MINING AND DISASTERS
IT or centuries coal mining had been back-breaking, labor-intensive, and extremely dangerous. Rock falls, cave-ins, explosions, and poisonous gases threatened the miner every minute he was underground, while the cumulative effects of inhaling coal dust caused black lung and other respiratory diseases that distressed and shortened the lives of those miners who did survive the everyday dangers of underground mining. The story of coal mining in Carbon County began with the most primitive pick and shovel methods and advanced during the next century and a quarter to include the use of the most sophisticated mining equipment in the coal mining industry. As mechanization advanced, the need for thousands of toiling miners declined. Still, coal production increased significantly even with fewer and fewer miners. Although safety procedures have advanced far beyond the dustchoked, open-flamed, inadequately timbered mines of another era, coal mining remains a dangerous occupation. Mining disasters such as those at Winter Quarters in 1900 which claimed 200 lives, Casde 134
