History of King County, Washington
By Clarence B. Bagley in 1929. Now in Public Domain
From Chapter 47: Issaquah, Pages 771-773
Issaquah: Coal Mining
The story of early coal mining at Issaquah is related elsewhere in this history. Mention will be made here only of the romantic episode of the Issaquah and Superior Coal Mining Company, which occurred just before the beginning of the European war, and which has been facetiously termed, the "German occupation" of Issaquah.
The Issaquah and Superior Coal Mining Company, organized by Count Alvo von Alvensleben, a German national, acquired surface and coal rights to about 2,000 acres of land and spent more than a million dollars in preparing to take coal from its properties. Tunnels, gangways, tracks and surface equipment were installed. The most modern machinery at that time for grading and cleaning coal was installed at a cost of more than $100,000. Houses were built for the miners and Count von Alvensleben even proposed to install a golf course for the miners. von Alvensleben in operating his Vancouver mines had startled other mine owners with his almost socialistic ideas of giving the men who worked in the bowels of the earth adequate pay and decent living conditions. He had welcomed the labor unions and had always maintained that any industry which could not give its men a fair wage and humane hours forfeited its right to exist.
Walter Baelz, general manager of the company, was then connected with the German civil service in its department of mines. Today he is assistant to the Minister of Mines of the German Republic. The installation of the plant was in charge of J. R. Watkins, an English mining engineer.
All the preparatory work had been done for a plant capable of producing 2,000 tons of coal daily. Besides the millions of tons in the seams of the mines, the Company controlled valuable deposits of fire clay which it planned to develop in the future. A briquetting plant and a works for the manufacture of commercial fertilizer were being planned.
The enterprise was hailed with great expectations by the people of Issaquah. More than 500 men were employed during this preparatory period, with a monthly payroll of $30,000. Under the impetus lent by the Company more homes and business buildings were erected at Issaquah in 1913 than had been built there in the preceding twenty years.
But world politics were to close the shafts of this mine within the next twelve months and the newly installed machinery was destined to rust until the greatest conflict the civilized world has known was fought out on European battlefields.
von Alvensleben, who has since become an American citizen, came of a noble Brandenburg family. An intimate of the Emperor and other well born Germans of less rank, the Count found no difficulty in persuading many of exalted station to invest money in the plant. During the war a rumor was circulated to the effect that the Kaiser himself had money in the mine; von Alvensleben was even accused of being the Emperor's agent in Canada and in the Pacific Northwest. These charges were pure propaganda, according to the Count. "I wish to deny unequivocally that the Kaiser ever had money invested in the Issaquah mine," von Alvensleben told the writer in 1928. "Any funds the Emperor had for investment were placed by two conservative Jewish banking houses in Berlin. Struggling mines on the western shore of North America were not on the list of these bankers."
But there was more than $1,000,000 of German money invested in the enterprise. With names like that of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg on its pages the stock book of the Issaquah and Superior Coal Mining Company might have been a section of the "Almanach de Gotha."
Prior to the European war, von Alvensleben had sent 100 tons of coal to a Bavarian by-product plant for analysis. He received encouraging reports from the chemists who declared that at least 199 products were derivable from Issaquah coal. The Count's German friends, had already engaged themselves to furnish $1,000,000 for the erection of a by-product plant when the hurricane of August 1, 1914, swept upon the Central Powers and made necessary the use of all available funds in the defense of the Fatherland.
von Alvensleben had purchased the properties of the Issaquah Coal Mining Company and the Superior Coal Mining Company, paying $250,000 for the fields. A Seattle bank held a mortgage on the property. After various vicissitudes the bank, for other causes, failed, after foreclosing the mortgage on the mine. All the Germany money invested in the mine had been lost, leaving nothing to turn over to the Alien Property Custodian. Later, the bank, while in the hands of a receiver, disposed of the property to the Pacific Coast Coal Company for a sum in excess of $300,000 making, according to von Alvensleben, a profit of more than $300,000. The Count, a victim of circumstances, was unable to continue his mining operations and is now engaged in the real estate business in Seattle.
Issaquah hopes that some day the Pacific Coast Coal Company may see fit to reopen the mine, which is said to be comparatively free from gas and water and might be operated with slight overhead expense.
The Pacific Coast Coal Company also owns the old Grand Ridge Mine which has not been operated since 1920. The Grand Ridge Mine, operated during the early boom, had been acquired by Andrew Reynolds in 1903. He operated it until the strike of 1905, when it was shut down. Beginning in 1909, in company with C. J. Smith and A. S. Carey, Andrew Reynolds worked the mine until 1920 when the property was sold to the Pacific Coast Co.
Reynolds and his sons, John James and Joseph A., are now beginning operations in sections 22 and 13, on a slope about two miles northeast of the Grand Ridge Mine. At the present time they are taking out only about twenty tons a day, but they hope to increase the capacity as time goes on. The fields contain as much as 20,000,000 tons, according to Reynolds' estimate.
A small trucking mine is being operated on the Caroline property near Issaquah, owned by the late John C. Eden. The output is from twenty to twenty-five tons per day. Lawrence Harris also has a small mine on the Sunset Highway west of Issaquah.
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By Clarence B. Bagley in 1929. Now in Public Domain