On March 24th, 1922, seventeen mine workers were killed in an explosion at the Sopris mine near Trinidad.
Just as nearly 200 miners exited the mine as their day shift had ended at 3 pm, at 3:30 pm the top of the ventilation shaft was blown off. Within a couple of hours the ventilation fan was working again, the the retrieval for the bodies or the hopes of anyone alive, began.
The explosion occurred 3000 feet from the main shaft, and by 9 o’clock, eight of the victim’s bodies were recovered. By the next evening, all seventeen bodies were found. It’s believed that two brothers died side-by-side from the afterdamp instead of the force of the explosion. The rest were scorched by fire.
A couple weeks later, the coroner’s report concluded that the explosion was caused by the effects of the accumulation of gas and dust in the mine, set off by a spark from the power service of the mine.
Within the next few years, the mine slowed down and was ultimately shut in 1940. In the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers announced they were going to construct a dam on the Purgatory River, and the town was abandoned and razed. As the dam filled in the early 1970s, and Trinidad Lake formed, the Sopris townsite disappeared beneath the water.
Article written by Colorado Haunted History, and shared on their Facebook page on March 24, 2026