The Cherry Mine disaster struck on November 13, 1909, when a coal mine fire outside Cherry, Illinois, claimed 259 men and boys, making it the third deadliest mine disaster in American coal mining history. This real photo postcard documents the scene on that date, photographed by Durham Photo of Princeton, Illinois, and carries the series number 13 in white script across the lower image. The postcard format and divided-back design place production squarely in the 1907 to 1915 era standard.

Hundreds of onlookers, many of them women in long dark coats and wide-brimmed hats, stream along twin railroad tracks toward the mine complex in the middle distance. The headframe tower, engine house, and smokestack of the St. Paul Coal Company rise against a pale sky on the left, while a slag heap on the right is crowded with men standing above the crowd for a better view. A stopped freight car along the right edge marks where the railroad line ends at the pit works, and the flat northern Illinois prairie stretches to the horizon in every direction.

The fire originated when a hay cart left too close to a kerosene lamp ignited underground while roughly 480 workers were on shift. The disaster made widows of more than 100 women and orphans of 500 children, and eight days after the fire broke out, twenty trapped men emerged alive in a miraculous survival.

Inscribed in white script on the image face: "13 / Scene at Mine Disaster Nov. 13, 1909 / Cherry, Ill." and "Durham Photo / Princeton, Ill." Pencil notations on the reverse read "9-08 Gn-DE / X400" and "100-."