 By the mid-1880s, Hamilton had two newspapers, the "Hamiltonian" and the "News-Graphic", as well as two banks, two hotels, flour mills, grain elevators, and other businesses supported by a population of around 1,800.Coal mining became of some importance to the town's economy in the early 1880s.The Hamilton Coal Company was organized in the spring of 1882 and began mining operations the following year about two miles outside of the town.