Fossil Fuel Traditional Cache

This cache is located near the once coal mining town of Renton, now a residential community. The Renton mine was a deep shaft bituminous coal mine. Many of the early miners were immigrants from Europe and Eastern Europe who lived in the company houses and shopped at the company store. In 1920, an explosion in Renton Mine No. 3 killed nine miners. The mine closed in 1987. Today, there is a fire in the mine which has been burning for years. Fires in closed and abandoned mines cause subsidence, dangerous gas emmisions, and tainted water supplies, and are extremely hard to put out. There are ongoing efforts to extinguish this fire.