Underground coal mining at the Ravensdale Mine was begun around 1899 by the Seattle and San Francisco Railway and Navigation Company. In 1900 the Northern Pacific Railroad (NPRR) built a rail line to the area, making coal mining much more financially feasible. NPRR created a subsidiary corporation, the Northwestern Improvement Company, which purchased the Ravensdale mine and built up the town of Ravensdale, populated mostly by miners and their families.

This panoramic photo features 40 miners posing on the surface, many wearing helmets with lights and holding what appear to be lunch and water pails. The site is purportedly the Ravensdale Mine. Tragically, the Ravensdale mine suffered an explosion in 1915 that killed 31 men, one of the worst mining disasters in state history. Miners left town to find other work at other mines, or to fight in World War I. As fuel oil and natural gas increasingly replaced coal as a source of energy during the 1920s, coal mines throughout the county shut down, including Ravensdale. The town of Ravensdale never fully recovered, and in the mid-1920s it became the only legally incorporated city in King County to dissolve. In 1975 the last underground coal mine in the state of Washington, the Rogers No. 3 mine at Ravensdale, was dynamited shut by Palmer Coking Coal Company.

Caption information source: "Ravensdale coal mine explosion kills 31 men on November 16, 1915," by Alan J. Stein, HistoryLink.org Essay 3576.
Caption information source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/puget-sound/ravensdale-marks-100-years-since-states-worst-mining-disaster
Caption information source: https://blackdiamondhistory.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/ravensdale-mine-to-close-down-leaving-rich-deposits-behind