For Dawson’s shot firers, nothing seemed amiss the night of April 14, 1920.

The men entered mine Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 6. They set their explosives. They exited to await detonation by an electric shot-firing system.

All in accordance with company rules; all in accordance with New Mexico mine regulations.

So how did five men end up dead?

The explosion

That was the puzzle handed to Jo E. Sheridan, the state mine inspector, when he received this telegram at 9:30 the next morning from Phelps Dodge Corp. General Manager W.D. Brennan:

“Explosion occurred about eight twenty five pm April fourteenth in number one and six mines causing death of five men stop number one fan only partly wrecked and has been kept in continuous operation stop number six fan building entirely demolished will have emergency fan running by noon fifteenth stop bodies two men recovered other three fear are under cave.”

Sheridan boarded the first train out of Silver City and arrived in Dawson on April 16 at 6 p.m., two nights after the explosion. By the next morning, he was inside mine Nos. 1 and 6, which were connected, and quickly concluded that the explosion originated in the latter.

Sheridan’s next stop was to examine the shot firers’ record books. Here he found everything in order.

A.J. Reed and Daniel Villa, shot firers for mine No. 1, signed out at 7 p.m. Mine No. 6 shot firers M.B. Crowley and Pedro Lopez did the same 15 minutes later. Shot firers Joe Kriegel and Mike Biggi also signed out of mine No. 6, though they didn’t record the time.

Nonetheless, Sheridan determined that the electrician on duty knew the mines were unoccupied at 8:20 p.m. when he began his short walk to the substation to flip the switch that would set off the charges, which were intended to dislodge coal for loading by the day shift.

Afterward — and only afterward — the shot firers were expected to enter the mines to inspect their work before heading home for the night.

Five minutes

Everything appeared to be by the book – until the electrician threw that switch five minutes later at 8:25 p.m.

Rather than only igniting the shot firers’ charges, that action triggered a huge explosion inside mine No. 6, sending flames shooting 100 feet out the entryway, according to newspaper reports.

Worse, the mine wasn’t empty after all.

Unbeknownst to the electrician, during his 50-yard walk to the substation, four shot firers had re-entered the mine. A fifth man — a laborer — was in the mine as well.

All were killed in the blast.

In his report to Gov. Octaviano Larrazolo dated May 22, five weeks after the incident, Sheridan had yet to determine the cause of the explosion, though preliminary newspaper reports identified gas or coal dust as the likely culprits.

But Sheridan showed no such hesitation on what led to the deaths of the miners.

“In flagrant violation of the mine rules,” he wrote, “these men returned to the mine and were killed in the explosion, within eight hundred feet from the portal of the mine.”

Why would they knowingly enter the mine before the electrician set off the charges?

Sheridan had an answer for that too.

To get out of work, in his words, “a few minutes earlier.”

“The sole incentive which these men had in entering the mine was that they might make their final inspection of the various places where the shots were fired as quickly as possible and get through their work for the night,” he wrote. “By going into the mine as far as possible, before that last switch was thrown, and the shots fired, they would be that much nearer to their working faces to make the examinations and would get out of the mine a few minutes earlier.”

Big news

New Mexico’s largest newspapers jumped all over Sheridan’s pull-no-punches report, starting with the April 25 issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican:

5 VICTIMS OF BLAST AT DAWSON KILLED IN SAVING FEW MINUTES GOING TO THEIR WORK

The next day’s Albuquerque Journal got right to the point too.

FAILURE TO OBSERVE MINE RULES COST 5 MINERS THEIR LIVES

Among the dead:

• Biggi, 25, Italian, unmarried, shot firer for mine No. 6.
• Kriegel, 35, Austrian, married with three children, shot firer for mine No. 6.
• Martin Peryatel, 52, Austrian, married with four children, track repairer for mine No. 6.
• Reed, 50, American, married, shot firer for mine No. 1.
• Villa, 28, Spaniard, unmarried, shot firer for mine No. 1.

Three widows. Seven fatherless children.

Peryatel, the oldest of the victims, was a familiar face around Raton, according to the Raton Range, having lived in Barela Mesa and Sugarite before moving to Dawson.

A little more is known about Reed, thanks to some research conducted by his great-grandson, Steve Reed, who lives in Washington state.

Albert James Reed was born in Ohio and got a job as a coal miner in April 1917 in Walsenburg, Colorado. He remained there until at least February 1919, after which he made the 90-mile trip across the border to work in the Dawson mines.

Reed’s death certificate lists his cause of death as “explosion in mine,” stating he suffered severe burns over his entire body. There was no autopsy, his death confirmed by physical examination two days later in Raton.

And while the death certificate states his place of burial as Dawson, his name is not listed in Dawson Cemetery records as among the dead buried there.

Of the three mine disasters to plague Dawson during its half-century of existence, the two deadliest occurred in 1913 (263) and 1923 (120). Measured by the loss of life alone, then, the 1920 incident was the smallest by far.

And, sadly, the most preventable.