J. B. Dawson purchased a piece of the Maxwell Land Grant in 1867 for $3,700. He thought he had obtained approximately one thousand acres, but it turned out to be a parcel of over twenty thousand acres. Dawson supplemented his ranching income by selling coal to his neighbors since a nearby seam more than provided for his needs. In 1901 he sold his property for $400,000 to the Dawson Fuel Company, who a few years later sold it to Phelps Dodge. This was the company that determined to make Dawson an ideal coal town by providing the previously mentioned amenities. At one time, nine thousand people lived in Dawson, and its future seemed extremely promising.

Then, on October 22, 1913, an incorrectly set dynamite charge resulted in an enormous explosion in Stag Canon Mine No. 2 that sent a tongue of fire one hundred feet out of the tunnel mouth. Rescue efforts were well organized and exhaustive; Phelps Dodge sent a trainload of doctors, nurses, and medical supplies up from El Paso; and striking miners in Colorado ceased picketing and offered to form rescue teams. But there was little need for anything except caskets. Only a few miners escaped, and 263 died in one of the worst mining disasters in the history of the United States. The dead were buried in a special section of the cemetery, each with a small iron cross.

Almost ten years later, a mine train jumped its track, hit the supporting timbers of the tunnel mouth, and ignited coal dust in the mine. Although it was not the same shaft as before, the effect was horrifyingly similar. Many women who lost husbands in the earlier disaster waited anxiously for their sons to appear out of the smoke. But 123 more men perished in February of 1923, and the crosses in the special section then numbered 385.

Ghost town enthusiasts love to wander about mills, peer down shafts, and browse through cabins; it is rather easy to romanticize the lives of the men who worked the mines or at least to feel rather detached about them as individuals. It's as if we are less concerned with their lives than their leavings. A trip to the Dawson cemetery, then, should be obligatory, for we can see the importance and the value of their lives as it is mirrored by their graves. It is a hard person who is not deeply moved by the sight.

They advertised Colfax as a good farming opportunity that was close to Cimarron and, more importantly, the expanding coal operations at Dawson. A post office opened in 1908. Although a modest community with a school, a church, a hotel, general merchandise, and a gas station survived into the thirties, the post office closed in 1921. Apparently the town was simply too near Dawson and Cimarron to keep its own identity. Land promoters, however, have sporadically attempted to sell the place again and again, despite pretty good evidence that the town is dead. Perhaps the interest Kaiser Steel has shown in the coal in York Canyon will perk up the land agents and have them scurrying for Colfax once more.