Delagua, Colorado

Delagua is an extinct town in Las Animas County, Colorado, United States. The town site is about 5 miles (8 km) south of Aguilar. It served as a company-owned coal-mining town for the Victor-American Fuel Company.

History The Delagua post office operated from April 30, 1903, until May 31, 1954. The Trinidad, Colorado, post office (ZIP code 81082) now serves the area.

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,Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States (1910), Volume II: Population, p. 202, footnote 17 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."Dead and Living Taken From Ill-Fated Colorado Mine", Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1910"Mine Dead Forty-Seven: Fourteen More Men Rescued Alive in Colorado Explosion", Washington Post, November 10, 1910 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 west of the site of the Ludlow Massacre, which occurred in 1914. As of 1922, it was the largest mine in Colorado,"Middle West News in Brief", Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1922 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."Rescue Bodies in Mine Wreck", Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1910 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."Six Killed in Colorado Mine", New York Times, May 28, 1927

Delagua was also the site of armed conflict between strikers and strike-breakers during the Colorado Coalfield War 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.

Delagua, Colorado

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