This is Mazon Monday post #30. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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This week's Mazon Monday isn't about fossils... we are recalling a coal mine disaster in Diamond, IL on February 16th, 1883. ESCONI had a great lecture about this event back in June 2019 by Michele Micetich, of the Carbon Hill School Museum in Carbon Hill, IL. If you get a chance, catch her informative lecture held every year on the anniversary at the Coal City Library.
You can visit memorial marker in Diamond, IL to commemorate the event and honor the 69 men who died that day. This monument erected by the United Mine Workers of America in 1926.
Unfortunately, the coal mining that brings us many of the stunning fossils at Mazon Creek has a tragic history with many fires, floods, and cave ins. The Diamond Mine Disaster was a flood. Wayne's World of History & Genealogy has a great page about the tragedy and its aftermath.
The most conspicuous event which has occurred during the year, or which has ever marked or marred the annals of coal mining in this State, was the calamity which befell the Diamond Mine, and the miners in it, at Braidwood, in February last. At this place, by the sudden precipitation of a sea of surface water into the workings of the mine, in the middle of the day, 69 men were engulfed and miserably perished; 39 women were made widows; 93 children were made fatherless, and the mine itself and its owners were involved in common ruin.
The history of coal mining in all times and countries presents a deplorable record of sudden death and disaster to coal miners.
There is said to be ten square miles of this level and marshy tract upon which the Diamond and other mines are located, and it is all so flat that no natural drainage is locally possible, and ordinarily all accumulations of water lie upon the surface until absorbed or evaporated. Even when thrown out of the mines with pumps it has no alternative but to find its way through the soil back again. Another feature of the situation is that all of the coal in this field is worked on the long-wall system, and as fast as the mineral is removed the surface comes down with the roof, and consequently makes a loose, irregular break all along the face of the workings, particularly susceptible to the action of water, and leaves in general and uneven and treacherous surface for water to stand upon.
For several days prior to the 16th of February, 1883, there had been a general thaw in the vicinity of Braidwood, accompanied by warm rains, which reduced the winter's snow to water and swelled it to a flood, which overspread the entire surrounding country. That this was an unusual condition of things, is not claimed. Water in similar quantities had accumulated and stood upon the surface there before. On several occasions in former years, surface water had found its way into the mine, and two years previously it had broken through in such quantities as to create general alarm. In this case it is stated only that the volume of water was not greater than usual. Its depth is given as from one to three feet, but whether it were more or less would seem hardly to affect the gravity of the situation. It was spread like a sea over the entire face of the country, and constituted an open menace to every mine in the vicinity. That it was regarded as an element of danger, is shown by the action of the superintendent of an adjacent mine, who prohibited the men from going into his works, and ordered out those who had gone down before his arrival. Yet the men of the Diamond Mine went below that morning as usual, and with only 54 feet of sand and surface drift between them and an untold weight of water, began the day's work which they never finished.
There's also a good amount of information at the Coal City Public Library site.
The following excerpt regarding the Diamond Mine Disaster comes from The Wilmington Advocate dated February 19, 1883.
There are many persons who even yet do not fully understand how the terrible affair of Friday could have occurred. The first man who knew anything concerning the break was the pump man, who is located at the bottom of the shaft, and whose duty it is to keep the water out of the shaft and see that the loading of the coal cart goes on properly. He had just sent up a load of coal, and upon going back to the pumps he found the water was rising rapidly, and the cause, he thought, was a lack of steam power in the engines above. He accordingly went up and saw the engineer, who said he had on as much steam as usual. The engineer stepped into the cage and went down to see what was the matter, and to his astonishment he found the water unto his waist and rising rapidly. He also found a number of miners who had come to the shaft to escape. An alarm was at once given by the "shovers," and all made for the top. The big whistles of the engines were sounded three times, and the little hamlet recognized it as the signal that the mine was flooded. Nearly four hundred distracted women and children gathered in a few minutes, and the heart sickens when imagination paints the scene that followed. The water in the mines was rapidly rising, and the stealthy stream had swoolen into a roaring torrent. The miners had received a late warning, and they started, some toward the main shaft and others toward the air shaft, a little west of it. The tide met them before more than twenty had reached the principal exit. Some had lingered to warn friends or to collect tools. The rushing water, which was descending like an Alpine torrent, with the impetus given to it by a fall of eighty-five feet, struck many of the unfortunate victims, whirling them away, and dashing them against the blackened roof with irresistible force. Some struggled on with the seething water up to their arm pits, but at points, where the roof sloped downward, they found the waves touching the top, and recognized the terrible underground trap. One man dived three times under the sloping roof and finally rose in the mine shaft and climbed into an elevator. He was a good swimmer and knew the locality perfectly, hence he was the only one of those whom the waters had shut off who escaped when hope had deserted everyone else.
