Almy

Five miles of coal camp, and three explosions that killed 113 men

Almy was a coal camp in Uinta County, Wyoming, strung for 5 miles along the Bear River north of Evanston, named for James T. Almy, a clerk of the Rocky Mountain Coal Company, and it existed for coal alone. A 4 mile spur, the Almy Spur, joined the mines to the Union Pacific's Overland Route, and the Union Pacific Coal Company held a stake in one of them. At its height some 4,000 people lived here, and they suffered more than their share of mining disasters.

The first was also the first mine disaster in Wyoming. On the night of 4 March 1881, gas in Central Pacific Mine No. 3 exploded, killing 38 miners, and it is counted as the first mine explosion west of the Mississippi. The Cheyenne Weekly Leader reported that 35 of the dead were Chinese and 3 white; nearly the whole workforce was Chinese. A fire had been burning in the mine for 5 years, walled off with stone, and the supposition was that gas had collected and reached it. The blast burned the surface works and set the mine slope alight, and 15 men were brought out alive from the fourth level.

Just before midnight on 12 January 1886, gas ignited in the Almy No. 4 mine and killed 11 men and 2 boys. The Deseret Evening News in Salt Lake City wrote that the sky lit up for miles like a bright yellow sunset, that the blast smashed the buildings above ground to kindling and threw timbers and rocks three-quarters of a mile, and that two miners riding down the slope in empty cars were shot out as from a cannon. The fireboss had reported the mine clear of gas at 6 that morning; the gas was thought to have caught a miner's open light.

The Wyoming Territorial Legislature met days later and passed new mine safety laws, which earlier sessions had let die. They created a state mine inspector, who had to inspect every coal mine at least every three months, and barred boys under 14 from working underground. A proposal to compensate the Almy families was voted down for fear it would set a bad precedent.

On 20 March 1895 the Red Canyon No. 5 mine near Almy exploded and killed 62 miners, with no survivors from the blast. It was heard clearly in downtown Evanston, seven miles away, and it remains the third worst mine disaster in Wyoming's history, after Hanna and Kemmerer. The mines were judged too dangerous to work, and the state mine inspector finally shut them in the 1940s.