The coal-bed is some hundreds of feet higher than the valley of the Purgatoire, where the village is; and it can be traced for thirty miles east and west, cropping out frequently and used all along by the farmers who live near it, as a supply of fuel. Throughout this extent it varies, of course, in thickness and quality, though in no great degree. Where the El Moro mines are opened, it runs from a vertical thickness of thirty feet to thirteen, nearly all of which is solid, merchantable coal. There are two thin streaks of what the miners term “bone”—something neither coal nor slate—and little patches of refuse, now and then, but no great amount.
I do not know how many hundreds of yards of underground tunnels we walked through, but it was an immense distance, yet the foreman said we had not been half way through it all. Everywhere the roof was high overhead and the walls solid coal, so that the men did not have to crawl on all fours or lie prostrate and dig, as I have seen done in some eastern mines, but could stand full height. All the product of the mine is taken by the pick, except a small amount cut by machines, which dig a horizontal trench, level with the floor, for five feet or so under the breast of the coal and across its whole breadth. This machine works with extreme rapidity, and after it is done, a couple of blasts will topple down as much coal as can be carted out in a day.
UP THE RIO GRANDE.
The output each month is nearly twenty-five thousand tons, about two hundred and seventy-five miners working. The piece-work method is adopted in paying, and though a smaller rate is paid per ton in mining than is usual in the Pennsylvania or Illinois mines, the earnings of the miners aggregate much larger than the average in the East. This is due to the superior ease with which this coal can be taken out, because of its softness and the roominess of the working chambers, rather than to anything better in the miners or greater diligence in working. One difficulty, indeed, arises from the ease with which high earnings can be made here, namely, that desirable workmen will labor only during the winter, or until they have made a “grub-stake,” as they say, when they will go into the mountains prospecting for mines until their funds are exhausted, for, thus far, none of them have become suddenly wealthy.
At the mines, the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, which owns this property, have built a small village of adobe and wooden houses, in which the miners reside. About two hundred men were employed, many of whom had families. They were of almost every nationality, including some sixty Mexicans.
The El Moro coal is a true bituminous coal, producing a coke of excellent quality. It is asserted by its owners to be the best coal for making gas and for blacksmithing in the state; and it is used extensively for steam and metallurgical purposes. It is also said to be the only coal yet discovered in Colorado, lying east of the mountains, which can be profitably used for heating iron in furnaces, and for this it is equal to the best grades of eastern coal. About two-thirds of the product is made into coke.
The coke-works lie five miles from the mines and near El Moro, where there are three steam pumps, a fifty-horse power engine, crushing and washing machinery and two hundred and fifty coking ovens. A charge for each of these ovens, they told us, was about four and a half tons, and the yield of coke from each, after forty-eight hours of burning, is about two and a quarter tons, making a present total product of two hundred and eighty tons of coal a day.
The following shows the analysis of this coal and coke, and also that of the well known Connelsville coal and coke: