Accounts vary as to who fired the first shot on the morning of the massacre, but testimony has established that the first offensive movement was made by the militiamen, who occupied a hill near the tent colony, in full view of the strikers. They planted a machine gun and exploded two dynamite bombs. Lt. Linderfelt had made those bombs; they were to be used as signals to call the militia and mine guards from nearby mines and camps, but the strikers didn't know that. They believed they were under attack.
When the bombs exploded, residents streamed out of the colony. About 60 men, armed with rifles, established positions in a nearby railroad cut.
Many women and children fled in terror to the hills or to seek shelter at nearby ranch houses. Others huddled for twelve hours in pits beneath their tents or in other shelters while rifle and machine gun bullets whistled overhead. Fifteen or twenty women and children escaped to a pump house near the tents, where they hid in a deep well. At 7 o'clock that evening, when a train pulled into the station, between the pump house and the soldiers who were firing into the tent colony, the women and children climbed from the well and escaped. The militiamen ordered the engineer, at gunpoint, to leave the station "damn quick."
A military committee, convened to investigate the Ludlow Massacre, found that the militia had attacked the camp. A gun battle raged all day, reaching a climax when the militia overran the colony. They looted the tents and then doused them with kerosene and fired them with torches.
Testimony given to a military investigative committee and to the Committee on Industrial Relations revealed that during the firing of the tents, the militiamen "Became an uncontrolled mob and looted the tents of everything that appealed to their fancy of cupidity," including jewelry, clothing, bedding, tools, bicycles, and money.
When the looting and burning was complete and the inhabitants all driven off, the militiamen stood guard and fired at anyone who attempted to come back to the colony or appeared on the roads or nearby fields and hillsides.
The militia began the next day to hunt down any who helped the strikers. The Colorado Federation of Labor issued a call to arms. Miners organized to protect themselves, and throughout the state they attacked and destroyed mine properties.
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