Ludlow 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 ...

Las Animas County, Colorado Las Animas County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,555. The county seat is Trinidad. The county takes its name from the Mexican Spanish name of the Purgatoire River, originally c ...

, United States. It was the site of the Ludlow Massacre–part of 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. The town site is located at the entrance to a canyon in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It is located along the western side of Interstate 25 approximately 12 miles (19 km) north of the town of

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

. Nearby points of interest include the Ludlow Monument, a monument to the

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 ...

miners and their families who were killed in the 1914 massacre, the Hastings

coke ovens Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ...

, and the

Victor American Hastings Mine Disaster The Hastings mine explosion was a fire at the Victor-American Fuel Company coal mine in Hastings, Las Animas County, Colorado, on April 27, 1917, in which 121 people died. A small monument marks the location, on County Road 44, about 1.5 km ...

Monument. Robert Adams made a series of photographs in Ludlow in 1981. In June 2009, the Ludlow Tent Colony Site was dedicated as a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

by Department of the Interior in a ceremony attended by

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Bill Ritter following approval in January of that year.

History

A road and standard-gauge railroad was built through Ludlow in 1888 by the Denver, Texas, and Fort Worth Railroad, which would later become the Colorado & Southern.

Ludlow Massacre

On 20 April 1914, after months of sporadic violence and the withdrawal of a larger contingent of troops a few days before, Colorado National Guardsmen and local militia fired on strikers participating in the

United Mine Workers of America The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the Unit ...

strike Strike may refer to: People * Strike (surname) Physical confrontation or removal *Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm *Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...

against the

Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to: People with the name Rockefeller f ...

-owned

Colorado Fuel and 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 co ...

company. Roughly 20 occupants of the colony, including at least 12 women and children, were killed––mostly by smoke inhalation in the ensuing conflagration. Also among the dead was

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

labor-organizer

Louis Tikas Louis Tikas ( el, Λούης Τίκας), born Elias Anastasios Spantidakis ( el, Ηλίας Αναστάσιος Σπαντιδάκης, link=no; 13 March, 1886 – 20 April, 1914), was the main labor union organizer at the Ludlow camp during t ...

. A single Guardsman is known to have been killed by gunfire from the strikers. The violence at Ludlow sparked the most intense period of violence of the

, which lasted until

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...

ordered troops into Colorado to end the fighting on 29 April. File:Colorado & Southern station in Ludlow, Colorado, 1913.jpg, Militiamen near the Colorado & Southern railway station in Ludlow, Colorado in 1913 during the early stages of the Colorado Coalfield War. File:Armed Strikers at Ludlow, Colorado, c. 1914.png, Armed strikers at the Ludlow tent colony during the Colorado Coalfield War.

References

External links

Pictures and information

Ghost towns in Colorado Former populated places in Las Animas County, Colorado Company towns in Colorado {{US-ghost-town-stub