#2: (Satellite)
Mine #1 was started in 1902. The seam was 400' (122m) deep with a thickness of 7-14 feet and an average of 9' (2.7m). The town was laid out in the shape of a wagon wheel with spokes with the mine's office building in the middle. Mine #2 was started in 1918. [GenealogyTrails] More about the town
Mine #2 had a depth of 300' (92m) and a comparably thick seam. [mindat]
[And how many died later with diseases like black lung?]
Chuck Edmonson posted two photos with the comment:
The history of shaft coal mining in Illinois was a grim business punctuated by tragedies.Owners and operators often overlooked maintenance and safety procedures in search of an extra dollar of profit, miners were often looked upon as being an expendable and renewable commodity.Although the Zeigler Mine #1 in Franklin County (about 10 miles northeast of Carbondale) was a new operation, on April 3, 1905 when ventilation fans, critical to removing volatile coal dust malfunctioned, work continued.Some workers were brought up to the surface while in the deepest shafts of the mine, some 500 feet below the surface work continued. Either an explosive mixture of coal dust or black powder stored underground would ignite in a violence explosion, strong enough to propel one of the eleven ton steel cages resting at the bottom to the surface some 500 hundred feet above and collapsing a large portion of the deepest shaft. The force of the explosion was felt in the town of Benton some 12 miles away.Altogether 51 miners would lose their lives, some who survived the initial explosion would succumb to asphyxiation before they could be rescued.Within a month the mine was back in operation and only four years later in 1909 would be the site of a second explosion killing 19 with an underground fire that wasn't extinguished for several weeks.The village of Ziegler which was a company town provided housing for it's workers in pretty squalid conditions, the mine would finally be shut down around 1930 but not before it had claimed the lives of some 70 miners.
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This article also uses this photo. It provides an example that indicates that Illinois has a long history of people using money to influence politics. Zeigler's population peaked in 1926 at 7,000. By 2005, it was down to 1,700.
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| Larry Joe Jenkel posted Bell & Zoller #2 Giant Coal Mine at Zeigler, IL 8506 tons per day |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Roger's share The smokestacks indicate Bell & Zoller. https://wikiimage.isgs.illinois.edu/ilmines/webfiles/topo-mines/christopher.pdf |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Roger's share The photo is of Mine #1, which was on the northeast side of town. Mine #2 was on the southwest side of town. https://clearinghouse.isgs.illinois.edu/webdocs/ilhap/county/data/franklin/flight9/0bgm02025.jpg, 1938 |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Roger's share The railroad was a spur owned by CB&Q. The CB&Q spur crossed the Missouri Pacific (St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway) near the IC crossing and paralleled the MoPac to its main route further east. 1968 Christopher Quad @ 24,000 [Some sources indicate that the spur also connected to the IC.] |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Roger's share This photo looks like the same mine, just turned 90 degrees. LC-USF34- 026819-D [P&P] LOT 1100 (corresponding photographic print) "Ziegler number one coal mine. Zeigler, Illinois" https://www.loc.gov/item/2017777089/ |
It looks like the office building was still standing in the middle of the "wagon wheel" in 1938.
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| Digitally Zoomed |
A different exposure of the photo at the top:
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| MiningArtifacts |
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| Andy Zukowski posted Bell-Zoller Coal Mine at Zeigler, Illinois. 1930 |
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| GenealogyTrails_explosions, 1939 This source indicates the shaft was 500' (152m) deep. [There is higher resolution copy of this photo at GaryStockBridge.] |
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| The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1939). Zeigler number one coal mine. Zeigler, Illinois Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/2fce9da0-c9f4-0138-1e8b-7b30d6e9adf1 |
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