Intermountain Mine Disasters

5 Locations | Curated by Megan Wagner, Northern Arizona University

Since the nineteenth century, mining has provided significant economic support to the Intermountain West and to the United States overall. Copper supported wars, coal fueled power plants, and silver financed economies. However, mining has long been dangerous business. Deep underground, lights can go out, air can go stale, tunnels can flood or collapse, and coal dust can ignite explosively. Miners have been on the front lines of this work, harvesting products worth so much it sometimes seemed as if buyers and bosses valued the coal and ore more than their lives.


This tour highlights five significant mining disasters in the history of the Intermountain West, ranging a time span of nearly a hundred years from 1889 to 1972. Mine disasters had the potential to both make and break communities. Some towns rallied to memorialize the dead and care for widows and children left behind; others dwindled into ghost towns, too devastated in the wake of who and what they lost.

A flood in the White Ash Mine, located in Colorado, killed ten men. Though not the worst mining disaster in Colorado history, the White Ash Mine disaster is remembered for a mysterious fire that thwarted an attempt to rescue the drowned miners.
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The Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine disaster is considered the worst hard-rock mine disaster in the United States, with 163 people dying as a result of the fire. The disaster is remembered both for its death toll as well as the strike that ensued following the fire.
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The Castle Gate Mine Disaster was a horrific tragedy that took the lives of 171 men. Considered the second-worst mining disaster in Utah’s history, the disaster is well remembered not only for the death toll but also for the push for safety reform in its aftermath.
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The Smith Mine Disaster was the worst coal disaster in the state of Montana. It claimed the lives of seventy-five people and destroyed the mining industry of Bearcreek which had been built around it.
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On May 2, 1972, the Sunshine Mine experienced a devastating fire. Claiming the lives of seventy-one men, the Sunshine Mine Disaster is considered one of the worst mining disasters in Idaho’s history.
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