The best account of western coal mining is Andrews.
David A. Wolff, Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming, 1868-1914 (Boulder: Univ. of Colorado Press, 2003), 5-6, 21-22.
An exception was the Rocky Mountain Coal and Iron Company, which supplied the Central Pacific.
Wolff, Industrializing the Rockies, 33.
Gardner and Flores, Forgotten Frontier, 26.
Adams publicly testified the next year that the mines were the salvation of the company, but, as with most railroad officials, what he said publicly often differed from what he said privately.
Adams to Callaway, July 20, 1886 (two letters), UP, PO, OC, vol. 38, ser. 2, r. 33.
Klein, Union Pacific, 334.
Adams to Callaway, Dec. 4, 1884, UP, PO, OC, vol. 24, ser. 2, r. 21.
For a wonderful account of coal mining and its environmental, social, and political ramifications in Colorado, see Andrews, Killing for Coal.
Neasham and J. N. Corbin to General Manager and President of the Union Pacific, Sept. 19, 1885, in Bromley, Chinese Massacre, 74; "A Plea for Free Labor," in Bromley, Chinese Massacre, 90.
quote, Storti, Incident at Bitter Creek, 84-8.