What happened at Dawson?

Explosions in Stag Cañon Mine No. 2 (1913, 263 dead) and Mine No. 1 (1923, 120 dead) — two of the deadliest U.S. mining disasters, memorialized by the field of white crosses that outlived the town.

Dawson, NM Ghost Town — History, Map & What Remains

The story

Dawson was Phelps Dodge's model coal city — nine thousand residents from two dozen nations, with a hospital, opera house, department store, and champion sports teams. It suffered catastrophically for its coal: the 1913 explosion killed 263 men, among the worst mining disasters in U.S. history, and another in 1923 killed 120 more — many of them sons and brothers of the first dead.

When Phelps Dodge closed Dawson in 1950 it sold the buildings for removal; whole houses drove away to towns across the Southwest. What remains is the cemetery — ranks of identical white iron crosses on the hillside, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most quietly devastating places in the West. Former residents' descendants still reunite there.

What remains today

The Dawson cemetery (open to visitors) with hundreds of white crosses; the townsite itself is fenced ranch land with scattered industrial ruins.

From the archives

Five State Livestock Auction, Clayton, New Mexico; Houses from Dawson coal mine company town, Clayton, New Mex

Houses from Dawson coal mine company town, Lloyd Tower and Irene Tower, Clayton, New Mexico

Source: Library of Congress digital collections.

Questions from the field

What happened at Dawson?: Explosions in Stag Cañon Mine No. 2 (1913, 263 dead) and Mine No. 1 (1923, 120 dead) — two of the deadliest U.S. mining disasters, memorialized by the field of white crosses that outlived the town.

From the field

The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.

Stamp your passport

Check in at Dawson — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.

File a field report

Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.