A coal fire has been burning underground in Colorado ever since a mine explosion on February 18, 1896 – and it’s not the only underground fire found in the state.

According to the Colorado Encyclopedia, Vulcan Mine in the New Castle area exploded at 11:27 a.m., killing all 49 miners who were working that day. This made it one of the deadliest mine disasters in Colorado history.

Colorado Virtual Library writes that the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the explosion was so large that “the town of New Castle was shaken as if by an earthquake.”

State mine inspector Griffiths wrote “every man in the mine died instantly…the fans located on the surface…were blown to pieces,” and “every wooden stopping and door in the mine was broken…shattered like matchwood.” There were theories about why the mine exploded, but the exact cause is unknown.

Despite this explosion, the Vulcan Mine was reopened years later. However, there was another explosion and fire that killed 37 men on December 12, 1913 and another that killed three men on November 4, 1918.

This coal fire is one of more than two dozen active coal fires in the New Castle area, all of which began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Horse Mountain’s slopes are barren because of the firey heat that comes from under the soil. Snow melts from the hills faster than the surrounding ground during the winter, and steam and smoke sometimes can be seen rising from the ground.

Today, there is a memorial on New Castle’s Main Street that commemorates the victims of the mine explosions.