Mining for 100 years of history

Originally published Saturday, December 14, 1996

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

BLACK DIAMOND -- The Pacific Coast Coal train doesn't stop here anymore, but the old barn-red tin-roofed depot is gonna open anyway. And it's gonna stay open after June 6th because they've struck a rich vein of history in this old coal town.

On that day, Black Diamond celebrates its centennial and the old depot officially opens to the public as the Black Diamond Museum. This town's roots go back 100 years and down 6,000 feet. The ground is steeped in the homemade Dago Red and coal miners' blood. And the history being crammed into the 100-by-35-foot depot smacks of Italian, Welsh, Irish, Slovenian and just plain working class families that have called this place home over the last century.

When Carl Steiert blows the old mine whistle at noon on the 6th, there will be echoes that bring goose bumps to some people hereabouts. "You knew when that whistle went off in a repeat pattern and it wasn't the change of a shift that something was wrong in the mines," said one oldtimer. "Everyone stopped what they was doin' and went down to the mine to see what they could do to help."

Four trainloads of McKay coal, said to be the richest coal in the western United States, left the south central King County town every day, bound for the Pacific Coast bunkers on the Sound. Generations of Black Diamond residents came and went and they almost all worked in or near the old Indian Mine, the Lawson Mine and the Old Lawson Mine, the No. 14 Mine, No. 2 and No. 7 and No. 12 and the Skunk Cabbage mines.

An old wall clock
Some men never made it out of the mines; their bodies were sealed in the shattered mine drifts after explosions, fires and cave-ins. And some who made it out are helping recreate part of the mining imagery for the centennial. Seventy-five-year-old Ted Barner, who worked in the mines until they closed in the late 40s, has hand-split huge fir timbers for a display mine tunnel beneath the depot. Barner, a big man with coal-shovel hands, can split timbers and talk about coal mining at the same time, detailing the intricacies of mine timbering.

Upstairs in the old depot, Carl Steiert and Bob Eaton were hanging an old Waterbury wall clock on the wall over the entrance. Ann Steiert was stripping 10 layers of paint off an old stained-glass church window, which Nancy Nicholas was painting wood trim around the windows and Ray Drury cut trim wood. Frank Guidetti was out back in the old baggage room cleaning odds and ends off the old refurbished baggage cart.

The Black Diamond Historical Society Pool of Cheap Volunteer Labor has been working day and night and weekends for the last three years, readying the old depot for the centennial celebration. They have rummaged through old attics and basements and closets to come up with local historical artifacts. What they couldn't find in their own homes, they conned or cajoled out of other old-line Black Diamond families.

Not all blood and sweat
There are old family Bibles, with handwritten genealogy traced on the inside front cover. There is Stefano Vernarelli's original "Miner's Record" certificate, recording his entrance as No. 2257 as a dues paying member of the United Mine Workers Union on 21 May, 1907. That wasn't long after the Black Diamond UMW Local was formed at "The Stump," an old tree stump that served as an organizer's platform.

There's a big brass searchlight which, according to Ann Steiert, "was used by the company for security back during the strike." And there are many reminders of the 1921 UMW strike when the company brought in scab miners and the UMW people had to move out of their homes because the company owned the land beneath them.

The memories aren't all sweat and blood and coal dust and hard times. A pickup truck rolled up to the depot and the smiling driver said: "I've got just the thing for you ... Black Diamond Museum just wouldn't be complete without this." And he hauled out a copper wash-boiler still with the top soldered on and a retort-type condensation arm and coil jutting out of a copper turret.

"Hah! A reminder of Black Diamond's second biggest industry!" said Carl Steiert. (Old "Duda" Vernarelli, who peddled vegetables with his father Stefano after he left the mines, once boasted to me: "We always had people making their own. Why do you think there's all those Italian Plum trees around here? After the real Prohibition came in, things here got real busy. Some Sundays, you couldn't see the end of the line of people coming out here from Seattle!")

They won't be selling any Miner's Mouthwash at the June 6th centennial bath, but the old main street will be blocked off and filled with booths selling ethnic foods, including Italian and Mexican snacks. The old Black Diamond Bakery down the street -- which turns 80 years old on the 6th -- will be selling delicious Miner's Bread and specially decorated doughnuts.

I can never get out of Black Diamond without losing a few bucks and gaining a few pounds because of that bakery. I figure it takes me at least six fresh doughnuts to make it back up the road as far as Ravensdale or Maple Valley.

How to get there
If you're planning on making it down there for the centennial, you should know that they've resurfaced the old two-cell Black Diamond Jail. It used to stand down behind the saloon and the bowling alley ... sort of an overnight cooler for the more exuberant citizens. But you know how townsfolk are about centennials ... they might throw you into one of those 5-foot-square cells just for not buying a loaf of Black Diamond bread.

You get to Black Diamond via Route 169, the Maple Valley Highway, which intersects with Interstate 405 in Renton, or south out of Issaquah on the Hobart Road or north out of Enumclaw on Route 169, or east out of Auburn or southeast off the Kent-Kangley Road. (And you hafta get there early before the bakery's all sold out ... which usually is about 12 noon.)