Thanks for writing. Those fellows like your grandfather, who went in first, with a canary, had to be brave men. They were checking for lethal gases. If there was enough gas to kill the canary, the man testing had to get out of there fast, or it got him too. Coal seams often have methane gas trapped in them, and a couple of other gases can form in coal mines. The latter two gases the miners called "black damp" and "white damp." Any of them could be lethal to the miners, and of course, they could also cause an explosion. Since your grandfather would have gone in there with an open flame on the front of his cap (old mining lamps burned oil, then later ones carbide, before they began using battery lamps) if a significant amount of gas had been down there, his lamp could have set it off. Somebody had to do it, though. ......Montana is a town that no longer exists. Only the local historians know where it was. In its heyday, though, it was a major mining town.

Gerald