Incident at the Kalamazoo Gold Mine

By Steven Wade Veatch

During the cold day of December 27, 1901, Martin Gleason, a mining superintendent working in the goldfields of Cripple Creek, Colorado, was attacked in the shadows of the Kalamazoo mine. Gleason’s assailant struck him on the head and then pushed him into a mine shaft, where he fell 500 feet to the bottom of the mine. The attack left behind two things: Martin Gleason's corpse and footprints suggesting a struggle. What brought Martin Gleason to this grim end?

Martin Gleason was born in Queenstown, Ireland, on December 25, 1848. When he was 18, he immigrated to America. Gleason worked for fifteen years in the Pennsylvania coal mines before coming west to Colorado in the early 1880s (Annonymous, 1900). He ended up working for the Consolidated Gold Mines Company in the Cripple Creek Mining District in 1898 (Poet, 1932). Two years later, the Woods Investment Company employed him as the superintendent of the Wild Horse (figure 1), Deadwood, and Battle Mountain mines.

Figure 1. View of the Wild Horse mine. The writing on the left lower corner states “Gleason shaft.” The Wild Horse mine was one of several mines under Martin Gleason’s management when his troubles with the union deepened. Undated photo by A. J. Harlan. Photo courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum (CCDM 82 591).

Things were looking good for Gleason. His reputation as a hard-as-nails mining man brought him success in the mining district.

Prior to Gleason becoming a mine superintendent for the Woods Investment Company, the Cripple Creek Mining District experienced its first labor strike in 1894. The union called a strike to resist wage cuts and a longer workday. Specifically, the miners demanded a minimum daily wage of $3.00 and an eight-hour workday.

During the strike, James C. Veatch, former Denver chief of police, arrived in Cripple Creek with a force of 125 heavily armed deputies, mainly former policemen and firemen, to confront the striking miners (Rastall, 1906). The pro-labor Populist governor Davis Waite used the state militia (figure 2) to stop this army of deputies from advancing on union miners. The strike was resolved in favor of the miners, and the power of the union was firmly established in the mining district.

Figure 2. Encampment of state militia on Bull Hill, Cripple Creek Mining District, June 12, 1894. Cripple Creek was the site of two labor conflicts: the first in 1894 and the second one in 1903-1904. Photo by A. James Harlan. Courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum. 

After the miners won the strike, the union’s power continued to expand, and by 1902, unions organized most of the workers in the district, including bartenders, clerks, cooks, waitresses, laundrymen, and newsboys (Jameson, 1998).  However, power soon began to shift from the unions to the mine owners and capitalists. Trouble brewed as organized labor worked to maintain its authority while intimidating miners to either join the union or leave the district. Violence escalated. Union thugs threatened miners in their homes and assaulted them as they went to and from their work. Sometimes the beatings resulted in death (Montgomery, 1904).

About this time, Martin Gleason, the superintendent of several local mines, aroused the enmity of the union as he supported nonunion labor. According to an article in the Victor and Cripple Creek Daily Press (December 28, 1901) Gleason “had the reputation of not discriminating in the employment of men” (Jameson, 1998).

Gleason further antagonized union bosses and miners when he hired a black miner at the Wild Horse mine. There were few black miners in the Cripple Creek Mining District, and when the Wild Horse mine employed another black miner, most of the white miners opposed the hiring. Gleason reminded the angry miners that President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation 35 years earlier and that they should show some “brotherly love” (Jameson, 1998). Gleason’s remarks held no sway, and the white miners refused to go work with the black miner.

The circumstances turned lethal. Two days after Christmas, 1901, Martin Gleason, 50 years of age, was found dead, with his head crushed in, at the bottom of the Kalamazoo shaft—Miners brought his mangled body up 500 feet to the surface. The Woods Investment Company, Gleason’s employer, offered a $5,000 reward for the capture of his killer (Anonymous, 1902).

Several men were charged with this crime but were later released. According to Poet (1932), the principal of the Victor High School, “the murderer was never brought to justice.”  We may never know who murdered Martin Gleason.

Although Martin Gleason worked for mine owners as a superintendent, he was sympathetic with the plight of the miners. As he tried to bridge the two worlds of labor and capital, Gleason became a grim statistic in the violence leading up to the second (1903-1904) of two Cripple Creek labor strikes.

References Cited

Anonymous, 1900, Fortunes of a Decade, Colorado Springs: Sargent and Rohrabacher for The Evening Telegraph, p. 116-118.

Anonymous, 1902, “Martin Gleason:” Mining Reporter, Vol. 45, No 1, p. 12.

Jameson, E., 1998, Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, Chicago, University of Illinois Press.

Montgomery, W. H., 1904, Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics: Biennial Report 1904. Denver, The Smith-Brooks Printing Company.

Poet, S. E., 1932, The Story of Cameron, Colorado. The Colorado Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 5, p. 197.

Rastall, B. M., 1906, The Labor History of the Cripple Creek District, A Study in Industrial Evolution. Madison, Wisconsin, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 108, Economics and Political Science Series, Vol. 3, No. 1, p. 1-166.