In the late 90s Scott Martel was a staff writer at the Detroit News, but there was turmoil.

The Detroit News had imposed a new contract while still in negotiations with the newspaper

guild of Detroit, so the staff there decided to go on strike.

After a year and a half of being on the picket line,

Scott decided to pack up, move west, and get another job.

So I was working at the L.A. Times as a feature writer

and ran across a footnote in a book about the Colorado Coldfield War.

The Colorado Coldfield War was a major labor uprising in Southern Colorado from about September of 1913 to December of 1914.

On one side you had striking coal workers. On the other, there were the mine operators.

And at the peak of this uprising was an especially

tragic event. On a single day in 1914 the National Guard killed more than 25 people

including 11 children.

This event became known as the Ludlow Massacre.

Learning of the Ludlow Massacre

got Scott's journalist's brain tingling,

and he decided he needed to do some more research.

In the process I discovered that there was an ongoing archaeological dig at the Lobbler

10 colony site and as I was researching that I realized that there was really not much done published on the history of this thing, what had actually happened.

So Scott decided to visit Ludlow for himself, and once he got there, he felt like he could feel the history in the air.

The colony site was once a two-acre tent city of about a thousand striking coal workers in their

families. But now, there was just a monument.

It was kind of eerie.

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