12/09/07: Industrial Age’s lifeblood mined on west side

Although there were coal mines in Bloomington, maps held by the McLean County Museum of History show the tunnels generally running west of Morris Avenue from Washington to Market streets, an area on the fringes of the city's older west-side neighborhoods. So fear not, Bloomington taxpayers: The U.S. Cellular Coliseum will not be lost to a giant sinkhole!

Coal was the lifeblood of the Industrial Age, indispensable to railroads, factories, municipalities and households. The city of Bloomington, to cite one example, needed a steady supply of coal to operate the boilers at its waterworks and electric light plant. Most homes were heated with coal, and most machinery could not run without it.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were coal mines throughout Central Illinois. In Livingston County, the coal boomtown of Cardiff boasted a population of 2,500. When the mine closed in 1912, the village underwent a rapid decline and today exists in name only. In McLean County, there were mines in Colfax and Chenoa, as well as a short-lived venture on Bloomington's north side near North Mason Street.

For local residents, though, the most important mine was the McLean County Coal Co. on Bloomington's west side, north of Washington Street and just west of the Chicago & Alton Railroad mainline. (Today these tracks are shared by Union Pacific and Amtrak.) It was the largest and most successful coal mine in the area, operating from 1867 until the late 1920s. In 1904, for instance, this mine accounted for 150,000 of 218,000 tons - or 69 percent - of all coal hauled out of McLean County.

Financial backers of the McLean County Coal Co. included the Stevenson brothers, James B., William and Adlai Ewing, the latter serving as U.S. vice president during Grover Cleveland's second administration. The Stevensons erected a housing development for the miners situated south of Washington and west of Lumber streets. Aptly named Stevensonville, many of the development's homes still stand.

The mine was the setting for periodic struggles between capital and labor common to the Industrial Age. Longer strikes produced coal shortages, or "coal famines." A 1919 strike ended in the cold of mid-December, and once the mine reopened, wagons lined up 20 deep near the coal chutes. Each household was allowed 1 ton of what the Pantagraph called "the warmth of life."

In May 1899, the McLean County Coal Co. offered a rare glimpse of its operations to "Madame Annette," a pseudonym for a local female newspaper reporter with a literary bent. Annette, who wrote for The Daily Bulletin, a long-defunct competitor of the Pantagraph, described in vivid detail life 500 feet below Bloomington's far-west side.

"Stepping from the elevator, one hears the sound of dripping water, catches a glimpse of twingling lamps far down the dark galleries," she wrote, "all so weird and fantastic as to cause the imagination to go farther into the realms of Pluto."

At the time, mine production averaged 700 tons of coal per day, with a work force numbering some 350 men. Annette noted the "cosmopolitan crowd down under" by identifying African-American, English, French, Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian and Swedish miners.

In early 1903, local resident Edwin O. Ropp received permission to spend a day underground, recording his observations in a diary. During the long, dark day, he trailed a German miner he knew, as well as that miner's work partner. In a side tunnel the party came upon two loaded coal cars pulled by a mule. "We also passed the barn for this mule," Ropp wrote. "It consisted of one stall with bits of hay scattered about. These animals have a dark life. It is said they never see the light of day."

Later, Ropp watched his friend drill a hole into the exposed coal vein, or face, and insert powder and fuse. After the explosion, the men broke up the loose coal and loaded it onto cars. After more than eight hours underground, the "black, soot covered, grease bespattered" miners returned to the surface.