a 225-mile (362 km) front from Trinidad to Louisville, north of Denver.[5]: 197  Violence largely ended following the arrival of federal soldiers in late April 1914, but the strike did not end until December 1914. No concessions were made to the strikers.[11] An estimated 69 to 199 people died during the strike,[7] though the total dead counted in official local government records and contemporary news reports is far lower. The labor dispute was the bloodiest in the United States and Colorado historian William J. Convery called it the "bloodiest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War," the Colorado Coalfield War is notable for the number of company-aligned dead in a period when strikebreaking violence typically saw fatalities exclusively among strikers.[12][13][14][15] The Battle of Blair Mountain, also involving the Baldwin-Felts and UMWA, is considered the largest labor uprising in the U.S. by number of combatants. Contemporaneous accounts suggest the Blair Mountain strikers feared Baldwin-Felts would utilize a gun-equipped truck on their number, erroneously believing that the Death Special had been present at the Ludlow Massacre. Like the Colorado National Guard in 1913–1914, the West Virginia National Guard were drawn into the suppression of the strike at Blair Mountain.[16]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Redstone was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Doesch, Ethan (6 March 2009). "Review: From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood's Struggle against the United Mine Workers of America". EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History. Economic History Association. Archived from the original on 22 January 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jones was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b c Walker, Mark (2003). "The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado". Historical Archaeology. 37 (3). Springer: 66–80. doi:10.1007/BF03376612. JSTOR 25617081. S2CID 160942204.
  5. ^ a b c Martelle, Scott (2007). Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813544199.
  6. ^ Bovsun, Mara (8 September 2013). "Justice Story: Women, kids killed in bloody 1913 Ludlow Massacre during coal strike". Daily News. New York City. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved Oct 31, 2019.
  7. ^ a b Wilde, Debbie Carnevale (5 April 2010). "European grandparents came to U.S. to mine coal". Glenwood Springs Post Independent. Glenwood Springs, CO. Archived from the original on 1 July 2021. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  8. ^ "Topics in Chronicling America – Colorado Coalfield War". Newspaper & Periodical Reading Room. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2022-01-30. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  9. ^ Seligman, Edwin R. A. (5 November 1914). "Colorado's Civil War and Its Lessons". Frank Leslie's Weekly. Archived from the original on 2022-01-30. Retrieved 20 February 2020 – via Accessible Archives.Closed access icon
  10. ^ Papanikolas, Zeese (1982). Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-0803287273.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Wilson was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ "Colorado Coal Field War Project". Denver: University of Denver. Archived from the original on 25 February 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
  13. ^ Larsen, Natalie (12 June 2018). "The Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913–1914". Intermountain Histories. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU. Archived from the original on 20 September 2020. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  14. ^ Smith, Martin J. (12 September 2019). "He made this town the world's 'sex-change capital,' but he's not honored here". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. Archived from the original on 2022-01-30. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  15. ^ Green, James (Spring 2009). "Re-Interpretting Ludlow". Dissent. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 132. Retrieved 4 September 2021 – via University of Denver.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cork was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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