Cardiff: Illinois's Lost Mining Town

When most people think of a ghost town, they probably think of an abandoned goldmining town in the American West. Once the gold mine is exhausted, miners and the rest of the town's inhabitants leave and the abandoned buildings are a ghostly reminder of a formerly thriving community. Journalist and historian Jim Ridings, in Cardiff: Illinois's Lost Mining Town, documents a vanished town in Illinois that has left little in terms of structures, though artifacts could be uncovered in a future historical archeological excavation. Even though the material culture of Cardiff is currently sparse, Ridings has collected a rich array of photographs of the people who for a time called the coal mining town of Cardiff home. Through these photographs, Ridings is able to present the community during its beginnings, its prime, and its steep decline in the early twentieth century.Cardiff, in Livingston County, Illinois, sprung up after the White Breast Fuel Coal Company discovered a rich vein of coal north of the small town of Campus in 1899. The mine immediately produced an abundance of coal by a subsidy of the coal company, the Cardiff Coal Company. The name of the subsidy and town, Cardiff, was in honor of the abundant coal region of Cardiff, Wales. Production stalled in 1903, however, after an explosion in the mine killed three miners, followed by another explosion several days later taking the lives of more miners. Although that brought the mine, and seemingly the town as well, to an end, the Cardiff Coal Company established a second mine a few months later and the town began to grow again as the new mine proved quite productive and attracted miners, who in many instances brought their families to settle in Cardiff. The coal town developed quickly as the company built homes for miners and their families and established a dry goods store; saloons followed, along with banks, schools, and other attributes of a Midwestern town.Ridings's narrative provides a concise history of the town, with a variety of stories that are grounded in the lived experience of the townsfolk. More importantly, the vibrancy of the town and its people are reflected in the many pictures that make up the majority of the pages of Ridings's history. Photography was becoming fairly common in the first two decades of the twentieth century, though it could still be a special occasion to have one's photo taken. The surviving photographs that Ridings provides in Cardiff depict miners at work and at leisure in one of Cardiff's many saloons; schoolchildren smiling in the group photos of their class; the local baseball team having a team picture taken along with photos of the team playing a game at the baseball field. Photos of wedding partners and their families appear frequently in Cardiff as well as individual portraits and those of couples.For many of the photographs, Ridings provides extensive captions that describe the individuals, associates, workmates, classmates, families, businesses, and other attributes of a town over the course of its history. By noting the birthplaces of many of those photographed, it becomes quite clear to the reader that the population of Cardiff had a good deal of ethnic diversity. Immigrants from the British Isles are well represented. However, a surprising number of Italians made Cardiff their home. In many instances, chain migration is evident in those who arrived from overseas. Native-born Americans from the Northeast and Midwest make up a substantial portion of the population as well.Over the course of several chapters, Ridings narrates the history of the town. He also has a chapter on the nearby town of Campus. The book concludes with the closing of the mine and the depopulation of Cardiff that began almost immediately. Nevertheless, families continued to live in the town as it slowly ebbed away. Ridings's final chapter explains the efforts to remember the town and its history up to the present day. Cardiff is an accessible book to readers interested in smalltown Illinois and the Midwest in general. It is also a useful book for those interested in labor history, particularly mining history.