Excerpts from June 2011 Bugle

More History of Local Mining Presented by Bill Kombol

Despite the disastrous explosion which closed Northwest Improvements Company’s Ravensdale mine in Nov. 1915, the quality of coal and its location near a main railroad line eventually lead to the formation of new coal mining companies in Ravensdale.  Several companies failed before the Dale Coal Co. commenced operations in 1924.  After three years of driving the gangway entrance for the mine, substantial improvements were made in 1927 to facilitate increased production including a mile long tramway, permanent hoist machinery, a tipple with an Elmore washer, shaking screens, picking tables, revolving screens and loading booms; a complete briquetting plant, blacksmith and machine shops, Supt. and accountant offices, a 1,000 gpm electric pump to deliver water from nearby Ravensdale Lake, a Jeffrey ventilation fan, and electric haulage motors to replace the mules used during the development stages of the mine.

During his day as leader of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis was often referred to as “the second most powerful man in America.”  During the 1920s through the 1950s, coal was the fuel that powered America.  And with control of over 4,000,000 miners, Lewis often led his union to strike at opportune times when the country was most dependent upon coal.  Lewis was the driving force behind the creation of Congress of Industrial Organizations, the second half of the acronym AFL-CIO.  He worked tirelessly on behalf of his miners for better wages and safer working conditions.  According to Rich Miller, a retired coal miner from Roslyn, many coal miners’ homes revered three figures:  “God, John L. Lewis, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.” ( Kombol displayed a portrait personally inscribed by Lewis “to Mr. Jack Morris with warm personal regards.”  Morris received the photo from Lewis when the two met on a trip Morris took to Washington D.C. in the 1950s.  Morris was the long time President of Palmer Coking Coal Co., Inc.  The framed portrait originally hung in the Four Corners mine office and was donated by the daughter, Pauline Kombol, of John H. “Jack” Morris to the Black Diamond Historical Society and is on display at the Museum.)

A farm home which eventually became the mine office for Palmer Coking Coal Co.  It was originally located on a parcel of land in Ravensdale, just north of Kent Kangley, west of 268^th Ave. S.E., and south of a small stream.  Martin and Magdalena Hock owned the land, home, and operated a small farm on the property.  The home was built around 1932 and was purchased by Palmer in 1950.  Around that time the home was moved ¼ mile west and was converted into a mine office to serve PCCC’s Landsburg mine.  In 1958 the building was moved to its present location on Highway 169 in Black Diamond, where it has served as the main headquarters of Palmer Coking Coal Company.  Palmer was founded on August 14, 1933 in the coal mining town of Durham during the depths of the great depression, it celebrated its 76^th anniversary in 2010.

Palmer Coking Coal Company  mine office at Four Corners and coal retail yard was located at the NE corner of the intersection of Kent-Kangley Road, Summit-Landsburg Road, and S.R. 169 (Maple Valley-Black Diamond Hwy.)  The office was used as Palmer Coking Coal Company's main headquarters from 1939-1958, when the company relocated to its present site in Black Diamond.  This building later housed a succession of restaurants, culminating in the Summit Inn, and later became Nollies, a sporting goods store.  The building was torn down in June 2006 to make way for intersection improvements at Four Corners.

Excerpts from the Feb/March 2011 Bugle

                  The information given by Bill Kombol at the Ravensdale Reunion in September continues with this edition.  The last column ended with the discussion of the Northern Pacific Locomotive #1368 and the mining operations in Durham.

                  “Coal production was recommenced in 1915 by the Durham Colliery Co. which operated until 1920.  In 1921, the Durham properties, including the mine, bunkers, hotel, homes and mine equipment were sold to the newly founded Morris Brothers Coal Mining Company, Inc.  Mining operations continued at Durham until the early 1944.  From 1888 until 1944 over 733,000 tons of coal was mined from Durham.  The photo above was donated by Dan Johnson, a life long resident and logger whose family arrived in nearby Kangley around 1912.

Elk Coal Mine: The Elk Coal mine commenced operation in 1921 in a location about ¼ mile west of Durham, 1.25 miles south of Kangley and 1.25 miles north of Palmer-Kanasket on the south slope of Sugarloaf mountain.  The 160-acre property was homesteaded by Robert Pearson, an Irish immigrant.  Pearson and later his daughter, Aileen Gregovich, operated a small store and gas station which bore the name, Elkcoal on the Kanasket-Kangley Road.  The Elk Coal Company commenced mining in 1921, and in 1929 the Big Four Coal Company took over and continued mining coal until 1953.  There were two mine openings and during the 33-year mine history over 850,000 tons of coal were produced.  The mine was at one time owned by Pete Pergolius and James Bagley and in later years managed by David J. Williams and Henry Benson.  Remarkably, there were no fatalities at this mine, though one miner named John A. Wolti was buried by a cave-in for several days in 1950.  For the complete story of Wolti’s entombment and rescue by miners including Fred Davis, Bill Moses, Jack Darby, Joe Bertelli, Bill Zapitul, Fred Benedetti, Grover Smail and others go to www.HistoryLink.org and type Wolti in the search box.  One of the last remaining vestiges of Elk Coal was the service station and store which helped keep the Elk Coal name alive into the 1960s, but the store is gone and all that remains of this once vibrant coal town are about a dozen homes….

The Habenicht Hotel: In the early 1900s, the Habenicht Hotel was located behind the railroad depot in Black Diamond.  The hotel was owned by Henry and Lena Habenicht who were some of earliest immigrants to Black Diamond, arriving from Nortonville, CA in 1887.  Henry Habenicht was born in Germany in 1833 while Lena was born there around 1837.  Henry immigrated to the U.S. in 1848 at age 15 and eventually found work as a coal miner with the Black Diamond Coal Mining Co., of California.  When the company moved operations north to Black Diamond in the 1880s, Henry and Lena moved here as well.  According to Vernon Habenicht, his grandmother Lena operated the hotel.  There were a number of hotels and boarding houses in early Black Diamond, usually operated by local residents.  Verna Thompson reports that “nearly every family had a boarder or two.” 

This photo is the Franklin  Hotel, building #18 in the coal mining town of Franklin, and comes courtesy from the collection of the Enumclaw Public Library.  The photo probably dates from the early 1900s, which would coincide with the periods of peak mining at Franklin.  Most of the people are dressed up indicating it might have been a Sunday or some other special event.  Many of the men in the photo were probably residents at the hotel.  In those days a hotel in a coal mining town was more of a room and boarding house for single men who worked in the mines.  Married men with families typically lived in homes provided by the coal company…

Danger Signs in 16 languages:  In the early 1970s Jack Kombol found a faded version of this near the old coal mining town of Franklin, located above the Green River Gorge.  The sign was donated to the Black Diamond Historical Society. Danger signs were mass produced by the Stonehouse Steel Sign Company and sold for 50 to 85 cents each.  The 16 languages represented a testament to the immigrant and ethnic groups who populated the early coal mining camps and towns…the languages are:  Russian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Danish-Norwegian, Croatian, Spanish, Serbian, Lithuanian, Italian, Polish, Greek, Swedish, Bohemian, German, Finnish and French.

1915 Ravensdale Explosion-On Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1915 at 1:25 p.m. an explosion ripped through the Ravensdale mine killing 31 miners and permanently closing what was then the third largest coal mine in the state of Washington.  At the time of the explosion only 34 men were in the mine due to a breakdown in the power plant resulting in most of the miners having been sent home for the day.  During that year the mine employed 153.  This became the worst underground coal mine disaster in Washington during the 20^th century. 

The Ravensdale mine was originally opened in 1899 by the Seattle & San Francisco Railway Company and eventually acquired by Northwest Improvement Company, a Northern Pacific Railroad subsidiary.  The mine was located southeast of Ravensdale Lake near an area where the Black Diamond-Ravensdale Road crosses the BN-SF railroad tracks. 

Dr. J. Tate Mason was the Coroner who conducted the investigation into the tragedy.  Dr. Mason began his career as a mine doctor for Pacific Coast Coal Company in Black Diamond and Franklin, and later went on to found the Virginia Mason clinics and hospital. 

Following the explosion, the mine closed; homes were cut into sections and loaded onto railroad cars for relocation; many of the miners and their families packed up and moved away.

According to a news clipping donated by Jane Gattavara, the deceased miners’ families received a total of $124,000 for their losses; about $4,000 for each married man and a lesser amount for single men.  All but seven of the fatalities were

married.

A row of nearly identical houses in the coal mining town of Ravensdale were built in the years after World War I between 1918 and 1922.  The photo is looking west from the former Northern Pacific railroad tracks.  What’s fascinating about this photo is that almost every one of this same row of homes still stand along S.E. Ravensdale Way between the Gracie Hanson building at Ravensdale Park and the Reserve Silica sand plant near the BNSF railroad tacks.  The next time you drive along Ravensdale Way towards Black Diamond, notice the knoll to the right of the road and notice the similarities to this photo which likely dates from the mid 1920s.

History of Local Mining by Bill Kombol will be continued in the next Bugle.

Excerpts from the Nov/Dec 2010 Bugle

History of Local Coal Mining Program at Ravensdale by Kombol

            Bill Kombol of Palmer Coking Coal Company, Black Diamond, presented a slide show, Sept. 18, at the Ravensdale Reunion.  He also handed out a list of the Ravensdale Coal Mines and an accompanying map plus the history of their company and an article on Rogers No. 3:  The Last Underground Coal Mine in Washington State.

            There isn’t room to include the wonderful photos accompanying his presentation but here is a glimpse of the history he included.

            Map Coal Mining Towns: Among the coal mining towns shown herein are:  Landsburg, Danville, Georgetown, Ravensdale, Kangley, Elk Coal, Durham, Bayne, Cumberland, Naco, Franklin, Kummer, and Black Diamond.  The railroad names for sidings and switches include:  Barneston, Noble, Trude, Summit, Henry’s Switch, Palmer, Bayne Junction, and Selleck Junction.  In many of the old coal mining towns nothing is left but an old coal slag pile, sometimes visible due to the pronounced steep hill topography and associated black colored shale rock.

            Anton Kombol with Croatians:  (Grandfather to William Kombol)  Taken at a Fourth of July celebration in Roslyn of a group of miners, likely lodge members of the Croatian Fraternal Union.  Immigrants from Croatia were an important part of the labor force of early coal mining in Washington State.  Croatian surnames often end in the letters “ich” or “ic”.  Many Croatians came from the mountainous region of Gorski Kotar and eventually made up the vast majority of miners working the coal fields in Roslyn and Ronald.  The coal mining towns of Wilkeson and Carbondado also held large numbers of Croatians. Anton is shown holding a glass of beer, in the 1900 photo.  In December 1902 at the age of 17, Anton immigrated from Fuzine, Croatia arriving in New York and then traveling to Roslyn to work in the coal mines.  He eventually found his way to Ravensdale where he worked as a coal miner during the 1910’s for the Northwestern Improvement Company.  He avoided the mine explosion of 1915, which claimed the lives of 31 miners and resulted in the mine’s closure.  Kombol then moved to Arizona to mine copper before moving to Durham, WA. after a short stint in Alaska.  He sometimes worked as an independent contract miner who was paid for each ton of coal he shot, mined and loaded.  His mining career was cut short in 1925 while working at a coal mine in Kangley.  A dynamite charge exploded several feet away from him embedding bits of coal into his face and nearly blinding him completely.

            Home of Anton Kombol:  Anton moved from Roslyn to Ravensdale around 1908.  Lulu Shircliffe moved to Ravensdale around the same time as a school teacher.  The two married in 1914.  After the explosion, they moved around to Arizona, Montana, then back to Durham; then to Hiawatha…Their Hiawatha home was moved from Ravensdale on a train.  (Hiawatha was a tiny coal mining town between Kangley and Elk Coal.)

            PacCoast Coa1055:  The Maple Valley railway depot in the early 1900s. During the heyday of mining, the Pacific Coast Company was a New York based conglomerate, which controlled the Pacific Coast Coal Company, Pacific Coast Railway, the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad, the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, and later the Pacific Coast Cement Corporation.  At this time the Pacific Coast Company operated the Maple Valley railway depot through one of its two railroad subsidiaries.  Hundreds of thousands tons of coal was carried along the railroad tracks from Black Diamond and Franklin to coal markets and coal ships loaded in Seattle.  The signs on the side of the depot advertise “Wells Fargo & Co. Express” and “Western Union Telegraph and Cable Office”.

            Renton Coal Mine.  In 1873 coal was discovered in Renton and within a few short years miners were traveling from as far away as Givin, Iowa to work in the mines of the Renton Coal Company.  By 1909 the mines employed 325 men with a monthly payroll of $24,000 and a daily production of 600 tons.  At the time experts said there was enough coal to run the mines at present capacity for 50 years.  Within 15 years most of the mines had closed down and new chapters were about to be written in Renton’s history by two men named William-Piggot and Boeing.  In 1963 Renton’s coal mine history was unearthed when contractors working on the “S” curves of I-405 uncovered a large iron gate which protected the entrance to the Renton Coal Mine….  The coal mine facilities are located on a site now occupied by Sam’s Club, with the Renton City Hall next door.

            Northern Pacific locomotive No. 1368:  Taken at the coal mining town of Durham likely during the period from 1915-1920, when the Durham Colliery Company operated the mine.  The Durham mine was opened in 1886-87 as conceived by Peter Kirk who planned a steel mill on the shores of Lake Washington at a city now known as Kirkland.  Balfour Guthrie provided start up capital for the coal mine, while the Moss Bay Iron & Steel Company ordered the steel making equipment.  The plan was to use coking coal from Durham and iron ore from the Cascade mountain range, both of which would be shipped to the planned steel mill in Kirkland.  Those plans failed when the iron ore anticipated to be mined between Snoqualmie Pass and Cle Elum fell through.  The original Durham mine folded in 1888 and the mine bunkers were burned in 1889.                             

                        (to be continued)

Excerpts from the Sept 2010 Bugle

Ethel (Downs) Hanis recalls Taylor Days

On the June trip into Taylor were two sisters, Mildred (Downs) Ellis and Ethel (Downs) Hanis, former residents of the town, and 25 of their relatives.

Ethel recalled that just as you entered the gate to head for the former townsite, there was a huge CCC’s camp during the depression of the 1930s.  She said the men living there were a vital part of their community.

“On July 4 they brought a big steer and put it on a turntable over a huge pit and roasted that all day, you could smell it all over camp.  Then they invited us over for dinner.  It was depression time and the offering was much appreciated.

“They worked in the woods and made trails and planted trees and generally took care of the wilderness around town.

“The men also had a number of games that they offered to the kids at the grade school.  They brought all the equipment with them.  I was small so I thought it would be good for me to learn how to box.

“Dad always welcomed them home, I remember one fellow was back east, not sure where they all came from or how many were in the camp.  I was just a little girl then.”  She’ll be 87 in November.

“I also remember the gypsies coming to town, usually in the fall of the year.  They would come in their old cars and camp down on the ballfield.  At night they would build up big fires, and we’d go down to watch them dance and listen to their violins playing. They would have little trinkets for sale.  Very exciting.”

She said they didn’t have any police in Taylor, but it was run by the company and “we lived by the owners rules; but it was a well run town.  It was a lovely place to grow up, we were so free.

“What has always amazed me is the mixture of cultures that lived in that town and got along so well.  I’m Irish and we had a great variety of Europeans.  Dad worked at the factory from 1929 until they ran us out in the 1940s.  That was so sad.  Many of us have bad feelings that they knocked everything down and wouldn’t let us back in.”

  Besides the two sisters, Ethel and Mildred, they had an older brother, Albert Henry, his flight jacket is at the Maple Valley Historical Museum and he’s included in the WWII book, she said.  Also an older sister Lovina and a younger one LaRue.  Ethel graduated from TaHoMa High in 1940.

Mystery Photos - Bugle