200 Dead In Scofield Mine Disaster; Today Is 125th Anniversary

It was 125 years ago today that 200 people died in the Scofield Mine explosion in Eastern Utah.

Many say it was the worst/deadliest disaster in Utah history and, indeed, it is one of the worst mining disasters ever in the United States.

Scofield, at the time, was a bustling mining town in Carbon County, with most of the population being workers in the dozen or more coal mines in the area.

One family had a father and two sons working in the mines, all of whom died in the disaster.

It was a cool Spring day as workers began their subterranean tasks at Winter Quarters Number Four mine, located just West of the town of Scofield.

With electricity still fairly rare, and nearly unattainable underground at the mine, most workers used torches to find their way around the mine. Some had gas lamps or even candles on their helmets.

In a time when there were few safety regulations and so much danger, open flames were quite commonplace.

One of these open flames got a little too close to a keg of TNT and, although there were no witnesses left to precisely describe what happened, it is believed the keg ignited and exploded, causing several other kegs nearby to do the same.

The resulting conflagration caused immediate death for many miners, but also created two toxic gases -- whitedamp and afterdamp -- that would ultimately lead to dozens more deaths.

The Utah History Encyclopedia described it like this: "Men working in the mine were killed outright by the explosion. Other miners, working in the Number One mine which was connected to the Number Four mine, died from the deadly carbon monoxide gas or "afterdamp." Hearing the explosion, but not knowing where it occurred, the men in the Number One mine tried to exit by the shortest route -- through the Number Four mine -- and consequently encountered the deadly gas on their way out."

The official death toll stood at 200, although there was no record of exactly who was in the mine and some say the death toll was closer to 250. Either way, it was the deadliest mine disaster in American history up to that point (later disasters in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Mexico surpassed that number of dead)*.

Among the dead at Scofield included 20 young boys and 61 Finnish immigrants.

The town of Scofield undertook the gruesome task of caring for the dead and 149 of the 200 were buried in the Scofield cemetery. The other 51 were sent back to their hometowns to be buried.

The little bit of positive that came out of the disaster is that there was a huge call after the fact to improve safety measures, especially for miners.

* -- It is believed the worst mine disaster in the world occurred On April 26, 1942, in the Benxihu (Honkeiko) coal mine in Liaoning Province, China when a coal dust explosion killed over 1,500 people.

Get our free mobile app