Coben Scott is a history graduate, a history buff, and he has explored and researched much of Falcon and the area’s past. Coben’s column, Yesteryear, features stories about the history of the plains.
The Mines
By Coben Scott
Long before our rolling golden hills were known for the vast selection of fast food establishments and automotive facilities, this was coal country, specifically, just south of Corral Bluffs and Jimmy Camp.
The early mayor of Colorado Springs and owner of Jimmy Camp Ranch, Matt France, had the idea to shift coal mining operations from the west side of town outside of Garden of The Gods to an isolated part of his ranch. France suspected there could be coal there and enlisted the help of a neighboring farmer and judge, James H.B. McFerran. Once they realized the amount of coal in the area and the potential wealth to gain, the two started up the small mining towns of Franceville and McFerran.
Franceville’s post office was built in November 1881, just in time for the Denver and New Orleans train to roll by. Coal production was happening fast, and the population of the town began to boom. A mix of workers rolled in from the old coal mines around Colorado Springs, some would come from Fountain, and a good amount of them were from Italy and Southern Europe. The production per day was roughly 500 tons, and its annual production was about 20,000 tons. The year 1884 reached peak production, yielding a grand total of 56,070 tons of brown coal. The main buyer of the coal was the Denver and New Orleans train, as it had a line that ran directly to the town of Franceville from Manitou Junction. The D&NO weren’t the only ones buying up the mine’s coal. Sales stretched from the little towns around the area all the way to Omaha, Nebraska.
By 1890, the population of Franceville surpassed that of Monument. Similar to Eastonville, the two towns were popular places. Franceville was documented as having hotels, a company store, a school and up to 40 houses for the miners and their families. Unlike other mining towns in Colorado at the time, Franceville wasn’t run as a “Company Town.” Where places such as Pikeview or Ludlow had extremely harsh and constricting conditions for their workers, Franceville and McFerran were progressive for their time. The miners weren’t bound to the town, and they were free to come and go as they pleased. Once the Rock Island Railroad was rolling through Falcon in the 1890s, they cashed in on the mines, too, running a line into McFerran from their Elsmere junction.
A notable event that occurred near the mine wasn’t anything typical like strikes or fights, but rather a discovery. In 1890, a local rancher in the area, David Anderson, discovered a unique looking rock that he didn’t recognize. He sent it to a professor of Colorado College he knew to have it examined, and the professor determined it was a meteorite that had fallen. Anderson said it was just sitting on the ground with no other similar rocks in the area. The professor bought the meteorite from Anderson in 1902 to examine its uniqueness compared to others in his possession. One side was completely flat while the rest was weathered yet bumpy, another odd feature of the meteorite looked like etching and weathered finger marks on the stone. This led some to believe ancient natives came in contact with the space rock long before Anderson’s discovery.
Back to the mines, in May 1894, Franceville began losing population and closed its post office, but mining continued in both Franceville and McFerran into the mid-1900s. McFerran’s operations ended sometime in the 1930s and Franceville went on into the 1970s. The trains both cut their lines to the mines sometime in the late 1940s; the Rock Island Line transferred its rails from McFerran to Peterson Air Force Base during World War II, and once the rail shut town entirely, the Elsmere area became Cimarron Hills. Today, when you drive down Highway 94 and look around, the trained eye might be able to spot some rubble of the old buildings and spots where mining took place.
