St. Paul Coal Company - Cherry, Illinois Mine.
There's an interesting page about the Cherry Mine Disaster over on "Digital Reseach Library of Illinois History Journal". It has a little bit of everything, including many pictures. It was posted a few years ago on the 108th anniversary of the event. We just passed the 110th back on November 13th. The whole event is a fascinating story and this page does a great job telling it.
The St. Paul Coal Company, which owned the Cherry, Illinois mine, opened in 1905 to supply coal for the trains of its controlling company, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad.
On November 13, 1909, the Cherry Mine employed a total of 481 men and boys. So many of them were from the Streator area that Cherry was known as a Streator "colony." The mine at Cherry was a large one, considered clean, safe, and well run.
There were three veins, with most of the work at this time in the second, about 360 feet down. On Saturday the 13th, work proceeded as usual, with the sounds of picks, men chatting and rumbling mule-driven cars echoing through the tunnels. Because a power line had broken a month earlier, the mine was lit by open kerosene lamps, which cast a flickering light through the underground passages.
