Almy, Wyoming

Almy was a coal mining camp in Uinta County, Wyoming, near the town of Evanston. In 1881 an explosion killed 38 miners in the Central Pacific Mine, marking the first mine explosion west of the Mississippi River. Another explosion killed 13 in 1886, and a third explosion in Red Canyon in 1895 killed 62 miners, the third worst mining disaster in Wyoming history. Following the second explosion, the Wyoming territorial legislature established the office of the state mining inspector, which subsequently shut down the Almy mines in the 1940s after it was deemed too dangerous to mine there.