Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, January 23, 2007
By Barbara Nilson
Riding the Northern Pacific Railroad to the upper end of the Carbon River Canyon or tooling along to Mount Rainier in a Model T, tourists would pass close to three mining towns: Melmont, Fairfax, and Montezuma.
First, beyond Carbonado, was Melmont, situated between the Carbon River and the NPR line. A bridge spanning the Carbon River ran between the company hotel and the saloon with the depot and school on the hillside above. On the left end of the bridge was the road connecting to Fairfax. This bridge was nearly a little beyond the high bridge which spans the canyon today.
Its history dates back to when the Northwest Improvement Company, owned by NPR, opened a promising coal prospect above the Carbon River Canyon, close to the Carbonado field, and not far from the Fairfax field. The mining company took the name Melmont Mines Inc., and the coal of the Melmont bed assayed among the highest grade of blacksmith coal mined. The mine started producing in 1902 and ran for 16 years sending out some 900,000 tons of coal, 4% of Pierce County’s total production. Miners worked on six subterranean levels. in places over 600 feet down.
They lived in cottages owned by the company, as in all mining towns. Each different nationality, Italians, Finns, Polish, or Japanese, took different rows. Many had come directly from their native lands and their known languages and customs were common bonds. As usual there was also a huge hotel for the single miners which also housed the store, butcher shop, and post office.
Pioneer women were an amazing breed. The wife of the superintendent, Ida McDowell, came out from the flat, farming country of Kansas, riding the train which was often sidelined in chilling weather, with seven children, six young girls and a month old baby boy. The boy died as an infant.
The Buckley undertaker brought a small coffin up by train to Melmont. Neighbors carried the small coffin from the depot to McDowell’s home where the tiny body was placed in the coffin. The next morning the coffin was put on the train to Carbonado, the nearest cemetery. Residents there met the train and carried the tiny coffin to the church. In Melmont, the McDowells boarded the railroad handcar to Carbonado and walked from the depot to the church for the services. Afterwards the congregation walked behind the hearse to the cemetery, some distance from town.
The passenger train came to town once a day, otherwise there wasn’t any other way out of Melmont unless riding a horse along the winding trail skirting the Carbon River Canyon or walking along the railroad tracks to Carbonado.
With the advent of diesel and electrical power, NPR no longer needed coal nor their engines so they didn’t have any reason to maintain the town.
The Northwest Improvement Company left Melmont sometime around 1918 and the Carbon Hill Coal Company took charge of the miner’s interests. During this time, Steve Poch, a homesteader living further up the river, bought the new schoolhouse for the lumber. (In 1980, the house was still standing not far from the Tolmie Creek bridge.) The rest of the town burnt down in the early 1920s.
The last man to live there was Andrew Montleon who made his home in the basement of what had been the schoolhouse. He loved his seclusion and his goats. Stories circulated about his “watch horse” that would chase off interlopers. When he became too feeble, he was placed in a nursing home and the property owners leveled the basement home—marking the end of another historic town.
Fairfax up the river
In 1897 NPR extended its spur line from Carbonado up the river to Fairfax where a coal seam had been discovered in 1892 and began operating in 1896. The end of the NPR railroad was just a mile or so up the canyon from Melmont at Fairfax where eventually a turntable was built to turn the engine around. At Fairfax, the Carbon River ran wide through the gravel bed, a fordable stream; but downriver it hit a three mile long chute of powerful water making river travel impossible.
According to the book, Place Names in Washington, Fairfax was a logging town, located 14 miles south of Enumclaw. Sixty coke ovens operated there in 1902. It was named by W.A. McNeil, who came there from Fairfax, Iowa. The Iowa town had been named for Fairfax County, Virginia.
Fairfax like other mining towns had its share of labor troubles. In the latter part of the 1890s miners grew unhappy over wages and labor conditions. When the owners were unable to hire white workers, they brought in Blacks. The troubles continued, so they hired Japanese workers. Finally, the white miners reached an end to their disagreements and returned in 1900.
The Fairfax mines used the chute-and-pillar method of mining, which involved the continual use of high explosives in order to blow the coal free. The mine had a flume, or chute, which extended one and one-half miles and loomed 20 feet above the ground to move the coal to bunkers at Fairfax. The trough the coal ran through measured eight feet wide and four feet deep, with a two-foot walkway on top. Water pressure forced the coal along the wooden flume at a rapid rate.
A new mine opened after 1911, taking the name Fairfax Mines Inc., producing some of the highest grade of furnace coal, and capable of sending out tons of coal per day.
Several sources proclaimed Fairfax to be the “prettiest village in the entire Carbon River country.” It was a planned town with a long main street lined with white homes and a store, railroad depot, and modern hotel. Bordering on the river’s edge, past the hotel, was a saloon where “a cool beer could slake the dusty throat of a miner’s particular thirst.”
It boasted a fine baseball diamond and though the miners worked hard putting in long hours, they never seemed to be too tired to play baseball. The games between adult teams of the Valley League involved South Prairie, Buckley, Burnett, Wilkeson, Carbonado, and Fairfax.
The isolation of the town for 25 years was attractive to some but that changed when the road was constructed from Burnett to Fairfax in 1921.
Montezuma stills
Montezuma was connected to Fairfax by a rough wagon road that climbed 500 feet to the mine. There wasn’t any railroad line so the company built a 400-foot long flume to the NPR line. There were mine shacks there but the post office and voting remained in Fairfax.
After the mine pulled out in 1909 after only 9 years, Joe Amidaio moved into one of the little coal mine shacks, requisitioned the abandoned store, and started a boot-leg operation and saloon during Prohibition.
Another character, “the chicken rancher of Montezuma” had ordered large loads of grain. Citizens became excited at the idea of a “chicken ranch” and hoped for chicken dinners. Upon investigation, there were only six scrawny chickens and the biggest still imaginable.
The remaining buildings as well as the one remaining home in Fairfax were scheduled to be torn down before 1991, either by the homeowners or the landowner, Burlington Northern Railroad.
Material source: Carbon River Coal Country by Nancy Irene Hall and published by Steve Meitzler, Heritage Quest Press, Orting, WA.
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