Hanna Mine disasters
Two separate explosions in 1903 and 1908 at Hanna Mines, coal mines located in Carbon County, Wyoming, United States, caused a total of over 200 fatalities. The 1903 incident was Wyoming's worst coal mining disaster. Background. In 1889, Union Pacific Railroad needed a reliable fuel source to run its massive coal-fired engines. After the coal mines in Carbon, Wyoming ran out, it hastily formed the Union Pacific Coal Company and opened a mine at Chimney Springs. Chimney Springs was renamed Hanna in honor of Marcus A. Hanna, a member of Union Pacific Company management and  an Ohio United States Senator. Hanna, Wyoming was founded and built by the Union Pacific Coal Company for its workers and their families, and the Union Pacific owned everything in it, including the boarding house, the general store and the miners' houses that were rented to them by the month. Hanna was a major hub of the emerging transportation industry of the day with the Union Pacific Railroad and the Overland Trail passing through. 1903 disaster. In those days, coal was mined by dynamite and the backs of men loading it into donkey-drawn carts. Men worked long hours in  the dark, faces covered in black dust. The disaster at the Union Pacific Coal Company Hanna mine #1 occurred on June 30, 1903. Coal mine gas (methane) was ignited in Mine No. 1 causing a violent explosion and a mine cave-in, killing 169 miners, while 46 survivors narrowly escaped this disaster. Many bodies, recovered over the next year, are buried in the nearby Hanna Cemetery. This tragedy was the greatest loss of life in any Wyoming mining disaster. The mine's bosses blamed the accident on a careless miner and, because of a coal strike in Colorado, Union Pacific  Coal Company reopened mine #1 a few months later. 1908 disaster. On March 28, 1908 the Hanna Mine #1 exploded again, trapping 18 miners. As the state mine inspector and 40 rescuers entered the mine, a second explosion occurred and killed all 59 inside. Recovery teams eventually removed 27 bodies, but another 32 were left in the mountain. With the 1903 blast leaving 169 men dead in the mine, 201 men are still buried there today. After the 1908 blast, the Wyoming state inspector blamed Union Pacific Coal Company's method of mining for the disaster. It was called "gouging