The Cherry Mine disaster struck on November 13, 1909, and this real photo postcard documents the scene at the surface of St. Paul Coal Company Mine No. 2 just hours after the fire broke out. Captured by Dunham Photo of Princeton, Illinois, the image is numbered "#2" in the series, placing it among the earliest documentary photographs taken at the site. Mine overseers closed the air shafts in an attempt to smother the underground blaze, and the structural consequences of that decision are the central subject of this view.

A dense crowd of several hundred onlookers, predominantly men in heavy overcoats and flat caps, fills the foreground, their backs turned toward the camera as they press toward the mine yard. To the left, the brick air shaft building has collapsed, its curved roof buckled and the masonry facade blown outward, leaving an open ruin. At right, the tall timber headframe and adjacent frame structures stand intact, with a wagon wheel visible in the lower right corner and a cluster of women and children gathered at the far edge of the crowd.

The Cherry Mine fire killed 259 men and boys and stands as the third most deadly mine disaster in American coal mining history. In its aftermath, the Illinois legislature established stronger mine safety regulations in 1910, and in 1911 passed a separate law that later developed into the Illinois Workmen's Compensation Act.

The image is inscribed in white ink on the face: "#2 / Scene at Mine Disaster / Showing Wrecked Air Shaft Nov. 13, 1909, Cherry, Ill." with the imprint "Dunham Photo, Princeton, Ill." at lower right. The reverse bears a standard undivided-back postcard format with the notation "9-08 Bu-DE / XAEO" and the figure "100" in pencil.