Dawson, New Mexico
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Dawson, New Mexico was a mining town founded in 1901 when rancher John Barkley Dawson sold his coal-rich land in northern New Mexico to the Dawson Fuel Company. The Dawson Railway was built connecting the town to Tucumcari, New Mexico. The mines were productive, and by 1905 the town boasted a population of nearly 2000.
In 1906, the mines were purchased by the Phelps Dodge Corporation. The corporation was determined to make Dawson an ideal company town, and to that end built homes for the miners, and numerous other facilities including a hospital, department store, swimming pool, movie theatre, and a golf course. With these attractions, the corporation was able to maintain a stable employment rate despite the inherent dangers of mining.
The Dawson Railway was purchased by Phelps Dodge at the same time and made part of its El Paso & Southwestern Railroad system. The EP&SW was later purchased by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which also purchased long term contracts for the coal production from Dawson. The SP used steam locomotives which were mostly fueled by oil, but the operating division located at Tucumcari utilized coal fueled steam engines, the only group of such locomotives on their roster.
In total, the Dawson coal operations had ten mines, numbered 1 - 10 in the area. Most of these mines were located in the immediate vicinity of Dawson. The mines are generally referred to as "Stag Canyon #", a reference to the operating company, but they are also often referred to as "Dawson #", in reference to their locale. Most of these mines were connected to the coal processing and loading facilities in Dawson by means of an electric powered narrow gauge railroad. Cars would be loaded inside the mines, taken outside and then transported in trains of cars to the facilities in Dawson proper. The coal was cleaned of non-combustible debris and sorted into general sizes for different uses. In addition to the coal processing facilities, there also were coking ovens which processed the coal, transforming it into coke which was used for metal processing by Phelps Dodge at other facilities. Stag Canyon coal was also used to fuel a power plant in Dawson, which provided electricity to the mines and to the town.
On October 22, 1913, Dawson suffered its first major disaster. Stag Canyon Mine No. 2 was shaken by an explosion that was felt two miles away in the town proper. Relief teams rushed in from surrounding communities, but of the 286 men who arrived to work in the Stag Canyon mine that morning, only 23 survived. Two rescuers died during the rescue effort. It was later determined that the explosion was caused by a dynamite charge set off while the mine was in general operation, igniting coal dust in the mine - a flagrant violation of mining safety laws.
Despite this disaster, Dawson continued as a successful mining town. Then, on February 8, 1923, Stag Canyon Mine No. 1 suffered an explosion. A mine car derailed, igniting coal dust in the mine. 123 men were killed in this explosion, many of them children of the men who died in 1913.
Astonishingly, Dawson did not become a ghost town until 1950, when the Phelps Dodge Corporation shut down the mines. At closure, Mine 6 was the largest producer, and several other mines had been previously closed out because of declining demand. The closures were also due in large part to the completion of the twenty five year coal contract with the Southern Pacific Railroad. The entire town was sold or razed, with some of the miner's houses moved to other locations. The tall smoke stacks of the coking ovens were eventually demolished in the early 2000's because they represented a liability to the current owner of the property.
The Southern Pacific branch to Tucumcari was lifted at about the same time, but was later rebuilt by the Santa Fe Railroad, continuing up the canyon to the York Canyon mines. These mines were initially operated by Kaiser Steel, with their output being transported to their steel mill at Fontana, California. The York Canyon mine was operated by several different companies, finally closing in the early 2000's. The railroad is still in place as of this writing (May, 2006), but its future is unknown since there are still undeveloped coal deposits in the area.
The town of Dawson is now largely gone, with only a few buildings remaining. What also remains is the cemetery, the only significant remaining landmark in Dawson. This cemetery is filled with iron crosses marking the graves of men who died in the mines. Other markers show the burial locations of their families.
The Italian presence in the West of the US has been largely documented, in particular in the research of the University of Florence sponsored by the Italian Consulate in Los Angeles (Italians in the Gold Rush and beyond, http://www.igrb.net )
The majority of miners in Dawson were Italian, and many Italian immigrants perished in the two disasters of 1913 and 1923. Their sacrifice was unknown in Italy before being brought to light by Professor Alessandro Trojani, with patronage and support of the Italian consul in Los Angeles, Diego Brasioli http://dawson.vps.it
The Carol & Dwight Myers Collection of Dawson photographs can be found [here: http://archives.nmsu.edu/rghc/photo/collections.html].
