This image is No. 16 of 20 in a bound book of photographs from the two-million-ton-a-year coal mining facility in Axial, CO owned by the Axial Basin Development Company. We do not know the date of the photographs or the book, but it is suspected to be from the late 1920s when the company had a capital stock of $3,000,000.00. The caption of the photograph in the book reads: “This is showing Tunnel No. 2 about 350 feet in the mine. The flashlight is in the chamber No. 8. This enables you to see the run of the seams in this bank [of coal] which is of a perpendicular nature. Because of this particular formation, it enables us to mine this coal on a very large scale and less cost of operation. Coal in other localities has a tendency to be of a horizontal strata."
You can find out more about the company in the Axial Basin Development Company SMss Collection held in the CU Boulder archives.
On June 6, 2018 the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries will celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Archives. This is story #4 in our series:100 Stories for 100 Years from the Archives!