Coal Mining in Las Minas: San Tomas Coal Field

Las Minas ran on Mexican labor. At Darwin, miners were paid fifty to eighty-five cents for ten hours, with twenty cents a month taken for medicine and $1.75 for rent on a two-room frame house. Miners at Santo Tomás struck in 1884 over unpaid wages, and yellow fever in 1900 killed many at Minera, where the houses stood in a low area by the river. Most miners came from northern Mexico, many already experienced in Mexico's coal and silver mines. In November 1910 Francisco Madero came to Minera to buy rifles for his revolt.

What the plaque says

Coal Mining in Las Minas: San Tomas Coal Field Cannel coal was mined from the Santo Tomas coal field between 1881 and 1939 and several mining towns, collectively known as Las Minas, developed during this time. The towns were located in the vicinity of the points of access to the mines. The towns consisted of Minera (Carbon), Darwin (Cannel), Dolores (San Jose) and Santo Tomas. Las Minas' quality coal and thriving economy attracted engineers, investors, laborers, miners, railroad developers and many others. Las Minas and the Santo Tomas coal field's production directly impacted Laredo's dynamic growth and infrastructural developments from the 1880s to the 1930s. Between 1880 and 1890, Laredo's population jumped from 3,521 to 11,319. The first railroad into Laredo was built in 1881, but four railroads reached the city by 1891. In 1896, coal from Laredo sold for $3.25 per ton by the railcar load after arriving in Mexico and North Texas. Many of the inhabitants of Las Minas were Mexican or Mexican American. However, citizens in Las minas migrated from the eastern and midwestern United States as well. The local population overcame difficult living conditions such as the lack of electricity and running water, underfunded schools, disease and mine fires. Despite these challenges, the inhabitants of Las Minas contributed many cultural and civic legacies to the region such as Los Matachines de la Santa Cruz, Pastorela troupes, baseball teams, political participation and labor organization that shaped the local community and neighboring town of Laredo. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort McIntosh Historic District at Laredo College — 19 mi
  An 1849 Army post on the Rio Grande above Laredo, its barracks, officers' quarters and 1895 chapel still standing on a college campus that took over the site in 1947.
• San Agustín Plaza — 20 mi
  The shaded square at the center of Laredo's 1755 town, where Carrizo families, Spanish ranchers and a century of border politics shared the same ground.
• Republic of the Rio Grande Museum — 20 mi
  A stone-and-adobe Laredo house, by tradition the capitol of a federalist republic that lasted ten months in 1840, now a museum of life in a mid-nineteenth-century home.
• San Agustín Cathedral — 20 mi
  Laredo's Gothic Revival parish church, finished in 1872 on a parish older than Texas statehood, and the mother church of the Diocese of Laredo since 2000.

More markers nearby

• El Paso de Jacinto — 19 mi
• Fort McIntosh — 19 mi
• Pvt. David Bennes Cantu Barkley — 19 mi
• Raymond and Tirza Martin High School — 19 mi