Early Newcastle was a coal town. That meant that everything — land and buildings — was owned by the coal company and the only jobs were associated with mining, separating, washing and delivering the black diamonds.

Conditions were hard and dangerous. As one account from that time noted, “There was a man killed in the mine last night. Mr. Oakley (a director) sent the coal car, with others in it, whizzing down into the mine. He fell out and it ran over him.”

As a result of these conditions, unions arrived and strikes became fairly frequent.

The Knights of Labor representing 50 of the 250 workers was on the scene. It operated from 1881 until 1891 and was noted for being anti-black and anti-Chinese. 

There were some short strikes during the first five years, but in 1886, a major protest began over an employee reassigned to work with better pay. The Knights, however, did not feel he was entitled to such a move.

The 200 nonmembers were OK with the move and the company ignored the complaint.  The Knights recruited 200 protesters from Issaquah and closed the mine and threatened to blow up buildings.

The company responded by bringing in an additional 24 deputies from Portland. The ensuing skirmish (the sheriff and deputy were conveniently absent) left one dead and many wounded. The mine reopened after three weeks.

In 1891, another strike led to the company bringing in 650 workers as strikebreakers at wages 15 percent to 20 percent less than the whites. This eventually caused the end of the Knights.

Throughout most of the mining period, there was no such thing as paid retirement or Social Security. When a man could no longer handle a strenuous job, he was assigned to the screen tables. This is where the one-legged, one-eyed, one-lunged and elderly survivors found work. Sorting rock from coal was a miserable job.

Mine strikes occurred on and off for the next 20 years, but those were generally good times. The workers were then covered under the United Mine Workers union.

In 1919, a very serious protest took place. The company had worked hard on cost controls in order to compete with coal from Montana and Wyoming. The miners had enough and went on strike. In response, the workers were forced out of their company-owned homes and miners from Montana were brought in. The lease agreements allowed the company to reclaim the rented houses if there was a work stoppage.

The displaced miners set up camp at “Uniontown.” This was county property near the present day corner of Coal Creek Parkway and Southeast 89th Place. The strike lasted the better part of two years and the miners built some homes (two of which still exist with major modifications) and a few stores, and many found jobs in Renton.

The strike ended in 1922 and many of the workers returned to the coal mines. The company did not want another strike, so it resolved complaints and established a much-improved atmosphere with worker involvement in major decisions.

This collegial atmosphere lasted until 1927, when the Pacific Coast Coal Co. decided to close the mines and began the process of tearing down the buildings and removing all the railroad track. Most of the miners not involved in the teardown found work in other mining towns such as Issaquah, Black Diamond and Roslyn.

The process of law was very different in Newcastle, however.

The mining community of the early 1880s had a well-established legal process of constables, courts and justices of the peace, as well as a practical system of crime and punishment based on fines rather than imprisonment. A coal miner in that period might make only $2 or $3 a day and the loss of those earnings was a big motivator to follow the law.

The legal process was important — a fine for assault and battery might be $5, but failure to appear as a witness might cost $50 or more.

Complaints were filed with the constable and arrests were made, and trials before the justice of the peace might happen in only a day or two. A complaint found to be unsubstantiated would find the plaintiff paying court costs.

If found guilty, the accused was fined and would pay the costs. If a party could not pay the costs, they would go to a county camp and work off the debt at the rate of $2 a day.

The court system also provided a subsidy to some of our early residents. If a trial took place, then jurors were paid $2 per case. Witnesses also received $2.

These were part of the court costs paid by the plaintiff or accused. Imagine working eight hours in the dark of a mine shaft for the same amount of money you could earn for a two-hour trial. It was no surprise that on court nights, many residents would hang around hoping to be selected for a jury.

Here are a few of the Newcastle court cases from the 1880s. These short summaries were taken from an actual justice of the peace journal covering cases at Newcastle from January 1885 to June 1921:

• Mr. Graham accused Mr. Getcheman of property damage in the amount of $35. A jury found him guilty of damaging three fruit trees ($1 each) and destroying a fence. He was ordered to pay for the trees, repair the fence and pay court costs of $19.60.
• Mary Barnett accused Sarah Conroy of breach of the peace by calling her a “woman of ill repute” and other abusive, insulting, criminal and obscene language. A jury found Conroy guilty and fined her 1 cent — it seems the accusations weren’t all wrong — plus court costs of $31.56. She refused to pay and went to jail working off the costs at $2 a day.
• John Cahill accused Merdock Welmore of assault and battery. Welmore pleaded guilty and paid Cahill $7.50 for damages and court costs of $2.70.
• A warrant of arrest was issued for Ralph Rockey. He was spotted by a state mine inspector carrying matches and smoking in one of the mines at Coal Creek, a violation of coal-mining laws. He was found guilty and fined $10 plus costs.

When the original mining town of Old Newcastle was established in 1863, the primary source of drinking water was a little creek to the south that began up on Cougar Mountain and emptied into what is now Lake Boren.

It was normally a gentle flow of water, but during heavy rains the creek would overflow and created a large flood plain to the north of the current lake. The lake was bigger and deeper than it is today, and also was swampy on the Eastside.

Chinese workers came into the area in the early 1870s, primarily to work on the railroads, but some came to Newcastle and worked for the mining company.

The earliest news item we have found is from 1873 about an attempted suicide by a Chinese worker. There were evidently race issues, and in 1876, 40 Chinese workers were driven out of the mining camp.

In 1876 and 1877, more than 300 Chinese workers were employed in building the railroad extension from Renton into Newcastle. After the line was completed, many of those men came to work in the coal mines at New Newcastle.

They mostly worked in the bunkers at the picking tables sorting coal by size. They were housed in company-owned buildings until 1885, when race issues arose and all of the Chinese-occupied housing was burned.

The workers (all men) left the camp and built small huts among the trees near a creek away from the camp. They planted narrow gardens along the creek bank and coops for chickens and ducks. Over time, the creek became known as China Creek.

The creek continued feeding into Lake Boren, overflowing onto the flood plain and dropping rich silt during the winter.

The rich flood plain was used for grazing livestock in the summers. That condition changed in the 1960s when, according to the late Milt Swanson, Robin Peterson, owner of the property west of the current Coal Creek Parkway and north of the lake, began creating a concrete channel for the creek bed.

Peterson worked for Stoneway Concrete as a mechanic and was able to bring home surplus concrete, which he dumped into the bed. He created a stable channel that no longer overflowed during storm events and went directly into the north end of the lake.

Eliminating the flooding allowed the lakefront to be developed, and we have homes there today. China Creek continues to bring silt into the lake during storm events and the outflow must be cleaned periodically, or local flooding does occur.

Workers from many nations were instrumental in the success of coal mining in Newcastle and the eventual creation of the city, but only the Chinese have a named legacy in China Creek.

A founder of the Newcastle Historical Society, Swanson knew more about Newcastle’s history than anyone, because he actually lived it. Swanson died at the age of 95 in January 2014. In this month’s history feature, Newcastle City Councilman, and history buff, Rich Crispo recalls his favorite Swanson stories.

I had the good fortune to know Milt and spend almost every Wednesday afternoon with him during the two years prior to his death. I was thirsting for information about our city and Milt was always willing to share his personal experiences.

By Greg Farrar
Milt Swanson, recalling the happiness and the hardship of a lifetime lived in Newcastle, poses in a 2012 photo, sitting among the artifacts of local history that he had collected and stored in a makeshift museum building on his property.

Milt was born in a house near the current Coal Creek Family YMCA and lived in the house at the corner of Newcastle Golf Club Road and Lakemont Boulevard since 1922, when his father rented the property from the Pacific Coast Coal Co. Milt told me many stories. Here are two of them:

1.) Did you ever wonder about the slight dips in Newcastle Golf Club Road as you drive over them? The topography along Coal Creek was very different in 1863, when coal production started, than it is today.

South of the creek was a flood plain, and a series of small ravines fed ground water and rain water from the hills to the south into the creek. The first dirt road above the flood plain and along the ravines included a series of bridges made from cedar logs.

Over time, mine waste was dumped along the road, and the ravines and the flood plain were filled in. When it came time to pave the road, the path went right over the existing bridges. Eventually the logs rotted out and the road surface dipped a bit.

The next time you drive along the road, count the dips. Some are obvious while others are subtler.

2.) All of the mine tunnels had air shafts reaching to the surface. One such shaft is located where Newcastle Golf Club Road meets Lakemont Boulevard.

During a heavy rainstorm in the 1960s, a stream of water came down from Cougar Mountain and crossed the covered shaft. The top covering collapsed and dammed up the hole well below the surface. As a result, the hole filled up with water.

A Boeing employee driving his station wagon on the way to work tried to drive across the “puddle.” His car started falling down into the hole, but luckily hung up on the edge.

He called for a wrecker and one came from Renton and stopped on the other side of the puddle. The driver walked around, attached a pull chain, and proceeded to pull the wagon completely into the hole and beneath the water.  The car was removed with the help of another truck.

Shortly after the car was removed, the dam in the hole broke and fell into the abandoned mine far below. The hole was eventually closed using concrete, cedar logs, mine rock and asphalt. That fix has lasted for 50 years and the next time you drive that route look for the circular indentations in the road surface near the curve.

Want to hear more about Milt’s stories and the history of your city? Email me at crispo@comcast.net.

Newcastle pioneer Milt Swanson passes away

Family, neighbors and community leaders gathered Jan. 25 to honor the life of Milt Swanson, a titan of Newcastle history and a man with an unceasing, warming smile.

The Newcastle pioneer, born and raised in this community, spent all of his 95 years in the same area, 90 of which were in the same company house that still stands at the edge of town near the Cougar Mountain trailhead.

Swanson died Jan. 20 after a Jan. 14 fall sent him to a hospital, where he lapsed into a coma.

He knew more about the city’s vast coal-mining history than anyone, because he actually lived it. He worked in the mines, as his father and grandfather did before him, and it was vital to him to tell his story, making sure the history of Newcastle never died.

“It was important to him to allow as many people who were interested to understand the beginnings of the city they live in,” Newcastle City Councilman Rich Crispo said. “He loved this community.”

Council elects new mayor, deputy mayor

The Newcastle City Council ushered in 2014 with elections for the mayor and deputy mayor positions at its Jan. 7 meeting.

Steve Buri was elected mayor, while newcomer John Drescher is the new deputy mayor. Both will serve two-year terms.

Buri was elected to the City Council in 2007 and re-elected in 2011. He served as deputy mayor from 2008-2011.

Drescher was the new face on the council, having defeated opponent Mark Greene to fill the seat vacated by retiring Councilman Bill Erxleben in the November election.

Prior to that, he served on the Newcastle Planning Commission for four years, and as the board’s chairman for the past year and a half.

Neighbors voice concerns about Energize Eastside

A Puget Sound Energy project to bring higher capacity electric transmission lines to a growing Eastside caused controversy across affected cities, including Newcastle, in 2014.

Olympus residents in particular voiced their concerns about Energize Eastside at City Council meetings and public forums.

PSE’s Community Advisory Group recently presented its recommended routes, and both include a line that goes through Newcastle.

This story appears far from over though, as affected cities, led by Bellevue, come together to hire an independent consultant to research the project, and work through the Environmental Impact Statement process.

Old Hazelwood comes down to make way for middle school

The Renton School District demolished the old Hazelwood Elementary School in 2014 to make way for a new middle school.

The district’s fourth middle school comes at an important time, given that Renton’s middle schools are among the largest in the state.

The new school is slated to open in fall 2016.

Newcastle Days celebrates 20 years

The city of Newcastle celebrated its 20 years as an incorporated city with a special Newcastle Days celebration.

New to this year’s annual festival was a parade featuring youth groups and individuals dressed as coal miners in a nod to the city’s history.

“Really, when you think about it, 20 years isn’t old for even a tree, but there’s been a huge amount of change here in Newcastle in the last 20 years,” said Community Activities Commission Chairwoman Diane Lewis, one of the festival’s organizers.

Newport Woods community concerned about proposed development

A proposed multifamily, mixed-use development along Newcastle Way, just beside City Hall, has Newport Woods neighbors wondering how much longer the city will remain the quaint Newcastle they fell in love with.

The application calls for a 76-unit, 64-foot mixed-use building set on just under an acre of land in what is now a wooded area next to Newcastle City Hall. A trail along the Olympic pipeline is about the only thing that would separate it from homes on the edge of the Newport Woods community.

If approved as is, the six-story building would be the tallest in the city.

Renton History Museum features Newcastle exhibit

The Renton History Museum partnered with the Newcastle Historical Society to create an exhibit dedicated to Newcastle’s past.

“Newcastle: Little Giant of the Eastside,” feature pictures, maps and objects from Newcastle’s coal-mining past. The exhibit has information about the cemetery, as well as the Baima House, a still-standing Pacific Coast Coal Co. house, considered among the oldest buildings in King County.

The exhibit will be on display at the Renton History Museum through February 2015.

In that year, a couple of explorers found something that would change that landscape forever — chunks of coal along a creek (later to be named Coal Creek).

The first coal wasn’t mined until 10 years later, but when it began, it was in earnest. In the 100 years between 1863 and 1963, the Newcastle coal mines produced 10.5 million tons of coal.

The coal was of good quality, and the proximity to Seattle made it an important commodity. In 1870, Seattle had only 1,107 residents, but because coal was being shipped to San Francisco and the growth of the port, that number grew to 42,837 by 1890, only 20 years later.

In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes and General Tecumseh Sherman visited Newcastle during a trip to the Northwest. In 1886, Newcastle also had the only post office and voting district on the east side of Lake Washington, and in the late 1890s, Newcastle was the second largest town in King County with 3,000 residents.

Coal was king, but Newcastle was also a leader in the process of justice. There was a resident justice of the peace who oversaw proceedings from verbal and spousal abuse to assault and battery and murder.

Miners were frequently witnesses and jurors. The process of dispensing justice was so important that failure to appear as a witness or juror could result in a fine 50 times as great as the fine for the crime heard at trial. Jurisdiction was not limited to Newcastle. The court also heard cases from Renton, Bellevue and Issaquah.

Mine operations continued at an uneven pace in the early 1900s as demand for coal varied. In 1916, that all changed with the threat of World War I.

From 1916-1918, the mines at Newcastle produced 1 million tons of coal to support the war effort. After the war, demand dropped.

As 1929 rolled around, cheaper coal became available from Montana, oil burst onto the scene, the Depression crippled economies and a fire in Newcastle’s main bunkers caused the Pacific Coast Coal Co. to cease operations.

Newcastle was a company town and with the selling of the homes, dismantling of some buildings, removal and reuse of equipment, and the pulling up of the railroad tracks, by 1937, the town of Newcastle no longer existed.

The Pacific Coast Coal Co. moved operations out of the area, but did sell and lease land to contract-basis mining operators known as “gypos.”

Gypos went into the existing mines and cleaned out smaller pockets of coal. These smaller outfits worked the mines from 1932 until 1963, when all coal mining stopped.

During that time, they produced 536,000 tons of coal. One of the gypos, the Strain Co., strip-mined an area 80 to 90 acres in size that later became a landfill, and in 1999 became the site of The Golf Club at Newcastle.

Seattle continued to grow and the Newcastle area was a prime location as a bedroom community, so it also grew in population. In 1994, the city of Newcastle was incorporated.

The city has 150 years of history that has included discovery, growth, decline and growth again.

By Greg Farrar
Rich Crispo, Newcastle councilman, stands next to a display case with Milt Swanson’s coal miner helmet and an information poster honoring the late 95-year-old Newcastle native’s contributions to preserving the city’s history. The Renton History Museum’s Newcastle retrospective exhibit is on display until Feb. 7.

The first thing visitors see upon walking into the Renton History Museum’s Newcastle exhibit is, appropriately, a tribute to a man that means so much to the city’s history.

Milt Swanson’s mining helmet emblazoned with his name along the side greets museumgoers while sitting in a clear display case.

It’s appropriate because Swanson, the Newcastle pioneer born and raised in the community, spending 90 of his 95 years living in the same company house that still stands at the edge of town near the Cougar Mountain trailhead, cared immensely about Newcastle’s history, and made it his mission to preserve it.

Swanson passed away in January, but his memory and coal-mining history are preserved in the new exhibit, featuring many of his own artifacts.

“Milt would’ve been really, really happy,” Newcastle City Councilman Rich Crispo said of the exhibit. “It really honors not only his memory, but the memory of the city. I think it’s just great.”

“Newcastle: Little Giant of the Eastside” debuted Sept. 9 and is set to run at the Renton History Museum until Feb. 7. It features pictures, maps and objects, most on loan courtesy of the Newcastle Historical Society, from Newcastle’s coal-mining past.

It’s the first time the museum has collaborated with another historical organization, collections manager Sarah Samson said.

“Mostly, what we were trying to convey is what it was like to live in Newcastle during that time period,” she said. “It was pretty much strictly a mining town, so a large part of the exhibit focuses on the mine and life in a mining town.”

There are features about the still-standing Baima House and the Newcastle Cemetery, as well as a wall-sized present-day map pinpointing several historical locations.

“People can figure out, my house is here, but this is what used to be here,” Samson said.

The artifacts range from mining tools to wine-making devices, because, as Samson noted, “there were a lot of Italians” in Newcastle. But it’s not the exhibit objects that stand out, Crispo said, it’s the history behind them.

“The artifacts themselves are not as important to me as the stories that they tell,” he said. “The best part about all of this for me, is that if somebody were to say, ‘Tell me a little bit about this picture,’ I can tell them a story. I learned so many stories from Milt that I’m able to do that with just about everything that’s in here.”

It made sense to do an exhibit about Renton’s Newcastle neighbor, because there is so much shared history among the cities, Samson said.

“The exhibit is a really good comprehensive introduction to Newcastle history,” she said. “Personally, I am a history person, but I think it’s really important to understand the history of where you’re living.”

Newcastle’s coal-mining history dates back to the mid 1800s, when the city was second only to Seattle in population.

The Newcastle mining site operated for about 100 years, until the mid-1900s. Workers extracted nearly 11 million tons of coal during that period.

Vestiges of that history remain scattered across the city in the form of landmarks such as the Baima House, a century-old company house that used to house miners and their families, and the Newcastle Cemetery, the final resting place for a number of Newcastle pioneers.

The stories and the history of the people that set the foundation to make Newcastle what it is today are now on display in a special Renton History Museum exhibit, “Newcastle: Little Giant of the Eastside.”

In it you will see the faces of the men, women and children who called Newcastle home during its coal-mining heyday; the tools that workers used to extract the coal; and a special tribute to the late Milt Swanson, the Newcastle pioneer who deservedly gets much of the credit for championing the preservation of the city’s history.

Every resident that calls Newcastle home should make an effort to see this exhibit. It should be mandatory viewing for every single person working at City Hall. Anyone that has a stake in Newcastle’s future needs to make it down to the Renton History Museum.

As the saying goes, “You have to know where you’ve been, to know where you’re going.”

We once used this space to decry the lack of attention paid to preservation of the city’s history. It is now so thrilling to see Newcastle’s story not only being shared, but also celebrated in both this exhibit and display cases of artifacts at City Hall.

The Renton History Museum spared no detail in bringing Newcastle’s history to life, but the exhibit is only temporary. At some point, the artifacts Swanson so graciously donated to the Newcastle Historical Society will need to find a permanent home.

Our hope is that one day, the city can fund its own museum to house the treasures of its past.