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And then disaster struck. Around midnight on Thursday, March 12, 1903, an explosion in the mine sent a huge blast of air that blew three miners against the shaft wall, killing them. The huge explosion shook the town and awakened most of the residents. Flames and debris shot up more than 100 feet from the mine opening. [17]
The Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals' Springfield Mine Rescue Station is a historic facility located at 609 Princeton Avenue in Springfield, Illinois.Built in 1910–11, it was the first dedicated state-run institution in the United States established to prevent and respond to mining disasters.
James Braidwood was an early member of the community, and in 1872 he was hired by one company to superintend the sinking of the first deep mine shaft. [14] The addition of more deep-shaft mines followed, and on March 4, 1873 the city was incorporated [15] and named in Braidwood's honor. Concerning the city's early population, Donna reports,
The mine had been in operation since at least July 1881. [1] The mine had 3 shafts, the main shaft, an air shaft near the collapsed part of the mine and an air/escape shaft, just west of the main shaft. It is estimated that between 200 and 400 men and boys were regularly employed in the mines.
It was renamed in 1913 after the coal company and in honor of Richard J. Oglesby (1824–1899), a former U.S. Senator and three-time Governor of Illinois. [4] [5] During the Civil War, the Kenosha Coal Company sank a coal mining shaft at Oglesby in 1865. Thatcher Tucker Bent purchased the mine and mineral rights as the Oglesby Coal Company.
The Roanoke area, like most of Illinois, is underlain by rich veins of coal. The second coal shaft in Woodford County was sunk in Roanoke in 1881. Another shaft started in a westerly direction, but this coal was "flinty", or mixed with rock, and digging was discontinued. The mine at its peak employed around 300 men and hoisted 500 tons of coal ...
[1] [2] The mine consisted of three horizontal veins, each deeper than the last. The veins were connected vertically by two shafts set some 100 yards (91 m) apart. Both the main shaft and the secondary shaft contained wooden stairs and ladders. The main shaft was capped by an 85-foot (26 m) steel tipple which controlled a mechanical hoisting cage.
The rail line used by the Mid-Continent Railway Museum is a spur off the original Chicago and North Western Railway mainline. With the development of the Illinois Iron mine in early 1903, the C&NW sent a team of engineers on July 8, 1903, to survey a route to the iron fields.