by Nancy Christofferson
OUR WORLD — In the recent article about looking back at the year of 1953 was the fact the Kebler mine closed after producing under that name since 1919. That was the bad news, and the resulting good and bad news of early 1954 was that the miners were being transferred to the Allen mine, which, alas, being well within Las Animas County, was a serious drive to make for an eight-hour shift.
The Kebler was nearly the last of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company’s coal mines, closing just weeks before the Pictou where miners were also destined for the Allen. In fact, the December 31 issue of the Walsenburg Independent carries this dismal entry, “As of today, the last of the Huerfano County’s big producers are closed”.
Even though it was producing a fraction of what it once did, the Kebler of the early ’50s was the county’s best producer and had the highest employment, with some 7,000 tons most months, the result of something less than 20 miners. In 1952, the mine had been employing 141. The major point might be that it was just one of eight working mines, that it meant the end of the little town of Tioga nearby, it signaled the fall of King Coal in Huerfano County, and it was, overall, a sad sign of the times.
The Kebler mine had started in 1907 as the Big Four by three Walsenburg entrepreneurs who leased it to a company that called itself the Big Four Coal and Coke Company. The next year the operators had about 30 miners’ dwellings built nearby, at the town of Tioga, and a fan house.
The Denver and Rio Grande railroad had built the Loma Branch to reach these mines, the farthest west of those northwest of Walsenburg, and it built into Big Four in the same year, 1907. The railroad ended there until the Alamo mine opened to the southwest in 1923.
Tioga was a word said to mean “where it forks” in some language. Concurrent with the founding of the town was its getting a post office by that name established. Exactly what forked there is unknown; it was not a creek or river, not a highway, not the railroad.
Its location was mostly notable for lying near the road from Walsenburg heading northwest to Gardner and the upper Huerfano. West of Tioga was all livestock raising and farming country.
By 1909, the Big Four mine was being operated by the Minnequa Coal Company, which built a boardinghouse with one Robert Brown, superintendent. The last vestige of this era was the discovery, in 1944, of company records, safety lamp fuel and black powder cans found inside an abandoned section in what had been the Big Four.
The first fatality in the Big Four was in September 1909 when a miner was killed in a fall of the rock, the same cause as the last fatality in its successor, the Kebler, in very early 1954.
Even when it was officially named the Big Four, the mine was often referred to as the Tioga, or the “mine at Tioga”, for the nearby town and post office.
By 1916, Big Four Coal Company may have been still producing in the original location and an offshoot called Tioga, of the Tioga Coal Company, was also working. Big Four was employing 97 workers to produce 600 tons daily while Tioga had 48 shipping an average of 300.
It was in 1919 that these smaller mines attracted the full attention of the powerful Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
The mine was named for Julian Kebler, a longtime company employee and close friend of its president, John C. Osgood. The duo had met in Iowa where they were employed in the railroad and coal business together. Kebler was an energetic man with valuable knowledge of technology. While he was working as superintendent of Osgood’s former employer’s coal mine in Iowa in 1888, he was summoned by Osgood to come to Colorado, where he’d landed in 1882, to help consolidate his growing enterprise, the Colorado Fuel Company. The little company was growing fast, and had many subsidiaries and partners to coordinate. Kebler became general manager.
The Fuel Company had taken an interest in the Big Four mine even before its opening, seeing the potential and obtaining 1,200 acres with what was called the Huerfano Land Company which eventually bought the Big Four but passed it on. The Panic of 1893 caused a postponement of plans, as did a miners’ strike in ’94. Under such names as the Southern Colorado Coal and Town Company, Kebler and friends of the Fuel Company seem to have bought the land back in 1889, or at least a lease or option to buy.
By the time CF&I bought out the former Tioga and Big Four properties, Kebler had worked his way up the executive ladder, even assisting Dr. Richard Corwin select a site in Pueblo for the company hospital and nurses’ training facilities. He died in 1903, long before his namesake began production.
As the Kebler, the mine and town grew. A new feature for the local people fulfilled a long-anticipated need. Namely, this was a railroad siding and yard for shipping livestock from the upper valley to save them the long cattle or sheep drive to Walsenburg’s railyards.
As early as 1914 shipments of these animals were beginning in Tioga, though without proper facilities to hold and load them. By 1931, these shipments were large and unwieldy for the existing pens and chutes. When the stockyards and other conveniences had finally been completed in early 1937, the newspaper noted, “The new stockyards built west of Walsenburg are said to be some of the finest of their size in Colorado.”
The ranchers who most benefited from this new “service” included the Schmidt and Meyer families as well as the Inmans and the Tireys, who evidently raised the bulk of the stock. They were happy so everyone else was too. Taking credit for the new addition was Joe Dietz, captain of the annual roundup, who said he’d first approached the D&RG about building facilities at Tioga back in the ‘teens. In 1932, when there were just holding pens and chutes, 16 carloads of lambs had been shipped; in 1937 some 2,600 lambs went out. Cattle, too, were regularly hauled to market from this site. And, as time passed, from the ‘teens into the ’30s, the livestock and agricultural markets were the favored outlet of the residents of the upper valley, while the coal mines at Tioga dominated the industry of the lower valley.
At the same time, the mine was employing about 300 men in two shifts.
Preceding the stockyards by a year was a new and large Colorado Supply company store which cost $12,00 to build in 1938.
Farmers and coal miners apparently lived side by side in and around the post office of Tioga without strife, and all were delighted to have their own department store that filled needs only supplied in Walsenburg previously. The community boasted its own school, employing from two teachers in the ‘teens to as many as four in the 1939-40 school year.
Probably meeting in the school house, Catholic church services in the camp began in 1937 when Father Monahan introduced them as a weekly feature. The town also had it own Red Cross Chapter, several sports teams, young and old, and the Coal Anna home extension club, not to mention Local No. 6611 of the United Mine Workers and its award-winning mine safety team.
Kebler had closed down operations from 1922 until 1930, as did many others, after World War I caused a boom in business that ended gradually after the war. While it wasn’t closed entirely – miners were still employed and working (as death notices indicate) but full operation was greatly curtailed. In the 30’s it thrived and during World War II the mine saw its greatest activity and productivity.
So, when its closure was revealed in late 1953, it was not only a blow to the miners but also railroad and agricultural workers, plus the some 52 families still living in Tioga. The school of course was closed, but the building survived after being moved into Walsenburg and taken over by District No.4 for various uses, eventually as the music room of the high school.
Not much is left to see of Tioga despite its former busy life except foundations and mine dumps. The post office closed in April 1954, the buildings demolished if not moved, and the machinery hauled off to the few surviving mines still working.
