Sunrise Mine
by Jim Potter
Robert Parks left McPherson County, Kansas, sometime after the US Census in January 1920. In May, he was hired to work in the mining camp—or company town—of Sunrise, in Platte County, located in the high desert foothills of eastern Wyoming. Sunrise’s population exceeded five hundred people.
The iron ore mine and its town were founded in 1899 and owned by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), which was owned by John D. Rockefeller Sr., one of the wealthiest people in the world. For the mine to attract a sufficient workforce, it offered its employees an infrastructure supporting their economic and social needs.
CF&I merged various coal and iron companies to form a steel company. “The company controlled all phases of the production of steel. It owned the iron ore mines, the coal companies, the foundry, the railroad that brought the coal and ore to the foundry. It owned the miners, the town they lived in, and the company store, the Colorado Supply Company, at which the miners traded.”1
“In the early 1900s company-owned houses, boarding houses, depots, a school, churches, shops, and other structures were built” by CF&I.2 But the town’s infrastructure improved considerably in response to the Ludlow Massacre in 1914, which occurred during the Colorado Coalfield War. The mass killing by anti-striker militias, using Gatlin machine guns upon a tent colony of coal miners and their families, was largely blamed on John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
The improvements to Sunrise in the 1910s and 1920s were an effort by Colorado Fuel & Iron and John D. Rockefeller Jr., the primary stockholder, to make it a model company town and win back public support following the Ludlow Massacre. The strategy also promoted an Employee Representation Plan and welfare policies, instead of union representation.3 Some of the improvements at Sunrise included brick housing, “a YMCA building, parks, a hospital, and a better utility system.”4
Sunrise’s community building, built in 1917 and run by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), replaced a smaller social hall. The YMCA was the crown jewel of Sunrise and the first in Wyoming.5
The ninety feet by forty feet, three-story, brick building was used as a gathering place for employee meetings, dances, and other social gatherings. It had “a three-lane bowling alley in the basement and separate shower facilities for men and women. The first floor contained a pool and billiard room, a soda fountain, library with reading room, barbershop, card room and a women’s lounge later equipped with sewing machines. The top floor was a combination gymnasium and auditorium for sports such as basketball and boxing as well as for entertainment such as slides and movies. At one end of the large room was a stage and high up on the other end was a projection booth.”6
“People came from neighboring towns to view movies and participate in bowling tournaments at the Sunrise Y.”7
Despite Sunrise being a socially active community, residents and visitors were frequently reminded it was a mining town when, every time the mine’s warning whistle sounded, it was followed by concussive blasting, errant boulders that occasionally damaged a structure, and dust that never settled. Over 1,000 pounds of dynamite was used each working day.8
Here’s a story that was told in the monthly Colorado Fuel & Iron Company Industrial Bulletin: “A little boy who lived away from Sunrise but whose father worked at the mine came to visit him and spend the 4th of July. In order to be sure of celebrating properly he brought with him a quantity of fire crackers [sic]. The boy was much impressed with the noise made by the blasting at the mine. The father noticed that his son was not shooting his fire crackers [sic] and asked him the reason. The boy’s reply was ‘They don’t sound good no more.’”9
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I don’t know where Robert lived when he was hired at Colorado & Wyoming Railway. Sunrise was a company mining town with housing available to rent to its workers. Since Robert was unmarried, if there was a room available, he could have stayed in a local boarding house for single men.
Most employees who worked at Sunrise lived in Sunrise, others traveled by train from the nearby towns of Hartville or Guernsey.
On March 13, 1920, Robert reportedly applied for and was provided with a tract of 640 acres of public land through the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916. The claim was twelve miles west and four miles north of Sunrise.
The Homestead Act of 1872, that provided up to 160 acres of free federal land, originally required the claimants to build a home, live on their plot for five continuous years, and improve it through cultivation. This offering incentivized Civil War veterans to move westward and settle. The Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916, which encouraged ranching, did not require cultivation of land, but range improvements were mandated. In 1916, Congress decreased the amount of time to prove up on a homestead from five to three years, many World War veterans took advantage of this offer and filed on lands in Wyoming where only grazing and dry farming was possible.
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I wasn’t surprised to learn that Robert found work as a brakeman on a train engine. When I first read the McPherson County sheriff’s reward postcard about Robert’s disappearance in 1915, I learned that he was mechanically inclined. On the wanted card, law enforcement was informed that the missing teenager might be found around garages or tractor engines. Later, during the World War, Robert was selected and trained to be an electrician and radio operator.
The Colorado & Wyoming Railway (C&W) that Robert worked for was a subsidiary of Colorado Fuel and Iron. C&W moved loads of iron ore short distances so that other railways could haul the product longer distances, mostly to Pueblo, Colorado, where steel was manufactured.
A 1928 company employment record of Robert shows that he worked for C&W from May 18, 1920, until he quit over a year later, on August 24, 1921. He was rehired to the same position on January 30, 1922.
While a patient in Osawatomie State Hospital, Osawatomie, Kansas, Anna Borchart, mother of Arthur, Robert, William, and Bristol, died on October 1, 1921. She was forty-seven. I haven’t found any evidence that Robert was aware of his biological mother’s illness or death, so I doubt that he quit his job to visit her or her grave. Since the hospital had no contact information on Anna’s relatives, she was buried on the state grounds.
Robert stayed at C&W for almost a year, quitting on December 26, 1922. Two and a half months later, on March 13, 1923, Parks was issued a 640-acre Homestead Entry-Stock claim for the land he had improved and resided upon.
In 1918, during the World War, Robert had written home to his parents in McPherson County, Kansas, about his dream of getting “a nice little farm for me.” In 1923, his Homestead claim deed was evidence that his dream had materialized even though the Platte County climate was more conducive to growing hay for livestock than wheat for flour.
Until next time, happy researching and writing,
1. G. B. Dobson, Wyoming Tales and Trails: Featuring Photographs and History of Old Wyoming, http://www.wyomingtalesand trails.com, (1999-2018).
2 “Sunrise, Wyoming,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise,_Wyoming.
3 Greg Patmore and Jonathan Rees, “Employee publications and employee representation plans: The Case of Colorado Fuel and Iron, 1915-1942,” Sage Journals, 3 no. 3-4 (Aug. 1, 2008.), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1744935908094088.
4 Ginny Kilander, “Glimpses into the Iron Ore Mining Past of Sunrise, Wyoming,” Discover History: The blog of American Heritage Center, (June 7, 2018), American Heritage Center, https://ahcwwho.org/2018/06/07/glimpses-into-the-iron-ore-mining-past-of-sunrise-wyoming.
5 R. W. MacCannon, Sunrise: A Chrnology of a Wyoming Mine, (The Bessemer Historical Society, 2003), 70.
6 MacCannon, Sunrise, 70.
7 Mary M. Humstone, “Sunrise Mine,” SAH Archipedia: Society of Architectual Historians, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WY/-01-031-0006.
8 L. B. Weed, “Sunrise: Where the Mining of Ore Was Done Long Before Civilization Took Over America,” The Colorado, Fuel & Iron Company-Industrial Bulletin, April 1927, 5.
9 Weed, Sunrise, 5.
10 US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records, Accession Nr: 899068; Document Type: Serial patent; State: Wyoming; Issue Date: 3/13/1923. Name on Document: Robert W. Parks; Land Office: Cheyenne; US Reservations: Yes; Mineral Reservations: Yes; Authority: December 29, 1916: Homestead Entry-Stock Raising (39 Stat. 862); Document Nr: 028093; BLM Serial Nr: WYC 0028093; Total Acres, 640.
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