Copper Range Digital Archive Catalog
Volunteers at the PM&S have digitized hundreds of documents that were recovered from the Champion Mine’s Office in Painesdale before it was demolished. For the past 25 years these documents have been held in safe keeping by the Copper Range Historical Society and Painesdale Mine & Shaft. This digital library contains an incredible range of topics. Paychecks, underground drift diagrams, photos, journals and blueprints to name just a few.
This digital catalog is a large file (44Mb) and will take a few minutes to download. Please be patient.
View the Copper Range Digital Archive Catalog here
Payroll Ledger Digital Archives
We have 22 years of payroll ledgers. The years include: 1909, 1913 (partial), 1914 (partial), 1922, 1927, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1934-1937, 1940, 1944-1948, and 1951-1955. These ledgers have been scanned and then processed through optical recognition software to create a database of worker names. This database contains the names of the people who worked for the Champion Mining Company during those years. Each name entry has a link back to the digital image of the original scanned page containing the name.
In order to keep this project to a manageable size, only the employees listed as working in May of a year were recorded. The month of May was selected in order to create a “snapshot” of the number of employees in a given year. This month was selected because it fell in the middle of the ledger’s pages and so usually sustained less water damage during its years of abandonment.
It should also be noted that the employees recorded in the ledgers were not only underground miners. Managers, surface workers, workers at the Champion Mill in Freda, and the staff at the Trimountain Hospital were each included on separated pages.
Many individuals and organizations are to be thanked for saving these ledgers. Please let us know if you have a story about saving records form the old mine office. We would love to hear from you! We have made this database available in two formats. Both the Excel version and the PDF version are available. Only the PDF version has annotations that provide information related to the ledgers. The PDF version is searchable and close to 500 pages long.
View the payroll ledger digital archive here.
Paycheck Index
A digitally scanned collection of employee paychecks. In total around 7,200 paychecks have been saved as digital images. About 75% of the checks were issued in either 1930 or 1940. The rest were distributed over the years 1919, 1920, 1921, 1934, 1936, 1937, 1941 and 1944. The check images have been curated to allow easy on-line browsing by individuals interested in looking for names that they recognize.
View the paycheck index here
Adams Township Digital Archive of Copper Range Company’s Records
Over the Winter of 2022 volunteers digitized a cache of Copper Range Company documents
that are in the possession of Adams Township. 1,250 paper documents were recovered from
the Copper Range Mine Office and turned over to Adams Township for safe keeping. These
documents have been digitized and stored in PM&S’s Google Drive.
They are available to the public free of charge.
The inventory/database of the Adams Township digital archives can be downloaded by clicking
either of the following links:
PDF Version
Excel Version
Once you have downloaded the inventory you can search it for file references that might be of
interest. Once you know the file name (found in the left most column) you can then look for the
actual file that is located in our Google Drive.
Click on this link to access the Google Drive Folder containing all of the Adams Township
Digital Archive.
Painesdale Memories
We are currently collecting memories of what life was like in Painesdale during the mining days. We appreciate any additions to this effort. If you have a memory you would like to share, please contact us.
A Shaft of Memories by a Coal Miner’s Daughter by Benita Hall Cole
Portrait of Cesare Cappo by Annette Cappo Butina
Memories Of Painesdale by Orrin H. Bentz
Tara’s Store and The Great Depression by Thomas Cernek.
More stories about the Teague Barber Shop and Other Stories by James Teague Gourd and Ruth Cleary