by Nancy Christofferson
STARKVILLE — The coal mine called Starkville was said by its owners to be one of the oldest to be worked in Colorado. “It has a greater number of miles of underground tracks than any other mine operated by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It has always been a heavy producer, and at present the output amounts to forty thousand tons a month. The average amount paid each month to the 650 men and boys employed in the mine is $35,000.”
So read the central story of the Saturday, May 3, 1902 issue of the company newsletter, Camp and Plant.
The write-up went on to explain the earliest days of the mines there, which actually grew into the one Starkville. The main entries to these mines about four miles south of Trinidad were driven in 1,800 and 2,800 feet respectively. One was the Scandinavian, developed by a company of the same name and which was actually manned by – did you guess it? – Scandinavians. Some of these miners and their families hung on in camp until at least the early 1900s.
The camp was first named San Pedro. A post office of this name was established January 31, 1879. Just five months later, the camp and its post office were renamed Starkville in honor of one of the mine’s early owners, Albert G. Stark, who evidently had successfully powered the development and work force well. He h ad to have done something right to warrant the use of his name for a mine and town.
By 1882 Starkville boasted about 35 substantial homes. No one counted the insubstantial ones but there must have been plenty since the miners had been responsible for building their own shelters. Less than 20 of the residences belonged to the company.
An 1885 guidebook indicates the camp was up to 400 residents, and that it relied heavily on the railroad. This was the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, or as it usually referred to, the Santa Fe, which took over the town and mine around 1881. In that year, a reservoir near Fishers Peak was built and a water system installed. It was one of the first camps to have this luxury.
The Santa Fe used most of the coal produced to power its engines, but a large percentage of the remainder went to the coke ovens.
In 1880 the public school opened as a part of District #1, Trinidad. Two years later the stone school had three rooms and an enrollment of 45. Services of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, alternating each Sunday, were also held here.
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company bought the mine August 23, 1897. For the previous year, the company had operated the mine under a lease agreement with the railroad. At the time, CF&I sources claimed Starkville mine had the largest number of underground miles of rail track than any other of its holdings.
In 1900, the federal census gave Starkville a population of 3,106.The camp had grown to include three schools with a total enrollment of 450. However, the teaching staff was said to total SIX!
That year, the company built a recreation center in lieu of the more common YMCA buildings found in other large camps. The center was named Harmony Hall and was a four room structure with separate spaces for the kindergarten, recreation, kitchen and cloakroom. The first two could be combined for large gatherings such as lectures, concerts or other entertainments, and, of course, dances.
A reader of the Camp and Plant might think Starkville had a piece of paradise. By December 1901 there were two churches, Catholic and a union Protestant or Congregational. Both of these sponsored ‘Christmas Trees’ – special parties where candy, fruit and gifts were given by the company and the church, along with holiday and religious services, recitations and music. There were active lodges of the Red Men and auxiliary, the Pocahontas, which had popular dances with name bands for most every holiday. The kindergarten, not for kids only, was having well-attended sewing classes, which that winter had 50 students in three age categories. These were from the families of the 594 men employed by the mine. In March 1902 residents were looking forward to the promised inclusion of Trinidad by electric railroad. Entertainments that spring included a medicine show, performances by various vaudeville troupes, a “strong man”, boxing, plus and the whole camp would turn out for good snow to sled on and have snowball fights.
Six hundred and fifty miners were employed in May 1902, producing 40,000 tons of coal per month and earning a total of $35,000. By then, the Colorado Supply Company store had been completed and offered 13,600 square feet plus a basement and attic full of merchandise, foods and all manner of retail items.
The Starkville Athletic Club had its own gym. After it was organized it soon had 31 members. The Red Men had built themselves a hall where ‘picture shows’ were shown regularly, and dances, many of them masquerades, were regular, especially in winter. Other organizations included the Star of Italy, Odd Fellows, the Tyrolean Hunters and Knights of Pythias.
All that fun was interrupted in March 1903 when a benefit ball was given for Mrs. Dominic Banatto when her son was killed in the mine. Just nine months before, her husband was killed by a fall of rock, also in the Starkville mine, that injured one of his sons. After this young man’s death, she was supporting six more children. Adding to the tragedy, a typhoid epidemic was ongoing at the time.
Starkville in its early days was lauded for its lack of gas in the mine, and its excellent safety records. As production and employment increased, so did the number of accidents.
In May 1903, was this tidbit, “Last Friday was payday and the itinerant merchants were consequently very much in evidence.” Guess the Colorado Supply just wished it had a monopoly.
In October, we learn a lesson about the vagaries of a working coal/ coke facility. The good news was the coke ovens were in full production after a six-week layoff, but “clouds of smoke again cover our town”. Good news, bad news.
That same article carries the news of “Both the Ringling Brothers and Southern Carnival Company were in town at the same time, albeit they were on board some railroad cars standing on our siding”. So near and yet so far…
In November, some residents watched as three men were arrested for passing a counterfeit $5.00 bill.
The camp’s newsletter correspondent had remarked earlier, “Our town is getting a bad reputation.” Seems there had been several drunken shooting incidents and people were getting injured, and worse. At the same time, the Swedish residents had enjoyed a picnic.
About this time a large power house had been put into service which also served Trinidad.
In the 1902 article, the company writer included, “ Although one of the oldest properties” . . .”the Starkville mine shows no signs of exhaustion.”
Starkville’s darkest hour came on October 8, 1910 when an explosion snuffed out 56 lives. The blast was believed to have been caused by a spark from an electrical short circuit on a trolley line. It’s said the explosion was so intense and loud that it could be felt and heard as far away as Trinidad. As the days passed, several funerals were held in Trinidad, with 19 of them buried in one service and 27 in another. Apparently, the city streets were filled with mourners and sympathizers, some who walked the entire route to the cemetery.
Starkville moved on to suffer other heartbreaks, such as the deaths in 1918-19 from the Spanish Influenza when the camp’s enthusiasm for social events and gatherings exacted a price for the merrymakers and others who dared to move about freely to mingle.
Mighty Starkville began closing down in 1921 when sections were abandoned piecemeal. The many mines in the area continued to work as truck mines and smaller operations, so much of the population remained.
Starkville closed for good in 1922. Its physical presence was whittled away the same way as other camps, machinery, homes, stores, meeting places, were sold, stolen, moved or destroyed, but the townsite remained, and some residents refused to move on. In 1955 Raton Creek flooded and moved some of the structures. By 1967 the town still claimed 261 residents. By 2010 this was 59 and in the latest official count in 2020, 62.
So do the mighty fall.
