{"id":21284,"date":"2015-09-28T15:51:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T21:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/krtnradio.com\/?p=21284"},"modified":"2015-09-28T15:51:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T21:51:16","slug":"dream-of-a-miners-museum-a-long-time-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/2015\/09\/28\/dream-of-a-miners-museum-a-long-time-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream of a Miner\u2019s Museum a long time coming\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bill Knowles
\"WJ<\/a>TRINIDAD \u2014 Progress has been made in putting together the Miner\u2019s Museum, but there\u2019s still a long way to go. \u00a0
The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce was the first to become involved with the project. The Southern Colorado Coal Miners Memorial branched off from the chamber and formed a nonprofit so they could continue work on the memorial and museum exclusively. \u00a0Yolanda and Mike have, over the past 20 years, helped to raise and spend around $150,000 for the project.
Support for the museum is also coming in from the United Mine Workers Association. \u00a0The UMWA relocated to Trinidad from Denver several years ago and, according to the Region Four Organizing Director Bob Butero, is very supportive of the Coal Miners Museum.
\u201cThere is a rich and long history of coal mining here. \u00a0And the incident at Ludlow was one of the events that led to workers gaining the right to organize. \u00a0The museum will show and teach about how coal mining was done in the past and how it\u2019s done today,\u201d Butero said.
The name of the memorial has been changed from the Downtown Mini Park to the Coal Miners Memorial Park. \u00a0It is on land originally donated by the City of Trinidad.
The memorial is on the northwest corner of Convent and Main streets in downtown Trinidad. \u00a0The statue is of three miners loading coal into a coal car, which sits atop a dias that has the names of the 90 miners who lost their lives in the mines etched in granite on the four cardinal sides. \u00a0These are the names of those who\u2019ve lost their lives to cave-ins and gas build-ups in the mines.
The miners in Las Animas County and the Raton Basin came from over 100 countries, spoke about 400 different languages, and worked in the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. \u00a0
Next to the memorial dias is a canary in a bird cage with a fountain. \u00a0The building adjacent is the proposed location of the museum.\u00a0
The exterior wall of the museum that faces out toward the memorial will have a mural painted on it by artist Lindsey Hand for a cost of $15,000 to $20,000.\u00a0
About $100,000 more is needed to complete the museum phase of the project. \u00a0$50,000 alone is needed to repair the building. \u00a0When finished, it will contain artifacts from local area miners and their families.\u00a0
The center of the exhibit will be nine portraits of Ludlow by artist Ben Johnson along with work by Linsey Hand and numerous other local artists.\u00a0
Hand painted her impression of photos from Ludlow, adding color to the black and white of the monochrome prints. \u00a0She also wants to establish a permanent display of nine photographs at the museum for a cost of around $40,000.
On Sept 1, in a statement to the Trinidad City Council, Cy Michaels of the Trinidad Tourism board asked the council to consider entering a negotiation with Hand for a city funded down payment so the mural part of the project might get started.
The memorial site is one of the most visited sites in the city. \u00a0People from all over the country as well as many from other parts of the world have visited Trinidad and photographed the monument. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a major plus here for the county. \u00a0We need to celebrate that heritage. \u00a0There is a lot of tradition and history here,\u201d Butero said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bill KnowlesTRINIDAD \u2014 Progress has been made in putting together the Miner\u2019s Museum, but there\u2019s still a long way to go. \u00a0 The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce was the first to become involved with the project. The Southern Colorado Coal Miners Memorial branched off from the chamber and formed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","entry","rows-excerpt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}