The Location
Here at the former Black Diamond Depot you will find a bronze statue dedicated to the memory of the miners that toiled in Washington's coal mines. Behind it is a granite wall engraved with the names of miners who lost their lives in Washington state coal mines.
Coal mining has always been a very dangerous occupation. Every day, miners risked their lives from explosions, cave-ins, methane gas, blackdamp, and black lung disease. Mining coal in Washington state is more dangerous than in other areas because the coal is not in flat sedimentary layers as it is in many other places. Uplift from the Cascade Range has lifted and twisted those coal layers into pitching seams that are sometimes near vertical. This made retrieving it especially risky.
Logging Requirement
To log this cache, there is one and only one easy requirement:
Take a photo of yourself or a personal object with the memorial statue, and post it with YOUR log.
There is no need to send me anything, and logs not following these instructions will be deleted.
I encourage you to post an ADDITIONAL photo of yourself in the driver's seat of the train. This is completely optional and will not substitute for the one logging requirement - it is just for fun.
Black Diamond's History and How it Got its Name.
The City of Black Diamond can trace its history back to 1880, when the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company of Nortonville CA needed a better source of coal than the low quality local brown lignite coal to stay competetive in the coal market. They sent scouts north to Oregon and Washington Territories, who discovered large deposits of high quality bituminous coal in Washington.. Thus, the company expanded into Washington and built a village on company land for the miners and their families to live. They named the village Black Diamond after the company. At the time, the village could only be reached by foot, horse, pack animal, or wagon. It was 14 miles from Renton, the nearest town at the time. In 1884, the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad extended its line to Black Diamond, and that effictively ended the company's mining operations in California. They began to close the Nortonville mines and move the operation and workers north to Black Diamond. By 1885, the population of Black Diamond had swelled to 3500 people.
In 1904, the Pacific Coast Coal Company bought the Black Diamond mine and village. The coal industry began to decline after World War I, when oil began replacing coal as a fuel source. Demand for coal waned rapidly and by the end of the 1930s, Pacific Coast disbanded the Black Diamond company town to save money and closed the mines.
Black Diamond incorporated as a city on February 19, 1959 and began to undergo massive population growth starting in 2018. The population is currently over 7000 people and it continues to grow rapidly as a bedroom community.
Virtual Rewards 4.0 - 2024-2025
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between January 17, 2024 and January 17, 2025. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 4.0 on the Geocaching Blog.