Article by Linda Digby, Executive Director of the Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site outside Drumheller, Alberta, Canada
Underground mining is a dangerous job. Many Drumheller coal miners will say that the safety of the job depended on the sense of the miners. One job, however, was known to be dangerous, that job was pulling pillars.
Despite the inherent danger of this job, many miners were willing volunteer for pulling pillars because they were paid good money to do it. In some mines, only men with no dependents were allowed to volunteer because once the pillars and timbers were removed, it was only a matter of time before the roof came down.
A pillar is a column of coal left standing to help support the roof. Many early coal mines were“room and pillar” mines, laid out like long thin city blocks. Coal was removed from the “rooms,” and left in the “pillars,” in a kind of checkerboard pattern. That meant only half the coal was removed from each section of the mine.
The mines were worked in sections, or blocks, containing numerous rooms and pillars. When a section was finished, it was allowed to cave in. First, all equipment was removed. In some mines, the timbers holding up the roof were removed. Finally, the pillars were removed, to win the valuable coal. This job was called “pulling the pillars.” Not every mine pulled pillars, but many did. Naturally, mine operators wanted to sell all of the coal in their mine, not half of it.
Waiting for the roof to come down in a finished section was suspenseful for everyone in the mine. One miner remembers a day when the horses were extremely agitated and difficult to handle. Suddenly, the roof came down, and for thirty minutes it thundered and cracked. A shock wave whooshed through the mine, making hair on the back of his neck stand up. He recollects, “the horses knew before anyone else.”
Volunteers with no dependents were chosen for another risky job: removing equipment from a section of mine where the roof was fatiguing. One miner remembers that when a roof began to fail the falling coal made a sound like rain. Miners were moved out, but volunteers went in to remove railway tracks, electric lines, and machinery.
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Copyright 2006 Drumheller Community Futures and the Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site