Dawson, New Mexico, was named for John B. Dawson, a rancher who bought the coal-rich property from the Maxwell Land Grant in 1869. The town was incorporated by the Dawson Fuel Company in 1901 and sold to the Phelps-Dodge Company in 1906. Phelps-Dodge soon developed Dawson into a major coal source for the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads and laid down a model for the company town as among the most progressive in New Mexico.

Within years, Dawson’s downtown would boast of a gym, an opera house, a movie theater, several schools, two churches, a large mercantile store, and a modern hospital, and the town became the largest single-industry town in the Southwest.

Damage caused by the explosion on February 21, 1923
Dwight and Carol Myers Collection, NMSU.

Mass funerals were conducted for the victims and row upon row of graves dug, making it necessary to extend the cemetery far up the hill. The cemetery was marked by white iron crosses and the burials continued for weeks. It was the second worst mine disaster of the century.

It was determined that the explosion was caused by a dynamite charge igniting coal dust in the mine - a flagrant violation of mining safety laws.

Despite this disaster, Dawson continued as a successful mining town. Then, on February 8, 1923, Stag Canyon Mine No. 1 suffered an explosion. A mine cart jumped its tracks and ignited coal dust in the mine. 123 men were killed in this explosion, many of them children of the men who died in 1913.

There were 123 men in the mine at the time. Many women who lost husbands in the earlier disaster waited anxiously for their sons to appear out of the smoke. Early the next morning two miners who had been in an isolated section of the mine walked out. They were the only survivors. The cemetery was extended once again and more white crosses took their place in the cemetery.

Astonishingly, Dawson did not become a ghost town until 1950, when the Phelps Dodge Corporation shut down the mine. The entire town was sold or razed, and so today the only significant remaining landmark in Dawson is the cemetery, full of iron crosses marking the graves of men who died in the mines.

Over 350 white iron crosses in the Dawson Cemetery mark the graves of those who perished in the mining disasters. The cemetery, a deeply moving site, is now the only part of Dawson still open to the visitor. These silent sentinels, some with individual names and some unmarked, are poignant reminders of the tragic deaths of the miners.

Reported Phenomena

The Investigation

Initial Conclusions