Though Josephine Roche did not live in Lafayette, her influence as majority shareholder in Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. was widely felt among the coal mining families in the area. She disapproved of working conditions in her mines and in 1929, two years after the violent strike at the Columbine Mine, she agreed to a 2-year contract with the United Mine Workers that raised wages and instituted more humane working conditions and hours.
She continued what her critics called her “highly touted social experiment” through the Depression and in a fierce wage war against Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. until her company declared bankruptcy in 1944. She is remembered by miners as “a good old soul.”
