3a. Early Coal Mines

Washburn Coal Mine

In 1900, coal seams averaging 16 feet thick were discovered 50 feet below the surface near Wilton, North Dakota. General William D. Washburn built a coal shaft mine which quickly began producing fifty tons of coal a day. By 1903, the Washburn Lignite Coal Company produced 1,000 tons per day. General Washburn equipped his mine with modern technology to improve working conditions, such as a 16-foot fan. He also constructed housing; first a bunkhouse for 75 miners and later a complex of private dwellings for miners and their families, complete with a school and bathhouses.

By the time a second mine opened in 1916, lignite had turned Wilton into a booming community with hotels, stores, banks, stables, churches, and even coal-powered electric lights.

Scranton Coal Mine

In 1907, the Scranton Coal Mine opened over a 19-foot bed of coal, buried 30 feet below the surface. The mine ran year-round with 30 miners employed over the winter and eight over the summer months. The mine changed ownership several times, with the new owners adding a lignite briquette plant and power plant. The town of Scranton blossomed much like Wilton, with all the amenities including a silent film theater and a newly constructed brick plant. North Dakota Magazine declared Scranton’s future bright:

“Scranton is destined, at no distant day, to be one of the cities of southwestern North Dakota. It is surrounded in all directions, as far as an antelope can run in an afternoon, by as fine and fertile country as the sun shines on, which is rapidly settling up and will soon be one vast country of homes and farms.”

– North Dakota Magazine

Beulah Mine

The Beulah Coal and Mining Company was established in 1917 over a 14-foot-thick coal seam. By 1920, the mine had transformed the agricultural community of Beulah into an official coal mining town. Later, the mine would be reorganized as the Knife River Coal Mining Company – the largest underground mine in the United States.

Mines continued to pop up all over North Dakota in towns such as Velva, Medora, Bowman, Underwood, Hazen, New Salem and more. By 1920, the number of reported mines in North Dakota was 136, producing nearly 900,000 tons of coal and valued collectively at over $2 million.