Coal Ball: Baseball and Its Role in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company Coal Towns of Southeastern Colorado, 1900–1910

In many communities, large or small, throughout the United States in the early twentieth century, one form of entertainment came through the organization of team sports. At this period in time, the most popular and widespread of these games was baseball, or some variant such as softball or corkball.

This was true in the numerous small coal-mining camps and towns that were established during the period between 1898 and 1910 in southeastern Colorado. Baseball would play an important role in these mining towns as the coal-mining industry developed near the city of Trinidad. The games not only provided entertainment for community members but also created a sense of camp or community pride and identity, which was extremely important in maintaining town harmony. Communal bonding was further developed when an intertown league was created. By 1908, there were more than twenty coal towns in the region, and a number of strong rivalries developed between camp baseball teams.

The communal unification that baseball provided helped ease the tension between the various immigrants that worked and lived in the town, as well as the tension that was created between the miners and the coal-mining companies. The tension between the miners and the companies was a result of the camps being a tangible example of corporate paternalism. From the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, mines in Huerfano and Las Animas Counties in southeastern Colorado accounted for the majority of coal output in the western United States, which, in turn, allowed for the establishment of industrial-based communities.

Fig. 1.

Colorado Fuel and Iron Company map of coal-town locations in Huerfano and Las Animas Counties.

Photo courtesy Steelworks Center of the West.

Cf&i and industrial baseball

The development and expansion of the coal-mining industry in southern Colorado happened swiftly. In 1891, Las Animas County was best known for a few large cattle companies whose herds grazed on the open eastern prairies. The hilly western part of the county was farming land along a peaceful river valley and canyons that branched off in many directions amid rock-strewn slopes. Within ten years, however, the whole landscape would change. More than a dozen coal towns would be scattered throughout the western hills of Las Animas County, with an equal number in neighboring Huerfano County (fig. 1). By the early part of the twentieth century, 60 percent of Colorado’s coal production was coming from these two counties. It was a type of coal that was highly in demand, being high-grade bituminous coal, well suited to making coke for use in American industry. Southern Colorado coalfields were the main source of coking coal west of the Mississippi.¹

Before the founding of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (cf&i) in 1892, the Industrial Revolution in southern Colorado was controlled by several smaller coal and iron companies. cf&i was the result of the merging of two of Colorado’s largest coal interests: the Colorado Coal and Iron Company (cc&i), led by Gen. William Palmer, and the Colorado Fuel Company, led by John C. Osgood.² The founding of cf&i made John C. Osgood Colorado’s “primary coal producer, only steelmaker, and one of the largest landowners.”³

Similar to the large railroad companies, cf&i was dependent on a large workforce in multiple industries. It operated like a large urban company; however, the rural nature of southeastern Colorado made it extremely difficult to oversee and control. Managing such a large workforce was difficult enough, but having it made up of multiple ethnicities made the task much more trying. Prior to 1894, most coal miners were English, Welsh, Scottish, or American. They generally spoke English and shared a related cultural background. That changed dramatically by the turn of the century, when a flood of new recruits came to the southern Colorado coalfields from southern and eastern Europe, Mexico, and Japan. By 1904, most coal camps averaged six to seven different...