Valdez is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Las Animas County, Colorado, United States.

Soon after its creation, the mine was renamed to "Frederick" and rapidly expanded, producing bituminous coal sent to the coking ovens at Segundo.

[4][5] Frederick coal was also, from 1918 onwards, shipped towards the CF&I Minnequa steel mill along the Colorado and Wyoming Railway, part of the company's vertical integration strategy.

While Valdez had been one of company towns not to see significant participation in the strike, the violence of the Ludlow Massacre and the succeeding days forced Rockefeller, Jr. to improve CF&Is image.

He hired public relations specialist Ivy Lee and future Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King for this task and would visit Valdez in September 1915 as part of a general tour of the coal mining region.