Delagua is a

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

in Las Animas County,

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. The town site is about 5 miles (8 km) south of Aguilar. It served as a company-owned

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

- mining town for the

Victor-American Fuel Company Victor-American Fuel Company, also styled as the Victor Fuel Company, was a coal mining company, primarily focused on operations in the US states of Colorado and New Mexico during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Prior to a 1909 reorganiza ...

. Delagua is a name derived from Spanish meaning "of the water" (and it refers to the 'canon of the water'). Delagua was incorporated as a town in 1903, and its post office opened the same year. The Colorado and Southeastern Railway was extended to serve the mine and town.

Delagua Mine

Delagua developed around the Delagua bituminous coal mine, opened in 1903 and operated by the Victor American Fuel Company. It was located in Canon Del Agua, situated approximately three miles west of the Hastings Mine, the site of a mine explosion in 1917, and 8 miles west of the site of the Ludlow Massacre, which occurred in 1914. As of 1922, it was the largest mine in Colorado, and at its peak employed at least 900 men.

Delagua Social Club

In October 1917, the Delagua Mine was considered one of the "largest and finest 'mining camps' in the state". By 1916 the saloon and dance hall had been converted into the Delagua Social Club, complete with "three first class pool tables and one billiard table", a soda fountain, bowling alleys, a stage that featured a motion picture show twice weekly and at least 250 members in 1917.

Mine explosion

At the Delagua Mine on November 8, 1910, an explosion (loud enough to be heard three miles away in Hastings) killed 76 miners. Safety inspectors later determined that the blast was an explosion of gas and dust, caused by the open flame of a head lamp. One month earlier, a similar explosion at the Starkville Mine claimed 57, which combined with the lives lost in the Delagua disaster resulted in 136 deaths in Las Animas County in just one month. A smaller disaster on May 27, 1927, killed six. Delagua was also the site of armed conflict between strikers and strike-breakers during the

Colorado Coalfield War The Colorado Coalfield War was a major labor uprising in the Southern and Central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) agai ...

in 1914. A Colorado House of Representatives subcommittee heard testimony that strikebreaking workers were lured to the Delagua mine under false pretenses and held there by force. The mine was abandoned in 1969.

References

{{authority control Ghost towns in Colorado Company towns in Colorado Former populated places in Las Animas County, Colorado