Colorado Mining Stories

Colorado Mining Stories collects first-person accounts from the men and a few of the women who worked hardrock mines in Colorado. Caroline Arlen gathered the recollections, and the book's full title, as a 2002 Durango Telegraph review gives it, is Colorado Mining Stories: Hazards, Heroics and Humor. The speakers are surviving miners or their relatives.

The description says the same contradiction runs through every account. People who talk about how much they loved mining go on, in the next breath, to describe the accidents that happened almost daily: cave-ins, premature explosions and falling slabs. Each shift began with the real chance of not coming home, and the speakers say so plainly.

The Telegraph reviewer found barroom brawls, close calls and laughter in the telling, and noted that many of these workers took mine jobs out of necessity rather than choice. The review also points out that Arlen includes a glossary of mining terms. It is oral history, edited into short pieces, not a textbook narrative.

This book suits readers of Colorado mining history who want the working miner's voice rather than the mine owner's ledger. It also fits families with a miner somewhere in their past, local historians collecting oral accounts, and anyone curious about what underground work asked of a person. The accounts deal with injury and death as a matter of routine, so expect a candid read. The glossary of mining terms, which the Durango Telegraph review mentions, helps readers new to the vocabulary.