On April 20, 1914, Colorado National Guard and company guards attacked a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families; eleven children and two women died in a cellar beneath one tent. The UMWA memorial stands on the site today.
County Road 44.2 (11 miles north of Trinidad via US-85), Ludlow, CO 81052
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free; roadside access to the UMWA monument and cellar marker on the site.
Access
Limited Access
Open semi-arid ground with a gravel path to the monument; uneven terrain at the cellar depression site
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1914 · National Historic Landmark (2009) · Site of the Ludlow Massacre, April 20, 1914 · Deadliest Event of the Colorado Coalfield War · UMWA-Owned Memorial Site · 11 Children and 2 Women Killed in the Cellar
The Colorado Coalfield War began in September 1913 when coal miners in Las Animas and Huerfano counties, organized by the United Mine Workers of America, struck against Colorado Fuel and Iron. CF&I, controlled by John D. Rockefeller Jr., evicted the striking workers from company housing. The UMWA established tent colonies to house the strikers and their families through the winter on open land near the mines.
By spring 1914, Colorado Governor Elias Ammons had deployed the Colorado National Guard — initially to maintain order, but increasingly acting on behalf of the mining companies. By April, most National Guard troops had been withdrawn and replaced by company guards in Guard uniforms.
On April 20, 1914 — Easter Monday — an altercation broke out at the Ludlow colony. The sequence of who fired first remains disputed. Guard and company forces opened fire with rifles and a machine gun on the tent colony of approximately 1,200 people. Colony leader Louis Tikas was captured, beaten, and shot dead. As the attack continued, residents took shelter in cellars dug beneath the tent floors. Late in the day, the tent colony was set on fire. Two women — Cedilonia Costa, 45, and Lucy Costa, 24 — and eleven children between the ages of 2 and 11, sheltering in the cellar beneath one tent, died of smoke asphyxiation when the tent above them burned. Four men were also killed during the fighting.
The Ludlow Massacre provoked an armed uprising by miners across the coalfields — the ten-day 'Ludlow War' — that was finally suppressed only by the deployment of federal troops. The total death toll of the Colorado Coalfield War exceeded 75 people. Subsequent hearings by the US Commission on Industrial Relations documented conditions at CF&I and placed significant blame on Rockefeller's management practices.
The site is a National Historic Landmark, designated in 2009, and is owned and maintained by the United Mine Workers of America. A 1918 granite monument and a concrete cellar marker identify the core of the former colony. The Smithsonian Institution and the Colorado Historical Society have conducted archaeological investigations on the grounds.
Sources
The Ludlow Massacre Site does not carry the kind of elaborated ghost lore — named apparitions, specific phenomena, paranormal investigation reports — that characterizes many Hauntbound entries. What is documented in Colorado dark-tourism and paranormal writing is more elemental: visitors describe a heaviness that settles specifically at the cellar marker, a grief that feels disproportionate to what they brought with them. Some accounts describe spontaneous emotional responses — tears, a pressing need to sit down — that people attribute to the place rather than their own expectations.
Colorado paranormal writing, including material collected in 'Unquiet Colorado,' frames Ludlow as a site where sustained, targeted violence against civilians — particularly the deaths of eleven children — left impressions that persist in the landscape. The site's isolation reinforces the atmosphere: surrounded by high desert scrub, miles from Trinidad, with the cellar depression visible in the ground and the monument catching the wind.
Hauntbound presents this framing with restraint. The cellar and the monument are real. The deaths documented there are real and documented. The visitor accounts of emotional weight at the site are consistent across independent sources. We do not invent supernatural framing for an atrocity site. The darkness here is entirely historical, and it needs no embellishment.
Walk the UMWA memorial grounds to pay respects at the monument and the marked cellar depression where eleven children and two women died on April 20, 1914. Interpretive plaques document the events of the Colorado Coalfield War. The site is isolated, quiet, and maintained by the UMWA as a labor history memorial.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPensacola, FL
The Museum of Shadows is the creation of Nate Raterman, a demonologist and paranormal investigator with more than two decades of casework. Raterman opened the original location in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Pensacola branch opened in late 2024. The collection contains over 5,000 objects that Raterman and his team deemed genuinely active during investigations — ranging from allegedly cursed Ouija boards and haunted dolls to items used in criminal acts and human remains. The museum bills itself as the most haunted museum in the world.
Eads, CO
On November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led approximately 700 Colorado Territory militia troops in a surprise dawn attack on a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment on Sand Creek. The camp, led by Cheyenne chief Black Kettle, was flying a United States flag and a white flag of truce. An estimated 150 to 200 people — the majority women, children, and elderly — were killed and mutilated. The massacre was condemned by Congressional investigations at the time and is recognized today as an atrocity. The site was designated a National Historic Site in 2000 and is co-managed by the NPS and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCripple Creek, CO
The Fairley Brothers and Lampman Building at 300 E Bennett Ave in Cripple Creek was constructed in 1896 during the gold rush era that transformed the city. It now houses the Colorado Grande Casino, one of the surviving historic commercial buildings in a district rebuilt after two devastating fires in 1896.