Eastside Stories: Local Coal Mining Part 2

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by Steve Williams

The Bagley Mine pictured above shows electrification and some of the 163,000 ton of coal produced in 1898. By then the hard-working mules and tiny steam engines had been replaced by electric haul motors called “tugs.” Then in 1905 the largest and most productive mine of all was opened just to the south. It was called the Ford Slope and went down five levels to 1,500 feet. At each level, horizontal gangways tunneled into the coal both east and west. Rock tunnels north and south gave access to a number of other coal seams, but all of the cars were pulled up the Ford Slope, and all of the coal was washed and sorted at the Coal Creek bunkers.

Today, the arched concrete entry to the Ford Slope has a picnic table, coal car and a large photo kiosk next to it at Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. Downstream in Coal Creek Park, just across Lakemont Blvd, there is an impressive airshaft (sealed 20 feet down) and seven more interpretive signs explaining the 100-year history of local coal mining. Today, long portions of the rail grade serve as beautiful and easy walking trails in Coal Creek and May Creek Parks (again with good interpretive signs).

Our Northwest coal miners came from 14 or more European countries. The English, Welsh, Italians and Finns were prominent at Newcastle. There were also some local Indians, as well as black miners from Missouri who settled at Kennydale. Chinese laborers who settled at China Creek built most of the railroad, and Scandinavian loggers built two immense 1,200-foot long trestles over the May Creek valley. Coal trains ran twice a day, and the trip to the Seattle docks took just over an hour (something we commuters stuck in traffic might envy today).

The end of ‘Big’ mining here happened when the Coal Creek bunkers burned down in 1929 – just as demand for coal was shrinking due to a global financial crisis (the Great Depression). The California-based Pacific Coast Coal Company decided to close up shop, and the company-owned town was dismantled. Anything of value was carted off or sold, including miners’ homes, which were offered at $25 apiece. The rail line was abandoned in 1933 and the rails pulled out by 1937. Several local miners then started their own independent operations: Baima & Rubitino, Bianco Coal, Harris, Scalzo & Strain. However, oil was fast replacing coal as the fuel of choice, and after World War II both demand and production fell off quickly. The last local mines closed in 1963, a full century after coal was first discovered on the Eastside.

Coal fueled trains, steamships, factories and businesses. Seattle became a major port city, with the population of King County expanding from just over 300 in 1860 to well over 43,000 by 1890, and just over one million in the 1960’s. The legacy of coal for the Eastside has been a skilled, diverse and ambitious population and a landscape now preserved for housing and recreation. A half-century of history and science has now taught us that burning any carbon fuel (coal, oil, wood or natural gas) makes our planet hotter. If we are to survive globally, the history we make now needs to be one of converting to clean energy as quickly as possible.

Above photograph: A group of Bagley Seam miners are shown here. Photograph courtesy of Oliver Rouse and the Newcastle Historical Society

Eastside Stories: Local Coal Mining Part 1

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by: Steve Williams

It is hard for most of us today, to realize that coal mining was Seattle’s first major industry—centered right here on the east side of Lake Washington. Bands of coal were noted in a local stream in 1863, and that stream has been called “Coal Creek” ever since. The hills south of I-09 contain eleven different coal seams that brought skilled European miners and their families to the area. The mines brought prosperity and growth, and provided a valued export to the entire west coast. Listed below are some key points to remember:

COAL MINING – KEY POINTS

• 100 years at Newcastle/Coal Creek. 1863-1963. (From the time of the Civil War, to construction of the space Needle and Seattle’s World Fair!)

• Coal is carbonized plant material. (Warm swamp vegetation was covered by a rising Pacific Ocean and thousands of pounds of sand and mud from inland rivers. Over the next 35 million years, heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen converted the plants into ‘a compact rock that will burn.’)

• There are 11 coal seams, all tilted down north at an angle of about 42 degrees. This is due to 20 million years of plate tectonics uplifting and rumpling the land, followed by mountain-building. (Mt. Rainier is only 5 million years old!)

• Our coal is Bituminous ‘soft’ coal; 40% carbon 35% gasses. However, it made 10,000 BTUs of heat. Hotter than wood and much more compact – oil replaced coal for the same reason. (One bucket of coal was said to replace 20 stove logs).

• Mined ‘down-slope’ 200 feet, then sideways tunnels (gangways), then up-slope, widened to rooms every other 50 feet. (Pillars were left in-between to hold the roof up.)

• Removal by drilling & blasting with black powder, then pick ‘n shovel. (Coal rolled down to fill mine cars which were then winched up-slope to the surface.)

• 11 million tons dug here. (Enough to fill Seahawks stadium 2 miles high!)

• First railroad in Seattle built to get the coal. Arrived at Newcastle in 1878. (18 wooden trestles; two at May Creek 1200’ long and 138’ high!) Coal sent to San Francisco first by sail then by steamship. – Turned Seattle into a major port.

Bagley Mine Crew circa 1900. Courtesy of Newcastle Historical.

Eastside Stories: Seattle's First Railroad and the Eastside

Article by Kent Sullivan, Steve Williams, and John Tun

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Newcastle sprung into existence in the years after Federal land surveyors discovered coal just east of Lake Washington in 1862. Seattle, a village of barely 1000 people in 1870, did not generate much demand for coal, but San Francisco, a city 150 times larger, was in great need of it for industrial and residential use, yet its local source (Mt. Diablo) was nearly exhausted. Seattle also greatly desired a “cash crop” to help provide much-needed capital. The timber and lumber businesses, although thriving on the Olympic Peninsula by 1870, were slow to develop in the Seattle area.

Creating a mining operation from scratch, to get coal to the surface, was a substantial challenge—but it was only half the battle, because the coal still had to be transported nearly 20 miles to the nearest ocean-going port, Seattle. The lowlands surrounding Seattle circa 1865 were densely-forested, old-growth wilderness, with absolutely no infrastructure (railroads, roads, settlements, etc.). Small quantities of coal were initially transported by canoe across Lake Washington, switching to small, shallow-draft barges guided south on the lake, to the Black and Duwamish Rivers, to Seattle’s waterfront, but clearly, a viable commercial enterprise could not be sustained with these methods.

Doing something different and more practical required capital—a lot of it—and there was precious little available in the village of Seattle. San Francisco, by comparison, was flush with investment dollars, and its investors were definitely motivated to help the city continue to grow and thrive. Thus, the Seattle Coal & Transportation Company (SC&T) was born in 1870.

The SC&T rapidly got an operation going that would have made Rube Goldberg proud, involving transloading coal 11 times in its journey and the first steam locomotive in the Puget Sound region.

1890's coal mining in the Newcastle Hill and Bellevue area utilized rail systems to move coal.

Amazingly, enough money was made this way that the company shut down for an entire year in mid-1873 to build a more-efficient transportation solution involving three rail segments with three separate locomotives, using a 3’ narrow-gauge system, and two lake segments, using two sets of barges propelled by two steam tugs. This system moved 500 tons of coal per day to the company’s wharf and coal bunker at the foot of Pike St., which was built by the first mayor of Seattle, was the largest structure on the Seattle waterfront in the mid-1870’s, and kept a fleet of 9 clipper ships busy transporting coal to San Francisco.

Even this system was deemed too costly and was replaced by an all-rail route in early 1878. (Please refer to Kurt Armbruster’s excellent book, Pacific Coast: Seattle’s Own Railroad for more information on this operation.) The large numbers of men (and their families) required to operate the complex mine and transportation system propelled Newcastle to become the largest settlement in the area outside of Seattle in the years before 1880.

A dedicated group of members of the Newcastle Historical Society (NHS) has been researching all aspects of the SC&T: the route, equipment, production, people, and more. Last year they uncovered the site of an incline used to lower loaded coal cars to the east shore of Lake Washington. Amazingly, part of the incline site survives today (on private property).

An information-packed presentation on many aspects of the SC&T will be given September 26 at the Bellevue Downtown Library at 7:00 PM, in conjunction with NHS and the Eastside Heritage Society. The public is invited and there is no charge. We hope you’re able to attend and learn more about this fascinating, all-but-forgotten chapter of Newcastle’s early industrial history.

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

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Eastside Stories: Coal Mining on the Eastside

No. 6 | April 17, 2019

Eastside Stories

Coal Mining on the Eastside

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Newcastle, Coal Creek, Black Diamond. These place names in King County did not spring up by accident. They reflect the importance of coal mining in the evolution of the Puget Sound region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

While pioneers were carving homesteads and logging camps out of the wilderness around Puget Sound, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. And that revolution was powered by coal. Coal fired steam engines, smelted iron and heated the urban homes and factories that were coming to dominate American life. These industries and innovations were slow to come to the West Coast, but when they did, they needed a reliable supply of high quality coal.

Such supplies were found in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Coal deposits had been discovered around the state and in British Columbia by the earliest explorers, and in 1859, just eight years after the first settlers established the new city of Seattle, coal was discovered in Issaquah. It took three more years for an enterprising miner to get a few loads to Seattle. Coal was discovered near Lake Washington—and easier transport to Seattle—in 1863, and the rush was on. This area would be dubbed Coal Creek and would be the site of mining for decades.

Mining camp at Coal Creek in 1910. (Photo courtesy of City of Seattle Archives.)

Scale was a problem at first. Seattle, at that time, was still a small place, with a limited number of houses and businesses that could afford coal--wood was still plentiful and cheap. And there was not a whole lot of capital to invest in mines and transportation infrastructure. But as with so many of the region’s dilemmas in the nineteenth century, the answer would come from California.

The same booming San Francisco Bay economy that was absorbing wood products from Puget Sound would absorb the coal being dug out of its hillsides. And investors from California, with piles of Gold Rush wealth, would supply the capital to make the mines of the Eastside and Southeast King County hum.

Mines began to operate from Newcastle to Renton and south into Pierce County (the town of Carbonado did not get its name by accident either). Railroads gradually came to the area, significantly lowering the cost of transporting coal. And towns sprung up, housing miners and their families, many of whom had immigrated from Europe and Asia.

This tramway in Newcastle transported coal to barges on Lake Washington, (Eastside Heritage Center Photo)

In many ways, coal shaped the Seattle area as significantly as timber. Whereas lumber and logs were shipped from the anchorage closest to the source, coal was shipped primarily from the docks of Elliott Bay, helping develop the port. Railroads and regular steamship service to Asia arrived in Seattle in the early 1890s, and by 1910, Seattle was the third largest port in the country (after New York and Philadelphia) and the primary West Coast gateway to Asia. Local coal fired all those ship and locomotive boilers.

Local coal also drove one of the more curious economic development schemes in the region’s history: the Great Western Iron and Steel Company of Kirkland. With coal and newly-discovered iron ore in the Cascades, a group of investors set out to create the “Pittsburgh of the West” atop Rose Hill. This is a long story that will be told later, but suffice to say that without local coal, Kirkland might not have emerged as the leading city of the young Eastside.

The coal mines of the Eastside have been closed for decades, but the old shafts can still be visited on Cougar Mountain, and there is evidence of the old townsites and camps, if you know where to look.

Presentations, tours and field trips with EHC’s expert volunteers and staff can be arranged. Contact our education staff.

The bulk freighter Dominion takes on a load of coal at a bunker on the Seattle waterfront in 1910. (Photo courtesy of City of Seattle Archives)

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Learn more about the Eastside. Books available from Eastside Heritage Center include:

Lake Washington: The Eastside

Bellevue: the Post World War II Years

Our Town, Redmond

Medina

Hunts Point

Bellevue: Its First 100 Years

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

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Eastside Heritage Center is supported by 4 Culture