While Victor Tull is usually credited with discovering high-quality coal seams along the Green River Gorge, lower-quality coal had been noted in the area as early as 1873. That year, Edgar E. Morgan and others incorporated the Green River Coal Co. to exploit their finds. But nothing came of the effort due to a lack of transportation. In the 19th century, without a railroad, or another way to ship products, there could be no coal mine.
Seven years later, the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company financed Tull’s expedition when he found those coal outcrops in July 1880. The California company discreetly purchase land and used straw men to file homestead claims. By January 1882, the Black Diamond Company began construction of what became Mine No. 14, named for the section of land where the mine took root. The mine sat on a knoll overlooking Jones Lake, also known as Lake 14.
Through cooperation with the Oregon Improvement Company, which planned its coal mines adjacent to the Green River Gorge, the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad was induced to build a rail line from Renton through Black Diamond, then two miles east into Franklin. Both mining communities prospered and within 20 years, dozens of new towns sprouted up as coal mining became one of South King County’s main industries.
As noted in last week’s column by 1977 coal mining in Washington was a shadow of its former self and only two operations remained, both open pit surface mines. The Centralia Coal Mine fed the Big Hanaford power plant that generated up to 10% of Washington’s electricity needs. Palmer Coking Coal Company’s McKay surface mine in Franklin supplied coal to heat four Washington state institutions.
The first step in extracting coal by surface methods was to remove the trees and vegetation, then push the topsoil into stockpiles to expose the coal seam. Because the McKay vein in this location dipped into the earth at about a 45-degree angle, the bedrock overlying the coal had to be removed. That was accomplished by drilling holes into the sandstone down to the coal’s level. Then with sticks of dynamite, electric detonating caps, and Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil (ANFO), the bedrock was blasted into small rocks and removed from atop the coal.
The coal, which is far softer and easily fractured, was next stripped from the ground as seen in this April 1977 photo. Jack Kombol, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, was operating a Koehring 405 excavating dragline. Kombol joined Palmer Coking Coal in 1952 after a dozen years driving garbage, tanker, and logging trucks, plus operating heavy equipment in the woods. LaVerne Shercliffe Kombol was born to a school teacher mother, Lulu Shircliff, and a coal mining father, Tony Kombol in a short-lived mining village of Hiawatha. He preferred being called Jack at an early age, contracted polio, and attended elementary school at Selleck, then high school at Enumclaw before dropping out his junior year. Jack Kombol died of pancreatic cancer two years after this photo was taken.
This image came from Louis Corsaletti, who authored several articles about South King County’s coal industry. The photo was colorized by Doug ‘Boomer’ Burnham, a Tahoma High School photography teacher who specializes in capturing the vibrant spirit of sports teams through custom graphic design, plus brings more than 20 years of insights to his projects. For further information about everything Boomer does, visit http://www.boomersphotography.com/
