The brothers soon started a construction company which, though it did a variety of projects, was most famous for building railroads, particularly in Colorado and Kansas.

Their walkout was a protest of a new method of payment, called "contracting", or "fathoms", which could sometimes result in a miner doing thirty days' worth of digging, and getting paid nothing for the work.

[1] A shooting war was triggered when one of the strikers, believed to have been unarmed, had been shot through the throat by a deputized mine guard.

Coates volunteered to mediate, and he was dispatched by the governor to be part of a commission sent to Telluride to investigate the issues that caused the walkout.

In 1901,[3] in response to thousands of requests, Orman commuted the sentence of Edward O'Kelley, who had killed Robert Ford, the man who murdered outlaw Jesse James.