What Colorado and Appalachia have in common

Quite an interesting article.

The Charleston Gazette
Sunday, June 1, 2014
What Colorado and Appalachia have in common
By Jean B. Cropley

The continuing decline of the coal industry in Appalachia is reminiscent of the decline in mining in my native Colorado after World War II.

Colorado started out as a mining state with the gold rush of 1859, and continued as a gold and silver powerhouse through the early 20th century. By 1900, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. was a major coal and steel company that made railroad rails and other products at a huge mill in Pueblo. They also operated coal mines all over southern Colorado and New Mexico, and iron mines in Wyoming and Utah. CF&I was Colorado’s largest employer, and it consumed half of the coal mined in the state.

And there were others. The Climax Molybdenum Company’s huge open-pit mine at Climax supplied molybdenum to the steel industry beginning in 1915 and continued through both World Wars and for some years thereafter. The mine reopened in May 2012 after a 17-year hiatus. Today the company’s Henderson Mine, which began production in 1976 near Empire in Clear Creek County, is the largest producing molybdenum mine in the United States. The company states that it intends to operate the two mines “in a flexible manner to meet market requirements.”

Mining remained Colorado’s main industry through two world wars and well into the 1950s. Then the decline set in. Many roads in the state were still unpaved in the early 1950s. Denver was a beautiful small city of 100,000 people and few opportunities. By 1950 most of Colorado’s mines had shut down and mining declined until today mining of all kinds accounts for only about 1 percent of Colorado’s economy. People like me graduated with degrees in science and engineering and moved to places like West Virginia and Texas where the opportunities were. Colorado did have a small ski industry in places like Berthoud Pass and Winter Park outside Denver, but a real organized tourist industry was still years away. There were still a few federal defense installations in the state and a couple of large military bases, but they faded away after World War II. By 1950, Colorado’s economy was pretty bleak....

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