THE REDSTONE COKE OVENS
by Ron Sorter

Redstone’s coke ovens are the foundation of the community. Over a century ago, the men who worked them and their families lived in the village’s houses and walked on Redstone Boulevard, its lone street. The Redstone community has always had a deep connection to them and Redstone’s history.

The Redstone Museum, before being moved from the Coal Basin mines to Redstone Park, was used to store the coal miners’ carbide headlamps. They wore them while blasting and loading Coal Basin’s “metallurgical” coal onto narrow gauge rail cars, bringing it down to Redstone’s coke ovens.

There, mule-drawn cars dumped small “slack” coal into the tops of just-emptied beehive ovens. The coal ignited and, for 48 hours, blew off impurities like sulfur, toluene, and ammonia, while inside, the coal transformed into coke, which is almost pure carbon.

Cokers then opened the door, sprayed the coke with enough icy river water to cool it, then raked it into boxcars destined for John C. Osgood’s Pueblo steel mills.

 

Building the Redstone Coke Ovens

Cokers at a typical CF&I coke oven operation

By 1902, there were six coking operations, 28 coal mines and the only steel mill west of the Mississippi in Osgood's CF&I group

The workers lived in nearby shacks adjacent to the ovens before the village was completed

Redstone Coke Oven 1900, the first year of operation, before the village was built

By 1902 the Redstone Coke Ovens were in full operation

Artistic interpretation by Redstone artist Jack Roberts, commissioned by the Redstone Castle

The processed coke is sent by rail to the Pueblo Steel Mill

1909, the Coal Basin mine and Redstone Coke Oven operation shut down

Coke is the key to a blast furnace’s power. In Pueblo, lorries fed the tops of towering smelters a constant parfait of iron ore, coke, and limestone. Smelters used the same chemical discovery that transformed the Bronze Age into the Iron Age.

The coke did three things: first, it burned with intense heat. Second, it buoyed and aerated the entire load, while gravity slid the fiery mass into the furnace’s heart. There, finally, a 15-foot-thick ring of firebrick was being cooled by 8 million gallons of Arkansas River water per day.

It maintained an even temperature so a critical chemical reaction could take place, something magical. Coke’s carbon atoms began bonding with the unneeded oxygen atoms in the iron ore and bubbled upwards as carbon monoxide and dioxide.

The limestone bonded with silica and other impurities, and ironworkers in heat suits extracted it as slag. Then they poured the remaining pure, molten iron into sand beds shaped like piglets nursing from a mother and called it pig iron.

That’s the iron that helped settle the West and made John Osgood a fortune. He used it to build the Redstone Castle and an enormous business empire. And he bought his wife, Alma, an electric car to drive on Redstone Boulevard and wave to the children.

RON SORTER was a historian and artist in the Redstone community for 20 years. He now lives in Sequim, Washington where he recently co-authored a book LETTERS IN A HELMET: A story of Fraternity and Brotherhood and is finalizing a book about his wife, Michelle Ann Sorter.  Ron and Michelle worked tirelessly in Redstone to secure resources to purchase, protect and restore the Coke Oven property.