History of the Blue Canyon Coal Mine

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In May 1885, a 22-foot coal seam was discovered at the southeast end of Lake Whatcom. It was high on the hillside, 800 feet above the lake. Three Whatcom County businessmen purchased the claim in 1890. Their names were Jim Wardner, H. Bloedel, and C.W. Carter. The mine was named the "Blue Canyon Mine" because of a gray-blue haze that hung over the area.

In 1891, Jim Wardner sold his part of the ownership to Peter Larson. That year, Peter Larson, Governor Hauser, A.J. Seligman, John T. Murphy, and A.M. Holter began to develop the coalmine. A small coal mining community developed, which was named “Blue Canyon City”. Most of its residents were coalminers and their families. 40 students attended a school in Blue Canyon City. There was a dry goods store and a boarding house, as well. Meals were served at the boarding house for $4.75 a week.

A tunnel was blasted out of the hill. The tunnel was 800 feet long. It had 26 rooms. The tunnel pitched into the hill at a twenty-two degree angle as it followed the seam.

The coal was carted out of the tunnel in coal cars, and loaded into chutes. The chutes carried the coal down the hillside on an 800-foot trestle. At the bottom of the trestle were some bunkers where the coal was temporarily stored. (A bunker is a large, outdoor bin used for storing something until it can be transported elsewhere.) The coal bunkers cost $50,000. The coal was stored in the bunkers until it was loaded into rail cars. The rail cars, filled with coal, floated on a huge barge to Silver Beach, at the north end of the lake. The huge barge could carry 24 coal cars. The barge was towed by the steamboat "Ella". The captain of the “Ella” was a man named Henry (“Captain Harry”) Reasoner.

The first year, the coal was hauled by four-horse wagons from Silver Beach to Bellingham Bay. It soon became obvious that the horse-drawn wagons were too slow, so a local businessman named John Joseph Donovan was asked for his help. He was asked to pay for a rail line for transporting the coal by electric streetcar. Mr. Donovan established the “Fairhaven and New Whatcom Street Streetcar”. It ran its first car from Dock and Holly Street to the Lake on January 22, 1892. It took twenty-three minutes to make the run. The passenger fare was ten cents. In July 1892, the “Fairhaven & New Whatcom Electric Streetcar” carried the first Blue Canyon coal shipment by rail, from Silver Beach to Bellingham Bay. The streetcars were faster than the horse-drawn wagons. However, they were too expensive to operate, so Mr. Donovan built the “Bellingham Bay and Eastern Railroad”. For the next several years, the coal was carried from Silver Beach to the bay by steam engine train.

In 1893, the Blue Canyon Mining Company was doing well. New steam-powered machinery was purchased for the mining operation. On March 23, 1893, a report in the Fairhaven Herald stated:

“Two cars of powerful hoisting machinery for the Blue Canyon Coal Company are on the track in front of the Bellingham Bay and British Columbia depot…the machinery will be used for hoisting cars of coal out of the mine, and consists of a very heavy drum upon which the wire rope will be coiled, and two engines to drive the machinery”.

Another report on April 4, 1893, stated:

“A new vein, 8 feet thick, has been struck, about 100 feet below the present slope, and 1000 feet east of the original tunnel…the output is now about 200 tons daily and this will be increased.”

Although the mine was producing plenty of coal, there were serious problems. In the year 1893 there were a string of accidents. One miner was severely burned by a gas explosion. Another man was killed by a cave-in. Some men were injured by a runaway cable car. Then the first coal seam ran out. The coal mine was temporarily shut down. The owners abandoned the mine and turned to the logging industry instead.

In 1895, new owners bought the Blue Canyon Mine. The Blue Canyon Coal Mining Company was doing well under the new ownership. They were shipping more than 3,000 tons of coal per month from Bellingham Bay down south to businesses in San Francisco. On April 27, 1894, the United States Navy agreed to buy its coal from the Blue Canyon Mining Company, for fueling its eight warships that were patrolling up north in the Bering Sea.

The new owners were developing a new coal seam that was lower and closer to the lakeshore, when tragedy struck. At 2:45 pm on April 8, 1895, while they were making preparations to reopen the mine, an explosion blew rock and debris out of the hillside. Only two men escaped with their lives. The explosion killed 23 miners. Most of the miners who were killed were single men, with no relatives or close friends. Two days after the tragedy, all of Bellingham Bay closed up so people could travel to Bay View Cemetery to mourn the miners’ deaths. Unclaimed bodies were buried in a trench. The exact cause of the explosion was not known.

From that time on, the Blue Canyon Coal Mine was never as successful as it had once been. Other owners tried to operate the mine, but there were too many problems. The coal was badly broken and crumbled easily. This made handling the coal difficult because the coal pieces were very small. Rock formations were constantly slipping and swelling along fault lines, shutting off parts of the tunnel. New tunnels and rooms had to be developed continually. This was very expensive and costing too much money to be profitable. The local newspaper, the “Reveille”, listed nine serious accidents at the Blue Canyon Mine. The mine continued to operate, but the owners struggled to make a profit.

By 1901 the Bellingham Bay and Eastern Railroad ran along the entire north shore of Lake Whatcom. It connected The City of New Whatcom, Silver Beach, Blue Canyon, Park, and Wickersham. At Wickersham, it connected with the Northern Pacific Railroad that ran north to Sumas. The Blue Canyon Mine no longer used the steamboat “Ella” to tow the barges of coal to Silver Beach. Instead, the coal was transported by train from Blue Canyon to Silver Beach, and then all the way to Bellingham Bay.

By 1906 Blue Canyon City was mostly in the past. The store, lodge, and school had been moved to Park. The Blue Canyon school was torn down and the lumber was used to build the Park School on land that was owned by a businessman named J.D. Custer.

In 1919 the Blue Canyon Mine closed because the United States Navy began using oil as a source of energy, and because of competition with the newly opened Bellingham Coal Mine. Finally in 1920, the Blue Canyon Coal Mine was permanently abandoned.

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