Remembering Cripple Creek

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Some of the sharpest and most violent class struggles in American history were fought in the hard rock mining towns of the nineteenth-century West where workers and bosses fought with fists, bullets, and dynamite in the streets and mines. On a recent visit to Colorado, I stopped by Cripple Creek, a little town whose name is forever linked to one of the most brutal confrontations in American labor history. In 1902, after a decade of steadily increasing worker political, social and economic power in the state as miners organized, corporate mining interests in Colorado decided to crush the Western Federation of Miners, the strongest, largest and most militant miner’s union. In November of 1903, miners, infuriated by the mine owner’s labor violations and failure to live up to their agreements, struck for the eight-hour day. The strike involved some of the iconic names in American labor history, including “Big Bill” Haywood – who would soon help found the Industrial Workers of the World -- and tireless labor firebrand Mother Jones, who fought for unity among the strikers, persuading the northern miners to continue the struggle at a critical point in the strike. During the 1894 strike, then-Governor Davis Waite had called out the state militia to protect the coal miners and citizens of Cripple Creek from the mine owner’s private army, which had gotten out of control and were harassing local citizens. In 1904, however, Governor James Peabody sided decisively with the owners and sent in the National Guard on June 7 after an explosion at the Independence Depot. Company L of the National Guard, a detachment commanded by a mine manager, surrounded the miner’s union hall in nearby Victor, took up sniper positions on nearby rooftops, and began to fire into the union hall. Four miners were hit, and the men inside were forced to surrender. In the ensuing days, union members were deported or loaded onto special trains and dumped across the state line and for all practical purposes the Western Federation of Miners had been destroyed in Colorado's mining camps. These days, Cripple Creek is known more for its casinos and though the miner’s union hall in Victor still stands, it’s empty and marked only with a For Sale sign. No monument or plaque memorializes the epic battles in either town and the museums barely mention workers at all, focusing instead on the tons of gold ore they painstakingly pulled from the now-quiet mountains.
- Chris Garlock; photos by Lisa Garlock