The town of Zeigler, in deep southern Illinois, had a remarkable history. The town’s creator and mine owner, Joseph Leiter, had visions of grandeur and commissioned  an urban layout iterative of Washington D.C.’s circle with radiating avenues.

Zeigler was briefly operated as an oppressive company town run by the coal company with the goal of exploiting its exceptionally rich vein of coal through the labor of immigrant miners speaking 28 languages. When necessary to break a strike, the company imported African American scabs.

Lethal explosions (such as in 1905 in which fifty men were killed) and labor conflict led the mine’s original owner (1901-1910) to sell out. Bell and Zoller Coal Company took over the mine and the town prospered, even surviving the Great Depression. But as the demand for coal diminished the town of Zeigler withered. From a peak population of 7,000 in 1926, today it has fewer than fifteen hundred. The thriving businesses that once served the town are gone, leaving abandoned buildings and empty lots.

A memorial in the center of the circle recalls Zeigler’s time as a major coal center, but not specific accidents.

However, before the statue was erected in 1974 at the center of the original town’s roundabout there was a fountain, created in 1960. The fountain had disappeared by the time we visited in 2022. The fountain itself was a memorial, as attested by its dedicatory plaque, which still exists on the pavement in front of the miner statue of 1974. It does honor miners living and dead – we assume “dead” encompasses not only miners who died at the end of their lives but those who died in tragedies.

As an interesting tangent we include below a brief article about very different company towns, unrelated to coal towns that were run as company towns.