Koehler, coal mining town
Koehler was a settlement in Colfax Couty. Its location was 16 miles southwest of Raton, 6 miles northwest of US 64, in Prairie Crow Canyon. It had a Post Office from 1907 to 1932 and from 1943 to 1957, after which the mail was set to Raton, NM. Koehler (pronounced KAY-lor) was a coal-mining town that began in 1906 and was named for Henry Koehler, president of the board of the American Brewing Company of St. Louis and the St. Louis, Rock Mountain and Pacific Company, which mined coal in Koehler and owned the town. Henry's brother, Hugo A. Koehler, was vice-president of the company. The demand for coal by railroads was high, and by 1907 Koehler had 1,000 residents. But like so many other coal towns, its existence was precarious. In 1955 Kaiser Steel Corporation purchased the town and razed almost all of its buildings. Koehler Junction was a settlement, now vanished, on the Ute division of the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe RR where the line to Koehler began, 2 miles east of Koehler.
Robert Julyan
The Place Names of New Mexico
2nd. ed., University of New Mexico Press, 1998
Koehler was one of the many coal-mining towns that sprang up in New Mexico but died when the demand for coal diminished.
Reproducing prohibited without express permission from the State Records Center and Archives.
Courtesy of the State Records Center and Archives.