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Sunnyside: Est: 1899
Columbia: Est: 1921
Dragerton: Est: 1943
East Carbon City: Est: 1974
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By Life in the Mines, In Carbon County, Utah
By Raymond David Stevenson 25 October 1908,
I'll try to describe Sunnyside mine where I lived. As long as I can remember there were all kinds of nationalities in this coalmine area. There were Greeks, Austrians, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, and Englishmen, but especially Italians. There were Irishmen and Welshmen too, and they all lived in this little town of Sunnyside. During the First World War there were about five thousa people there. All these people came in from the old country, and lots of them couldn't speak English, and those that did, spoke broken English. I got to mingle with all these people and all those kids. I got to help teach Greek kids to speak English and I got to go to school with them. I got to eat with them and drink with them and learned their habits - more and more different habits. I got to learn a little of every kind of language, mostly swear words, but words anyway. But the best part of it was the different ways people lived. I'd go in and eat with the Greek kids, and I'd go in and eat with the Italian kids, the Japanese kids, and the others. It was completely different from our way of living. We'd call them "spaghetti fiends" and they'd call us "Mormons." In this little town we had our Greek town and Italian town and "Gobblers Nob," and all that. But we still all kind of mingled together. We kids were closer; there must have been about 700 kids in school then.
They had all kinds of coke ovens in the town because during the war they needed to produce coke to make steel. They had big, big coke ovens there in Sunnyside. They would mine the coal and make coke and the whole town would be smoky because they never caught any of the gas like they do now. They would send this coke in most cases to Columbia Steel, that place between Provo and Springville, but some of it they saved and sent all over for use as fuel. I don't know where they sent it before then or since because Columbia has shut down.
We had some of the better baseball teams in the county. That's what everybody played during the summertime. There weren't any swimming pools around so we made our own in the creek that went down through the middle of town. We'd get gunnysacks, put dirt in them, and then dam up the creek and make us a swimming pond. Once in a while a flood would come down and wash it all away, then we'd rebuild it. It was a good thing that it flooded out because all the sewers and everything was thrown into the creek. There was no such thing as inside plumbing; there were only outside toilets at that time and it all went underground into the creek. All the water from the bathhouses and all the dirt that was washed down was caught in our swimming pond. It's a wonder we didn't all die.
In Sunnyside there were two mines and they both had bathhouses for the men. All the men used those bathhouses, all the nationalities together, except the Japanese and they had their own. The Japanese used to have a big tub; it was about twenty-feet square and about three-feet deep. They would all get into it together and bathe in the same water. We used to go up and peek at them through the holes and they'd catch us and chase us away. The women used to go up once a week. Us kids used to take a bath in a number two-washtub set up in the middle of the floor. As we got older though, we'd sneak into the mine bathhouses and take a shower, then sometimes we'd shower twice a day.
There was a boiler house where they had 8 or 10 boilers. They made steam for power. There was very little electricity then, just enough for a few lights in town. What they used most of their steam for was to run the big steam engines to crush the coal at the Tipple. They had electric locomotives that they ran on a trolley line in the mine and hoists and lights. They used to load their coal by hand. They'd pick and drill holes and shoot it and then they'd get paid .40, .50, .60 cents a ton for loading it. It was mostly all contract work.
Some of the mines were two or three miles deep. There were cave-ins that killed a lot of men. Explosions and real disasters. I was never in one, although I went into the mines when I was about fourteen years old with my dad. I can't remember how much money I got paid then, but it couldn't have been much. On idle days my dad would go in and run pumps, like on a Sunday or sometimes when the mine wasn't running and I'd go with him and stay all day. Dad was a boss during the week, but on Sundays the men would take turns running the pumps to keep the mines from drowning out from underground streams. The streams would fill the lower parts and they would have to pump the water out so they could work. They pumped during the week too, but the men working there kept it pumped out. The mines ran down into the ground on a slope then they'd break off into each side and that's how they'd get their coal. They couldn't take it all out of one big place or the whole mountain would cave in.
Sunnyside was twenty-eight miles east of Price. There's Sunnyside, Columbia, Dragerton up there now which wasn't there before. Sunnyside is called Kaisers mine now. The mines are still running and there are still people living in Sunnyside. It was pretty good money at that time, better than average. Most of the coalmines closed down in the summer because nobody bought coal to heat their houses. This was before natural gas came into this part of the country. After natural gas came in they kept closing down mines and closing down mines until only industry and powerhouses buy coal now, because gas is used to heat houses now.
Winter never bothered us kids. The bigger the winter, the better we liked it. We went sleigh riding and skating. We skated on hills and down in the creek. The snow would pack down so hard we could skate down the hills. Up above our house there were ledges, red ledges and white ledges. Up on this red ledge we had an old shack. We used to steal chickens and potatoes and onions from our folks and we'd go up there and cook them. We kids had more fun in the summer up in the ledges. We'd climb the mountains all day long. It was a good place to stay out of mischief, and our folks just let us run. There were probably a few places that we should have stayed away from, like those big high cliffs. With us kids climbing all over them, it's a wonder one of us didn't get killed. One guy or two broke their legs though.
We used to have our own little coal mines up on the hill. We used to go up and dig this coal out and light little fires and then we had pipes we'd gather up and put them in the coal. It's a wonder we didn't get our eyes put out because we'd get these pipes red hot and then we'd pour water on them and the steam would come "whooshing" out. We'd have whistles on one end. We used to play ball on the old slack dump. (That's ground up coal; it's powdery and black). There were whole piles of it out there. We kids used to play baseball on it. They'd use this slack to put into the ovens to make coke, and where they took some of the slack out it would be kind of level. Down below in town they had a nice big ball diamond and sometimes we used to go down there and play, but you know how kids are, in their own backyards playing. We'd come home so black you couldn't tell who we were. Our mothers would give us a beating, tell us to stay home, make us take a bath, then we'd be back at the same place, playing ball again.
We used to spend a lot of time in the barn. They used to use horses in the mines. They'd pull the car cars and pull the coal out of the mine. They'd pull the coal up to the parting (that's where the shafts separated), then a hoist would take it from there. They had about 30 or 40 great big mules or horses that they'd keep in this big barn. We kids used to go up on top of this barn and throw rocks and everything else at these mules. We'd use flippers and BB guns and anything else we could lay our hands on. There was a man who was supposed to tend to them, but he couldn't tend to them and watch us too. He was called Barn Boss and he was real mean. I think his name was Cofford or something, but he sure was mean. We were up there one day and there was this one tough mule and we were poking the mule in the hind end with a piece of pipe. We were jabbing him and he was kicking the barn so hard the shingles were coming off the rock. Well, something hit me so hard I darn near passed out. This old Cofford had hit me with a black snake whip and made a great big S shape welt on my back. We really high-tailed for home. Of course I couldn't tell my dad or he'd have killed me for even being up there. One time a bunch of us kids were swimming up in the canyon. I was about fourteen I think, and this Greek neighbor of ours who lived up the road, got into a fight with another Greek. This other guy shot him right between the eyes, then he ran up the canyon. So I think he was muttering some kind of prayer. I've seen men in the mines crushed by slabs. When I was about 33 I broke my arm in the coal mine. I got hit with a hoist and had to have a steel plate put in my arm. Then the screws came out and they had to operate again. I was about two years laid up with that broken arm.
Living in the mines was a real colorful life; I don't know anybody who has had as colorful life as I've had. All these people I lived around taught me a lot about human nature and how to get along. I've learned to talk broken Greek, and Italian and everything else. It's been an interesting place to grow up in.
This story was donated by Christine Frawley Hill at chris@mygenplace.com. If you have any comments or questions please contact her.
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