Diamondville Mine, undated. Photo courtesy of
John S. Gilchrist.
Diamondville, 1913, looking north along Diamondville Ave.
The two-story building on the right-hand side of Diamondville Avenue past the three-story building
is the Mountain Trading Company Building. The Mountain Trading Co. dates to before 1900 and at one time had three
separate stores in the area. Other mercantile companies included the Diamondville Mercantile Co. Additionally, by
1894, the town had the Daly Hotel, named after Montana copper magnate and co-founder of the
Anaconda Copper Co., Marcus Daly (1841-1900). Churches included a Mormon Meeting House and a
Union Church in which the other denominations would meet.
William Fenn's butcher shop, Diamondville, undated.
Fenn had a ranch in the area. He is now noted as having sold a horse, unknowingly, to Butch Cassidy prior to
the Wilcox robbery.
A second "hotel" in the town, not quite as decorous, was one operated by Joseph Kandelhofer. It was described by Justice Sidney Sanner of the
Montana Supreme court:
Diamondville, Wyo., is a mining camp consisting largely of Italians and Austrians, and there
one Joseph Kandelhofer maintains a “boarding house”; this place has two stories, and on the
ground floor are a barroom, leading off from which is a hallway with doors on each side, and
further on a dining room; the doors leading off from the hallway give entrance to a wineroom
and to bedrooms; the wineroom is a dance hall, and the bedrooms are occupied by miners who
lodge at the place; girls and young women were employed there whose principal duties were to
dance with men in the wineroom, drink with men at the bar, and otherwise “entertain” the men
who frequented the place, during all hours from 7 p. m. to 8 a. m.
State v. Reed, 53 Mont. 292, 163 P. 477 (1917)
Justice Sanner continued, noting that evidence "tends to show that the place was not one where a girl could live
for any lenth of time and be respectable." Kandelhofer's facility was closed by the town as a
"public nuisance."
Diamondville Ave, looking north. Photo courtesy of
John S. Gilchrist.
Diamondville, two miles south of Kemmerer, another important coal town,
traces its history back to a homestead established in 1868 by Harrison
Church. High quality coal was known to be in the area as a result of the
original governmental surveys undertaken in 1874. Church interested
investors in his Hams Fork Coal Company which ultimately became the
Diamond Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Company.
The Town, itself, was incorporated in 1901 with Scotsman Thomas Sneddon
(1855-1920) as its first mayor. Sneddon became superintendent of the
Diamondville Mine in 1898. Like many of the other miners in the area he
previously had been in the servce of the Union Pacific Coal Co. in Almy near Evanston.
Mountain Trading Company Building, approx. 1914.
Mountain Trading Company Building, August 2003, photo by Geoff Dobson
In January 2003, the Town Council, concerned with asbestos, voted to demolish
the building which had been empty for many years.
The building was torn down in December 2003.
Sneddon family, undated. Photo courtesy of
John S. Gilchrist, whose mother Elizabeth Sneddon is depicted in the photo.
The Sneddon family home is the white house located on the right in the next photo.
Diamondville Mine Buildings. Photo courtesy of
John S. Gilchrist.
Land Patent in favor of Daniel F. Harrison
As in the instance of the formation of the Union Pacific Coal Co., discussed on a
preceeding page, old fashioned greed came into play. Commencing in 1894,
Sneddon and Daniel F. Harrison began a scheme to
acquire over 2,000 acres of the coal lands by having strawmen file for homestead on the coal lands. Homestead
could be claimed only on non-mineral properties. Each of the applcations for
homestead were accompanied by false affidavits from Sneddon that he was acquainted with the
property and there were no minerals of value on the lands. After government patents were obtained the
properties were transferred to the Company with the patentees being paid $500 each for their cooperation.
A similar scheme was used by the Cambria Fuel Company in Cambria, which required employees to
apply for homesteads which were then conveyed to the Company. Commencing
about 1917, the Government brought actions to set aside over 34 patents on the basis that they were
based on fraud. Twice the action wended its way to the United States Supreme Court which in 1921 ruled against the
company. Justice Van Devanter explained the basis of the lawsuit:
This was a suit by the United States, against an incorporated company
engaged in coal mining, to regain the title to about 2,840 acres of
land in Uinta county, Wyoming, theretofore patented to Thomas Sneddon
and Daniel F. Harrison, and by them conveyed to the coal company. The
patents, thirty-four in number, were issued under the homestead law
upon what are called soldiers' additional entries. The applications
for the entries were made at various dates beginning with May 1, 1899, and
each application was accompanied by an affidavit, by either Sneddon or
Harrison, stating that he was [233 U.S. 236, 238] well acquainted with
the land, had passed over it frequently, and could testify understandingly
about it; that there was not, to his knowledge, any deposit of coal or
other valuable mineral within its limits; that it was essentially
nonmineral, and that the application was made with the object of securing
it for agricultural purposes, and not of fraudulently obtaining title to
mineral land. Mineral lands, including coal lands, are not subject to
acquisition under the homestead law (Rev. Stat. 2302, 2318, 2319,
2347-2351, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, pp. 1410, 1423, 1424, 1440, 1441),
and these affidavits were made and submitted as proof that the character
of the lands applied for was such that they properly could be acquired
under that law. The land officers accepted the affidavits and the
statements, therein as true, and allowed the entries and issued the patents.
The bill charged that the affidavits were false and that the entries
and patents were procured in the execution of a fraudulent scheme to
acquire known coal lands under soldiers' additional homestead entries.
The mine closed in 1928.
Music this page:
Hard Times, Come Again No More
by
Stephen Foster
I.
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;--
Oh! Hard Times come again no more.
CHORUS
'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary;--
Hard Times, Hard Times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
II.
While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say--
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
(REPEAT CHORUS)
III.
There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er;
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day--
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
(REPEAT CHORUS)
IV.
'Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
'Tis a wail that is hear upon the shore,
'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave,--
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
(REPEAT CHORUS)
Next Page: Sublet, Cumberland.
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