Crosses of Iron - by Nick Pappas (Paperback)

About the Book

In October 1913, 261 miners and two rescuers died when a massive explosion ripped through a mine operated by Phelps, Dodge & Company in Dawson, New Mexico. Ten years later, a second blast claimed the lives of another 120 miners. Today, Dawson is a deserted ghost town. All that remains is a sea of white iron crosses memorializing the nearly four hundred miners killed in the two explosions--a death toll unmatched by mine disasters in any other town in America. Now, to mark the centennial of the second disaster, veteran journalist Nick Pappas tells the tragic story of what was once New Mexico's largest and most modern company town and of how the strong, determined residents of the community coped with two heartbreaking catastrophes.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2025 Mining History Association Clark Spence Award for the "the best book in mining history published during the previous two years."

Winner of the 2024 Historical Society of New Mexico Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá Award--for outstanding publication in New Mexico or Southwest borderlands history.

In October 1913, 261 miners and two rescuers died when a massive explosion ripped through a mine operated by Phelps, Dodge & Company in Dawson, New Mexico. Ten years later, a second blast claimed the lives of another 120 miners. Today, Dawson is a deserted ghost town. All that remains is a sea of white iron crosses memorializing the nearly four hundred miners killed in the two explosions--a death toll unmatched by mine disasters in any other town in America.

Now, to mark the centennial of the second disaster, veteran journalist Nick Pappas tells the tragic story of what was once New Mexico's largest and most modern company town and of how the strong, determined residents of the community coped with two heartbreaking catastrophes.

Review Quotes

"An engrossing tale of the rise, the flowering and contributions, the disasters, and the memories of Dawson, a very important coal-mining site in northern New Mexico."--Richard W. Etulain, editor of New Mexican Lives: Profiles and Historical Stories

"Fortunately for students and scholars of the West, journalist Nick Pappas decided that the story of the nearly forgotten--and completely abandoned coal town--was worth researching and writing about. The award-winning writer's Crosses of Iron: The Tragic Story of Dawson, New Mexico and Its Twin Mining Disasters is an instant classic and a cautionary tale of what the coal company's pursuit of profit cost in human lives.... Pappas's Crosses of Iron should be considered one of the finest investigations of Western mining history."--Stuart Rosebrook "True West Magazine"

"In Crosses of Iron, Nick Pappas has skillfully fleshed out the story of Dawson--its unspeakable grief, its time as a cherished community and home, and its refusal to die in the memories of its residents and their descendants, who never live in Dawson but felt a kinship from hearing their parents' stories."--David Caffey "High Country"

About the Author

Nick Pappas is an award-winning journalist who dedicated more than forty years of his life to newspapers, most recently as an editor at the Albuquerque Journal. A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, he now lives with his wife in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Richard Melzer is a regents professor emeritus of history at the University of New Mexico's Valencia Campus. A former president of the Historical Society of New Mexico, Melzer is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Ernie Pyle in the American Southwest, Captain Maximiliano Luna: A New Mexico Rough Rider, and A History of New Mexico Since Statehood (UNM Press).