This is Ludlow, Colorado. In 1914 there was what is still considered the “deadliest conflict” between labor and corporate power in US history. 1200 striking coal miners and their families were attacked by the National Guard and privately hired enforcers on behalf of the coal mine companies that were being protested. Up to 200 dead were the result of that attack and the miners retaliation and this ghost town is all that is left of Ludlow, CO.
I came here in mid July on my way up to the Denver area. Coal mining is in my family’s blood. My Grandpa Fullerton was working in the coal mines by the time he was 13 and died of lung cancer when he was 54. My Great-Grandma Walker grew up in a coal mine camp and her stories of that particularly hard environment to grow up in, are lost with her to time.
Early morning hot and quiet except for the cicadas and the multitude of grasshoppers. Mournful still, this monument to death due to power warfare. I closed my eyes and opened myself to my grandfather, I asked him to speak to me in this place of remembering, his coal miner brothers. I was immediately hit with such a wave of deep sadness, grief old and strong. It filled me like a song, it got louder, I felt dizzy and the edges of panic wanted to creep in. I breathed and breathed and opened my eyes. I had gotten my answer.
