1868 - 1892: Town of Carbon Aka: Old Carbon and Carbon City

1868 - 1892: Carbon: Aka: Old Carbon and Carbon City

Notes from Bob Leathers with contributions from April Avery

The coal camp at Carbon was located in the wide open spaces. Lots of sagebrush and grass, with few trees for miles around. The camp and cemetery were located in the center of the picture below.

The Carbon coal camp was located in the center of this picture - in wide open spaces. (Image by Bob Leathers, 2020)

1867: Coal was discovered at Carbon.

The Days of 1867: How Coal Was First Discovered Along the Line of the Union Pacific Railroad

The following letter, addressed to Mr. F. C. Gillispie, now representing the Carbon Coal Company at Portland, Ore., came to the surface when the offices were relocated in Rock Springs in February, 1927. The boys in blue, made up in 1867 of men from every walk in life, just as they are today, performed many services for General Dodge and the men who built the first transcontinental railway. Soldier Dippel’s letter represents a distinct contribution to the history of the coal mining industry of Wyoming.

Milwaukee, Oregon R. D. No. 1,
November 2, 1915.
Mr. F. C. Gillispie, General Agent,
Union Pacific Coal Company,
Portland, Oregon.

Dear Sir:
Agreeable to your request, I herewith give you the facts in brief, relating to the first known discovery of coal along the land grant near to the then survey of the Union Pacific Railroad.

The writer was a member of “B” Company of the 30th U. S. Infantry, Col. Chas. G. Bartlett, Commanding Officer. In the spring of 1867, while chasing after Sioux Indians in the vicinity of Rock Creek, our command made camp, and while a party was gathering sagebrush one of our men, Bartholomew Foley, a miner, brought in large pieces of surface coal, the outcropping of a fine vein, as we discovered by the use of picks and shovels. Our captain caused sacks to be filled, which we took to our Headquarters Camp at Fort Fred Steel, and a sack of the coal was sent to Omaha to the head office of the Railroad Company. Fort Fred Steel was at that time not named; our command was encamped in the vicinity of where that post was afterwards built by the same command.

The writer was informed that the Railroad Company sent its agent to see Mr. Foley, who was detailed to show the discovery he had made. He was soon discharged and employed by the Railroad Company, I was informed.

Later on in 1868, while scouting on the Clear Creek, we found much coal along its banks, great veins of black rock we first thought, until on closer examination we found it to be coal. We drove our wagons up to the vein and picked the coal into the wagon bed.

Very truly yours,
August Dippel.

(UPCCEM, March 1927)

After the discovery of coal and with the coming of the railroad, the coal camp at Carbon began.

ILLUSTRATION OF HOUSING IN CARBON BY M. D. HOUGHTON (HANNA BASIN MUSEUM)

The article, Building For a Ghost Town by Marjorie Bailey, appeared in the May, 1945 issue of the Union Pacific Coal Company Employes' Magazine and sums up the coal camp at Carbon nicely.

Building For a Ghost Town
by Marjorie Bailey
Union Pacific Coal Company Employes' Magazine,May 1945.

Splashed across the annals of Wyoming are countless and highly picturesque records of expansion westward by the Union Pacific. Motion pictures have taken up the cry and heavy volumes have embroidered glittering words upon the cloth of the West.

But only isolated facts can be found concerning the ephemeral clapboard villages which made possible silver rails. Carbon, Wyoming, born in the Mauve decade, was one of these unfortunate path-breaker towns; now only an occasional date or statement sprinkled among yellowed journals remains to tell a story.

The curtains were yet to be drawn upon the colorful pageant of black gold in the West when General Fremont passed through Wyoming less than eighty years ago. His little band noted coal formations containing many fossil bones of dinosaurs and fresh-water shells dating from the period when Wyoming was submerged by water; yet in 1867 there was not a single coal miner within the borders of the state.

Then came the long, shining rails of the Union Pacific cutting a slim, glistening line west across the continent. Between 1865 and 1870 as many as 820 miles were completed. The noisy little engines required much fuel and the Union Pacific Railroad Company began to import eager, hard-working miners into the territory. Several hundreds of these toilers made it possible to establish an output of over a million tons of coal before 1890.

There was a time when 160 acres of coal land could still be purchased for $10 per acre, unless near a completed railroad, which then doubled the price. Carbon county exceeded one thousand square miles in measurement and Sweetwater county was considerably larger. The coal resources approached those of Pennsylvania.
A high grade of coal that would burn with a bright yellow and steady flame was said to cover one-fifth of the territory when Carbon, one of the most famous ghost towns in the annals of Wyoming, was created by the Union Pacific. A trillion tons of ebony wealth was only a part of the treasure chest of the state. Vast resources were faintly sensed when a high grade of iron ore paint from the mine of John Friend was sold to the Brooklyn Bridge in 1874.

Carbon was the first mining town established on the railroad; the mines opened in 1868. A deep, rich vein of coal had been discovered just 11 miles south of the present site of Hanna and here flocked the English and the Finnish, the Chinese and the Polish. Mines were opened at Rock Springs almost simultaneously under contract with the Wyoming Coal and Mining Company.

Famous Mine Number One at Rock Springs employed enough workers to give the village a total of forty persons in the 1870 census. Carbon inhabited by some 244 persons that same year, while the whole of the county was comprised of little over
One thousand persons.

Shortly after the opening of the Carbon mines a Union pacific journal carried the statement that “at Carbon Station, about 650 miles west of Omaha, a vein of coal sixteen and one-half feet in thickness is being worked, and about 100 tons of coal taken out per day.” The Union Pacific Railroad took over the operation of the mines in 1874 and important plans were made for the future of this minute beehive.

The territory surrounding Carbon is packed brimful of historical significance. On the jagged and rocky shoulder of Elk Mountain one of the tragedies of the first transcontinental air race occurred. Joseph “Dangerous Jack” Slade, for whom Slade canyon was named, frequently visited the area. One of the first bands of sheep in Wyoming was trailed from California by Louis Sederlin of Elk Mountain during this remarkable period.

The theory of rugged individualism was fact, not fiction. The ruined remains of old Fort Halleck stand at the foot of the mountain which is near Carbon. In 1862 the fort was a vital post and station on the Overland Stage route and furnished soldiers for Indian wars and skirmishes. The site was selected and the post built by Company A, 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, when the stage route was moved southward from the Oregon trail.

A mirage in a prairie desert could be the term applied to Carbon. The town appeared as if from nowhere and clapboard shanties mushroomed up almost overnight. One of the five roads leading to the renowned Gold Hill district in Carbon county above Encampment, where acres of mineral wealth had been found, was to begin at Carbon. New mining operations, a long new length of railroad track and an unconquered frontier lent a sense of feverish activity to this era. Reports of the Government Directors in the ‘80s stated that “fourteen tenement houses have been erected at Carbon and twelve at Rock Springs for the whites, and eighteen for Chinese.”

The miners drifted and seeped into Carbon during the days of the wagon trains and Indian attacks. “The land of milk and honey” was teeming with buffalo and teamsters were going out of the state to drive in hundreds of heads of cattle into the territory. Rock Springs went through a crimson period culminating in a Chinese massacre on September 2, 1885, and at the same time telegraph lines began to mushroom up along the Overland trail. Names such as Bloody Lake and Rattlesnake Creek told a venomous story in themselves. Carbon was simply named after the immense coal beds upon which it was located.

The little Chinese with their queues, the English with their accents and the Scandinavians with their coffee grinders and rag rugs, dug caves in the hillsides of Carbon and stuck stovepipes up through their dirt roofs. Others used clapboard lean-tos for temporary refuge. A large cistern furnished the community with an adequate water supply and the railroad hauled the water from Medicine Bow free of charge. Miners dipped it from the cistern and charged twenty-five cents for a powder keg full.

Awkward fingers were encountered by the workers when they attempted to carpenter, but not for long after the first attempts were made some fifty or sixty log houses sprinkled the prairie like chessmen on a board. These houses stood the test of time, however, and were later transported to Hanna.

The problem of providing places of worship was not so easily met. The First Methodist church was blown down three times before a substantial building was raised. The Right Rev. George Randall, who passed through this section of the West, recorded lawlessness which he encountered. He firmly stated that ministers should be at mining outposts as soon as the miners, or sooner if possible. The Reverend Mr. Randall preached his sermons in St. Mark’s church in Cheyenne, and the church was later to become important in the history of Carbon.

A bell recalls a fascinating chapter in missionary history. In 1869 and 1870 the Rev. John Cornell, first rector of St. Matthew’s church at Laramie, endeavored to establish a mission at Carbon. This mission gave so much promise of success that Mrs. Mary E. Cox of Troy, New York, was led to give a bell for the projected church. The bell has on one side this inscription: “Troy Bell Factory, Jones & Co., Troy, N. Y., 1870;” and on the other side the following: “Donated by Mrs. Mary E. Cox of Troy, N. Y., to St. Thomas’ church, Carbon, Wyoming Ter. O ye Mountains and Hills, Praise the Lord.”
When the bell was completed there was no church at Carbon in which to hang it. Meanwhile, St. Matthew’s church in Laramie had been built and needed a bell, so the bell intended for Carbon went to the Laramie parish. About the year 1888, when St. Mark’s parish in Cheyenne built a new church, the old St. Mark’s was taken down in sections, loaded on two flat cars, and sent to Carbon where it was set up and used for a number of years.

When the Carbon mines became exhausted the little church which went from Cheyenne to Carbon was sold and removed to a ranch between Carbon and Elk Mountain where it is now used as a barn. One of its two roof crosses is possessed by the Hanna church and the other by the Cheyenne church. After St. Matthew’s cathedral received its beautiful chime it no longer needed Mrs. Cox’s bell and the bell was given to the church of Hanna.

During this era many fly-by-night villages were hastily knocked together along the railroad. They passed as quickly as the trains over the rails and form many colorful pages of western history. This was not so with Carbon. The bustling population took a sheriff, established a bank and located a slaughter house just west of town.

Immense coal reserves lent a sense of security to the atmosphere and Carbonites prepared for an indefinite period of growth and expansion. School was taught in the churches in the best manner available. Medical care for the miners and their families was inadequate and antiquated remedies were interspersed with visits from doctors living in Rawlins. Hotels and stores sprang as if from the soil. The first hotel was called the Wyoming house and Thomas Wardell, Michael Quealey and William Hinion began the store which later sold to Beckwith, Quinn and Company.

The great and near-great of the pioneer West mingled in and around the milling little city. Coal production had skyrocketed to the 30,428-ton mark by 1869. The rough frame saloons catered to such clientele as Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Colonel Percy, famous construction engineer for the Union Pacific, was killed by the Indians after holding them at bay with his rifle for three days near the Carbon area. Percy left his name to the present little site and another character of renown, General Sublette, now lies buried near Elk Mountain.

1891 was a memorable year. Two million tons of coal were being mined in Wyoming, worth five million dollars annually. Coal miners were statistically rated as earning from $2.75 to $5.00 per day, roustabouts $1.50, and bakers, plumbers and cabinet makers from $2.50 on up. Carbon county spread over four million acres and the population of the town of Carbon jumped to peak of 1,140 persons.

Mining operations were crude and simple. Timbers were cut on Elk Mountain, hauled to Percy station in wagons, loaded on the train and brought to Carbon. Later they were floated down the Medicine Bow river. The shaft of Old Number One Mine reached from eighty to one hundred feet in depth. The pockets for storing coal for locomotive use were erected in connection with the tipple so that pit cars could be taken from the cage, the coal pushed to the pockets and dumped in one handling. When the mines flooded, the women sewed sacking together and built dikes.

A second hotel in Carbon was the Scranton House, which built on an annex in the heyday of the town to house holiday crowds and extra miners. Money passed freely from hand to hand, or hand to saloon, as it were, and the miners collected their monthly pay from the local store where it was stacked on a table in the rear among piles of canned goods.

The Hanna State Bank, oldest of its kind in Wyoming, was first organized as the Carbon State Bank in 1891 with a capital stock of $15,000, and was moved to Hanna in December of 1903.

Life in Carbon was never dull. The large yellow frame building known as the Finn Hall served for many dances. Later it was rumored to have been carried to Hanna by some two hundred Finnish men. The Knights of Pythias and Odd Fellows annual balls and calico dances were occasions of prime importance. One fiddler entertained the whole community under the kerosene lamps used for lighting. Hanna did not receive electric lighting until 1895.

Six years before this date plans were being made to abandon Carbon after the discovery of richer coal and Hanna was put on the main line. By this time Wyoming had produced five million tons of coal worth $9,500,000 and miners were receiving from $35 to $75 per month. The town of Carbon, however, was already beginning to lose its very life blood. The population was slowly diminishing and the eight hundred mark had been reached as the people filtered away.

Even much of the mining machinery of Carbon was moved to the site of Hanna and the superintendent of the mines lived in Carbon for several months following the change. Hanna mail came in by horse and buggy once a day. One Mr. Baker, photographer, visited Hanna from Carbon on several occasions and set up a tent for business. Groceries were hauled to town by Mr. C. F. “Coffee” Johnson who came twice a week with vegetables and solicited orders. The Carbon blacksmith shop was moved to Hanna and the shoe shop followed.

The saloons, which had been the main source of amusement for Carbonites, were the last buildings to be moved. Miners who frequented these establishments allegedly tossed gold pieces at cracks in the floor. “Dutch Charlie,” train robber, and his ilke were well known at every bar and the hanging post used in the execution of Charlie stood in front of Milliken’s saloon for many years.

Very little remains of the town which was once visited by such neighbors as Chief Washakie and his Shoshoni tribe. Seven mines were opened and worked and then all the houses were lifted like pasteboard boxes and transported by cart and buggy over more than eleven miles of rough prairie almost overnight.

Hanna residents often hunted sage chickens where they abundantly roosted near the ghost town. In the heyday of Carbon, game was plentiful and more than two hundred elk grazed in the pasture near town with the mules used by the Company to pull the coal cars. An old race track has long since disappeared from the brush where miners used to run horses on Sunday afternoon. A second sport in 1883 was the holding of pigeon-shooting contests. The birds were released into the air after tobacco juice had been squirted into their eyes.

The Carbon graveyard, which is still visited on Memorial Day by hundreds of people from all over the entire state to pay tribute, stands isolated from the ruins of the old town. Sunken and unmarked graves suggest the remains of travelers who were found scalped by the Indians. People who wish to be interred near old friends and relatives are still buried at Carbon.

Travelers at one time carried away many old markers and souvenirs of the locale when the Lincoln highway passed the town. A leaning fence and a thin line of rusty rails almost alone remain to suggest the passing of this phase of western settlement. Coal reigned as king for a day, but circumstances rang down the curtain and left but a trace of the stage and the setting. (UPCCEM, May 1945)

CARBON, WYOMING ABOUT 1875 (WHILE FAMILY COLLECTION FROM BOB LEATHERS)

CARBON NO. 1 MINE (WHILE FAMILY COLLECTION FROM BOB LEATHERS)

1894 UNION PACIFIC COAL COMPANY'S NO. 2 MINE IN CARBON (1894 MINE INSPECTOR REPORT)

CARBON N0. 2 MINE (JONES FAMILY COLLECTION FROM JOHN JONES)

UNION PACIFIC COAL COMPANY’S STORE IN CARBON. THE STORE WOULD EVENTUALLY BE MOVED FROM CARBON TO HANNA (WHILE FAMILY COLLECTION FROM BOB LEATHERS)

CARBON MINE OFFICE (WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES, DEPARTMENT OF STATE PARKS AND CULTURAL RESOURCES)

CARBON COAL CAMP IN 1875 (GERT MILLIKEN COLLECTION FROM GARY MILLIKEN)

Finnish Temperance Society of Old Carbon, 1880 (Gert Milliken Collection from Gary Milliken)

COFFEE JOHNSON (GERT MILLIKEN COLLECTION FROM GARY MILLIKEN)

C.F. "COFFEE" JOHNSON GENERAL MERCHANDISE STORE in Carbon . COFFEE JOHNSON, WITH A BEARD, IS STANDING IN FRONT OF THE STORE. (GERT MILLIKEN COLLECTION FROM GARY MILLIKEN)

The interior of the store belonging to Ben Jose in 1887, which was later destroyed by a fire which began in the Scranton House. On the extreme left is visiting Dentist Thode of Rawlins. (UPCCEM, May 1945)

Scene behind the C. F. Coffee Johnson's General Store in Carbon (UPCCEM, May 1945)

CARBON FIRE (HANNA BASIN MUSEUM)

CARBON Volunteer Fire Department in the 1880's ( GERT MILLIKEN COLLECTION from Gary Milliken))

The Picture above shows the Volunteer Fire Department of Carbon, the photo was taken in front of the Union Pacific Coal Company store. Many Old timers are in this picture, including Big Pete Travis, Jack Mates, Cud Hastings; in fact one could call the roster on this picture and a large proportion of the old Carbon families would be found to be represented.

Old Time Engine 929 at Carbon (UPCCEM, March 1927)

1928

Carbon - A Poem

O, Carbon, how we loved you, forty years ago today;
No one dream’t, old Carbon, that you weren’t on the map to stay.
You were prosperous and thriving, and the people held their own;
Who could tell them that today you’d be standing there alone?

Bright lights glittered in the night-time, and the days were busy, too;
Dark clouds always slighted Carbon, and her skies were always blue!
Such a jovial crowd of pioneers were seldom found--
And they’d braved the wilderness of the West to old Wyoming’s ground.

Snows or Indians could not scare them, for they had a world of grit;
This frontier life held charm—for heroes do not quit.
There you know’d everybody, and they all know’d you;
No one cared a penny what the other one would do.

The women dressed in calico, the men wore old-time jeans;
All of them were genuine and lived within their means.
They traveled with a team and rig—autos were unknown;
And just imagine these plain folks talking o’er a phone!

They hadn’t any phonograph, but danced after a fiddle;
The halls were always crowded—where they came from was a riddle.
They danced old-fashioned steps and sang old-fashioned tunes,
And they strolled in the silvery light of real old-fashioned moons.

Times have changed beyond description, and they have scattered one and all;
Some have gone to other countries; some have gone beyond recall.
And Carbon, you are shattered; you are dead, you are no more,
And the sight of you, dear Carbon, makes our heart ache to the core.

When we go to where you flourished, our spirits are depressed,
To think this hopeless wreck of now was once the very best.
Your houses are all tumbling down, the windows are broken out,
The doors are standing there ajar, the gophers run about.

The streets are full of tumble weeds, the bridges have fallen in,
And quiet reigns where at one time was industry and din;
The coyotes come within the wreck of this down-trodden place,
And howl in cheerless, mournful tones—there’s no one to give chase.

The sly jack-rabbits rack away and hide ‘mid the ruins there,
And o’er the whole of Carbon now is the attitude of despair;
The sagebrush flat is just as green, the hills slope toward the sky,
And Carbon now reminds us of the fact that all things die.

It used to be that spring winds made music in the air,
But now the night winds sob and sigh around the chimneys bare;
Out on the side hill north of town, a silent city lies,
Where monuments and blocks of stone among the graves arise.

‘Tis here that old-time Carbonites return to add another,
For here are resting old and young, the baby and the mother.
‘Tis here that many pioneers of these old times are sleeping;
‘Tis here that some good angel o’er the dead a watch is keeping.

So, fare you well, old Carbon, you are crumbling to the dust,
And our hearts ache at your downfall—which we cannot think is just;
And although you’re past redemption, still we reverence your name,
And always, dear old Carbon, we will love you just the same.

From Hanna Pioneer (UPCCEM, February 1928)