Calcite is a
ghost town in
Fremont County,
Colorado. It served as a
company
A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
coal mining town
A mining community, also known as a mining town or a mining camp, is a community that houses miners. Mining communities are usually created around a mine or a quarry.
Historic mining communities
Australia
* Ballarat, Victoria
* Bendigo, ...
for
Colorado Fuel & Iron
The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel conglomerate founded by the merger of previous business interests in 1892.Scamehorn, Chapter 1, "The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1892-1903" page 10 By 1903 it was mainly owned and con ...
. It is located along
Howard Creek
Howard Creek is a stream in the U.S. state of Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern p ...
roughly six miles from the
census-designated place of
Howard
Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...
.
Description
Calcite's name come from the
carbonate mineral calcite
Calcite is a Carbonate minerals, carbonate mineral and the most stable Polymorphism (materials science), polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on ...
, which was quarried in significant quantities in the valleys near the settlement. Located near the base of
Hunts Peak
Hunts Peak is a mountain summit on the boundary shared by Fremont County and Saguache County, in Colorado, United States.
Description
Hunts Peak is set east of the Continental Divide in the Sangre de Cristo Range which is a subrange of the Ro ...
, a mountain in the
Sangre de Cristo Range, it was composed of a set of three Upper, Middle, and Lower camps.
[
The site is currently composed of several abandoned structures and has signs delineating the separate camps. Basements of homes, portions of mining buildings, and pathways from the initial settlement are scattered through the site.]
History
The site was initially founded in 1903 by CF&I to serve as a residence for miners working at the newly-constructed Howard's Quarry, which began operation in 1904.[ The post office opened in 1904. A school and a men's club were constructed in 1914, part of the CF&I efforts to improve its standing among miners after a strike in their Southern Colorado coalfields turned deadly and resulted in the Ludlow Massacre.][ The school continued operation for several years, graduating students through the ]eighth grade
Eighth grade (or grade eight in some regions) is the eighth post-kindergarten year of formal education in the US. The eighth grade is the ninth school year, the second, third, fourth, or final year of middle school, or the second and/or final ye ...
. The town also had sports clubs and a local chapter of company union
A company or "yellow" union is a worker organization which is dominated or unduly influenced by an employer, and is therefore not an independent trade union. Company unions are contrary to international labour law (see ILO Convention 98, Article ...
established as part of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and William Lyon Mackenzie King's strategy to reduce discontent among the miners.[
]
References
{{Fremont County, Colorado
Ghost towns in Colorado
Former populated places in Fremont County, Colorado
Company towns in Colorado