The Franklin Mine Fire: Thirty-Seven Dead, Not a Scratch on Them
A fire in breast sixty-two traps miners between flame and return airway; bodies are laid in rows as Seattle sends a special train.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
FRANKLIN, Wash., Aug. 24.—A fire broke out in breast sixty-two of the Franklin coal mine, and thirty-seven miners are dead. The men were caught between the fire and the return airway and were killed by smoke and carbonic-acid gas. Many of the dead were brought to the surface during the night and laid in rows in the old engine room. Thirty-seven men without a scratch on them lay dead; a few hours before they had been lively and happy with their families and friends.
Superintendent J. K. Ramsey said the mine had never been in better condition. The origin of the fire is supposed to be spontaneous combustion caused by refuse and screenings at the bottom of breast sixty-two. The flames spread to breasts sixty and sixty-one, and the fifth level was threatened. Ramsey planned to bulkhead and hermetically seal the sixth and perhaps the fifth level, shutting off air and smothering the fire. About 1,900 feet of gangway and forty breasts would be rendered useless, throwing seventy men out of work.
As soon as news reached Seattle, Superintendent T. B. Corey arranged a special train, which left Seattle at 1:15 p.m. and reached Franklin in a little over an hour. At the mine, Corey visited the old engine room where the dead lay in rows. Thomas Dawson, father of one of the victims, was overcome with grief. “My boy, my boy, Joe, my boy,” he cried. Dr. Rufus H. Smith found that no one was wounded; those who escaped were perfectly well, and it seemed strange that the dead were not marked in the least and merely appeared to be sleeping.
Coroner Horton, Deputy Coroner Green, Prosecuting Attorney Miller, Attorney A. F. Barleigh and others arrived in the evening and began the inquest. The bodies were removed to the Masonic hall, where a public funeral was planned. The Oregon Improvement Company said it would bear all the expenses and aid the families. The Franklin mine was opened about eight years ago by the Oregon Improvement Company and employed 325 people, yielding 8,000 to 10,000 tons a month. There had never before been a serious loss of life there.
“Thirty-seven men without a scratch on them. All dead.”
The Franklin mine disaster was one of Washington’s worst coal-mining tragedies, killing 37 men in a single shift. The site is now a ghost town, but the questions it raised—who bears the cost of dangerous work, how quickly rescuers respond, and what a company owes the families left behind—remain at the center of workplace-safety debates today.
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