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The story
The first, and only until World War II, integrated iron and steel mill west of St. Louis was built in 1881 in Pueblo on the south side of the Arkansas River by the Colorado Coal and Iron Company (CC&L), an affiliate of the narrow-gauge Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company (D&RG), controlled by General William Jackson Palmer and Dr. William Abraham Bell. Its purpose in part was to manufacture rails for the railway. Local resources included water from the Arkansas River, coal from Trinidad, limestone from a few miles south of Pueblo, and iron ore from the San Luis Valley with rail transportation provided by the D&RG. Manufacturing using blast furnaces and the Bessemer process began April 12, 1881. Products included rails, pig iron, iron and steel bars and plates, and cut nails and spikes.
The original steel works were one of the projects of the Central Colorado Improvement Company, founded by General William J. Palmer in 1872, with plans "to purchase lands, minerals springs, coal and iron and other mines and quarries in Colorado Territory, and the establishment and building up of colonies, towns, coal mining, iron making and manufacturing works, and to build canals and wagon roads." The work on the mill began—under the original name for the steel producer: Colorado Coal and Steel Works—with excavation of the foundation for the first blast furnace in February 1880, on a prairie south of what would later become South Pueblo. A neighborhood of makeshift homes arose near the works, initially called Taylorville, then Steelworks, then, as more permanent dwellings were constructed, Bessemer in 1881. Initial capacity of the mill in 1881–82 was 80 short tons (73 t) per year from the first blast furnace, while a second furnace was being built, and the mill employed 300–400. The first steel rails were produced in April 1882 for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad's Silverton Branch.
The market for steel was slow due to intense competition from eastern mills, and the mill was often idle. The company turned to production of coke and coal opening additional mines near Trinidad and others near Canon City, Walsenburg, and Crested Butte. Coke ovens were built at El Moro north of Trinidad and at Crested Butte.
In the early 1890s, demand for fuel fell, and the company faced stiff competition from the Colorado Fuel Company, which was closely associated with and provided coal to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q). John C. Osgood, who with other investors from Iowa and Colorado, the Iowa Group, had founded Colorado Fuel Company in 1883, which acquired substantial coal reserves in Las Animas and Garfield Counties by purchasing existing facilities. Other properties were acquired in Garfield, Huerfano, Las Animas, and Pitkin counties. On Osgood's initiative these two companies merged in 1892 to form Colorado Fuel and Iron with members of the Iowa Group in control.
Often idle during the decades of the 1880s and 1890s due to stiff competition and the effects of the panic of 1893, the steel mill at Pueblo was small and obsolete. Due to economic conditions it was not possible to modernize it until 1899 when substantial improvements were made. including a rolling mill, additional blast furnaces, a modern Bessemer converter, open hearth furnaces, a wire mill, and supporting facilities. The mill was renamed the Minnequa Works in 1901.
Iron ore
Early sources of iron ore were hematite from the Calumet Mine north of Salida, Colorado, limonite from the Orient Mine on the west slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range east of Villa Grove and iron and magnesium rich ore which was a byproduct of silver mining at Leadville. Additional iron ore was obtained from New Mexico and Wyoming and reserves purchased in Utah. Company towns were built at isolated facilities such as Orient and Calumet. Deeper ores from Calumet contained greater quantities of silicon, which interfered with the iron making process. Calumet was closed in 1899 and production shifted to the Sunrise Mine near Hartville, Wyoming, about 100 miles north of Cheyenne which the company had leased in 1898. The Colorado and Wyoming Railway Company was organized as subsidiary to transport the ore. Orient was abandoned in 1905 but some ore continued to be mined and sold to the company by contractors until 1922 when it reopened, only to be permanently closed at the beginning of the Great Depression due to falling demand.
Production, which began in 1899 at the Sunrise Mine in Wyoming, was initially by open-pit mining at a cost of 15 cents a ton. By 1900, daily production was 2,000 tons. Purchase of the property was completed in 1904. Shortages of ore continued to plague operations at the refurbished Minnequa Works in Pueblo and some ore was obtained from the 86, Jim Fair, and Union mines near Fierro and Hanover in Grant County, New Mexico. Substantial reserves were purchased near Cedar City in Iron County, Utah, but remained unmined.
Limestone
Limestone was initially obtained from a quarry a few miles south of Pueblo at Lime near the St. Charles River and later from a high-grade low-phosphorus deposit of limestone and dolomite near Howard.
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Coal and coke
In 1903, CF&I was the largest producer of coal in the Rocky Mountain west with 23 mines in Las Animas, Huerfano, Fremont, Gunnison, Garfield, and Pitkin County, Colorado, producing 53% of the coal mined in Colorado and its nine coking plants producing 89% of its coke. Steam coal for use in boilers and locomotives was produced in the Huerfano district, coal for home heating in the Canon district, and anthracite at Crested Butte. Demand for coke by the precious metals smelting industry fell off as first silver production was impacted by the panic of 1893 and then gold production fell off in the first decade of the 20th century and used refining techniques which did not require large quantities of coke. The large copper smelting companies operating in the area, Phelps Dodge and The American Smelting and Refining Company, invested in their own coal mines and coking plants in Colfax County, New Mexico and Cokedale, Colorado.
Education
In 1901, in an effort to deal with its mostly immigrant workforce, CF&I formed the Sociological Department. Their main focus was to better the lives of the workers and their families and to shape their political and economic views. The Sociological Department began educating the miners through night school to teach them English. The Sociological Department began to set standards for education by regulating the curriculum and getting miners' children involved.
Richard Corwin came up with the idea that Kindergarten would be the best way to help the immigrant children become better citizens. Through the Kindergarten program, children were taught English and the importance of industrial labor in hopes of making them good future employees.
Also part of the multi-pronged efforts to promote support for the Company in the latter-half of 1914, several schools were constructed, including one in Primero.
Land
In 1900, anticipating high demand for coal, the extensive and coal rich lands of the Colorado portion of the Maxwell Land Grant near Trinidad in Las Animas County were purchased through its subsidiary, the Rocky Mountain Coal and Iron Company. Following this purchase mines and coking plants and railway connections were constructed by the Colorado and Wyoming Railway Company in 1901 and 1902 west of Trinidad, and facilities built for workers under the direction of Dr. Richard W. Corwin chief surgeon of CF&I.
From Wikipedia’s article on Colorado Fuel and Iron, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3