Ludlow Massacre Site Should Be a National Historic Landmark

by Mike Hall, Jan 27, 2008

One of the bloodiest chapters in American labor history is the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, where 20 innocent men, women and children were murdered by the state militia acting on behalf of coal companies. Colorado miners had been trying for years to organize with the Mine Workers (UMWA).

That southern Colorado site may soon become a National Historic Landmark. Last week, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said he plans to introduce legislation to give the tent-city massacre site Landmark status. As Salazar writes in a letter to the National Park Service:

The site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre is central to our nation’s understanding and memory of the labor struggles of the early 20th century, to the region’s identity and to the descendents of all those involved in the 1913–1914 strike and other labor conflicts of the era. It is fully deserving of National Landmark status.

In 1917, the UMWA erected a monument at the site “in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.” But there has been no state or national commemoration of the site.

In 1913, southern Colorado miners and their families walked out of the mines and mining camps striking for adequate wages, enforcement of state mining laws and union recognition. For more than a year, they lived in tent colonies near the mines.

According to UMWA history of the Ludlow Massacre:

Upon striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The massacre occurred in a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strike breakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

Click here for a detailed look at the Ludlow and other western mining conflicts by the Colorado Coal Field War Project.  

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