DID YOU EVER WONDER: What's with the union banner on Cascade Avenue?

Downtown across from the library on Cascade there is a picket sign in front of GE Johnson Construction. My friend says it has been there for a long time. This company builds huge projects all over the area. What’s the deal?
— Jamie Lynn

ANSWER: The banner has been there probably 18 months and is NOT a picket line or picketing action. GE Johnson Construction Executive Vice President Dave Ivis said it is part of a national campaign by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters “protesting that we have used a local drywall contractor, Spacecon.” However, Ivis pointed out, “there are no union local drywallers in Colorado Springs.”

Ivis said, “They don’t have a dispute with us (GE Johnson), they have a problem with us hiring Spacecon. But we have a bargaining agreement with the union. We can hire nonunion.”

 Here’s an interesting tidbit: the people manning the union banner outside GE Johnson are not union workers. They’re day laborers hired by the union. Yes, we asked them ourselves after they had walked back across Cascade Avenue after lunch at the soup kitchen.

You’ll see the banners in Denver and other cities nationwide where the Pennsylvania-based Spacecon has worked on projects. Complaints by Carpenters’ District Council of Kansas City & Vicinity against Spacecon range from using nonunion workers, “misclassification of workers as independent contractors to avoid withholding taxes” and using undocumented workers.

Is that a kiln near the Sunbird?

As you drive North on I-25, just past the Sunbird restaurant in the valley to the north on the left side, is a stone, dome-looking structure.  It’s quite large and appears like some sort of kiln. So my wife and I couldn’t stand it, and we went to investigate.  On the inside it looks more like a grain silo, about 10-12 feet deep now filled in with junk, and about 10-12 feet wide. Is this some sort of air vent for a mining operation, storage facility, kiln or drying oven?
— Andrew and Lisa

ANSWER:  It’s a beehive/honeycomb coking oven where ore was cooked when the area was the Pikeview Mine complex from 1897 to 1957. It is one of the last surface remains from this area’s rich mining past. Coking coal was heated at an extremely high temperature and the coke/carbon remaining was pure enough to be used for smelting ore in the production of iron and steel.

Earlier, local resident  Darrell Green shared family stories about having to save animals that had fallen into the oven hole. Green told us that his now-deceased father could ride his appaloosa horses across the 500 acres all the way to the Flying W Ranch property to the west. It’s an open expanse but one that requires caution. “There are numerous open mine shafts spread out over the bluffs,” Green said.
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Send questions to linda.navarro@gazette.com with “Column Question” in the subject line; mail to “Did You Ever Wonder?,” P.O. Box 1779, Colorado Springs 80901; blog at gazette.com, Life. Queries must be signed. No personal replies; no telephone calls.