{"id":1946,"slug":"ludlow-tent-colony-site-ludlow-colorado","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Ludlow is the tent colony the Guard burned — the spring of 1914, when the United Mine Workers' strike against Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron had put eight thousand miners and their families in canvas camps, and the National Guard the company was paying for attacked the Ludlow colony on April 20. The machine guns opened on the tents; the Guard torched what was left; and in the pit under one of them, two women and eleven children suffocated — the massacre that killed twenty-one and started ten days of war in the coalfields.","The country called it the Ludlow Massacre and it changed the labor war — Congress investigated, the Rockefellers' name was stained, the union got its martyrs. The site is a National Historic Landmark now: the monument, the memorial, the pit where the women and children were found, kept as the ground where the company town's violence was answered by the state.","The file keeps Ludlow: the eviction, the tent colony, the April 20 attack, and the eleven children in the pit that made the strike a massacre.","Ludlow is the archive's labor-war file — the burned tents, the Guard's guns, and the pit under the canvas."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Ludlow is the archive's labor-war file — the 1914 massacre, the Rockefeller strike, and the tent colony site.","A burned camp keeps its pit — the file's suggestion being that Ludlow's hold is the evidence: the ground where the company and the Guard met the strikers, and the children who died in the hole their parents dug for safety."]}],"name":"Ludlow Tent Colony Site","aliases":[],"type":"STRIKE_CAMP_MEMORIAL","type_label":"Strike Camp Memorial","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","ABANDONED_PLACES"],"groups":["dark-history","ghost-towns"],"desc":"Former miners’ strike camp and massacre memorial.","full_desc":"Ludlow Tent Colony Site is a strike-camp memorial in Ludlow, Colorado, a National Historic Landmark. Former miners’ strike camp and massacre memorial. HauntHunt files it with dark history and abandoned places. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":null,"city":"Ludlow","county":null,"state":"Colorado","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":null,"lon":null,"coord_kind":null,"status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Historic Landmark","current_use":null,"research_notes":"Record is tent colony and memorial, distinct from adjoining historic railroad town. Women and children’s deaths in the DOI summary are not the entire casualty total. No haunting inferred.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":55,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Camp established during the 1913 strike; destroyed in violence on April 20, 1914. Union purchased the land in 1916; memorial erected in 1918. Ludlow Tent Colony Site's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'Interior Secretary designates nine National Historic…'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Interior Secretary designates nine National Historic Landmarks","url":"https://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/2009_01_16_releaseC","publisher":"U.S. Department of the Interior","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[{"name":"Ludlow Massacre","type":"LABOR_VIOLENCE","date_start":"1914-04-20","date_end":null,"description":"On April 20, 1914, Colorado National Guard troops and company guards attacked the Ludlow tent colony — 1,200 striking coal miners and their families — and set the tents ablaze. Two women and eleven children suffocated in a pit beneath their burning tent; roughly 25 people died in all. The massacre radicalized American labor relations and is now a National Historic Landmark.","evidence":"LABOR_VIOLENCE","source":{"name":"Interior Secretary designates nine National Historic Landmarks","url":"https://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/2009_01_16_releaseC","publisher":"U.S. Department of the Interior","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"name":"Ludlow memorial construction","type":"MEMORIAL","date_start":"1918","date_end":null,"description":"In 1918 the United Mine Workers erected a granite monument at Ludlow, engraved with a miner, a woman and a child — one of the earliest labor monuments in America. It stands beside the death pit where the women and children suffocated, and the union still holds commemorations there every year. The site was named a National Historic Landmark in 2009.","evidence":"MEMORIAL","source":{"name":"Interior Secretary designates nine National Historic Landmarks","url":"https://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/2009_01_16_releaseC","publisher":"U.S. Department of the Interior","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Interior Secretary designates nine National Historic Landmarks","url":"https://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/2009_01_16_releaseC","publisher":"U.S. Department of the Interior","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Ludlow Massacre","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre","desc":"April 1914 massacre during the Colorado Coalfield War","extract":"The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people were killed, primarily miners' wives and children. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, and he was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Ruins_of_Ludlow_restored.jpg/330px-Ruins_of_Ludlow_restored.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":68,"lat":37.33916667,"lon":-104.58388889},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}