Top works of the Gem coal mine

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, January 29, 2013

By Bill Kombol

This photo shows a portion of what was called the top works of the Gem coal mine as operated by Pacific Coast Coal Co. in the now abandoned town of Franklin.

Coal was discovered near Franklin in 1880 and the underground mines were established shortly thereafter. With the building of the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad through Black Diamond on its way to Franklin, serious coal production commenced. The first coal was shipped in 1885.

During the late 1880s and early 1890s Franklin’s workers struck for higher wages and in 1894 a disastrous mine fire claimed the lives of 37 miners.

By the time of this 1912 photo Franklin was a prosperous mining town, located on a steep hillside above Green River Gorge about two miles east of Black Diamond.

At the end of World War I, coal prices declined precipitously and the town of Franklin came to an abrupt end, though a few residents remained for decades.

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George Watkin Evans

Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, December 18, 2012

By Bill Kombol

Evans, pictured above in his field clothes in the Alaskan wilderness during the summer of 1913, was an internationally renowned consulting mining engineer who spent most of his remarkable career in the coal fields of Washington.

“Son, here is imprisoned sunshine that warmed a swamp which stood here millions of years ago.” So spoke a Washington state coal mine inspector to the 17-year-old George Watkin Evans, who was working in the Franklin coal mines in the early 1890s.

Evans was born in Abercarne, Wales, in 1876 to a coal mine family who emigrated to the Pennsylvania coal mines before moving west to Franklin in south King County. Shortly after the Franklin mine shipped its first coal, Evans began work as an 11-year-old oiler who lubricated the coal cars wheels. Within a year he was driving mules and went on to learn most of the underground coal mining jobs.

Evans was at the Franklin mine during the disaster of 1894 when 37 miners perished from suffocation and smoke. It was about this time that Evans had his famous encounter with the coal mine inspector, an event that was to change his life.

Evans told a biographer that the phrase “Imprisoned Sunshine!” had set him forth on a hunt for knowledge, as he had no schooling until then. Evans taught himself to read the Welsh Bible, took correspondence courses, and entered preparatory school.

Evans said, “The wonders of coal as revealed in those books filled me with enthusiasm, and with a keen hunger to know all there was to know about coal. I began to live in the Paleozoic age—and to study nights.”

He attended Washington State College, graduating in 1903 with a Bachelor of Science as an Engineer of Mines.

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