Wyoming coal production has seen a meteoric rise in the last twenty years. It had been constant for 100 years supplying coal from underground mines for steam locomotives and local home heating use. In the 1950’s, production slacked off as diesel engines replaced the coal-fired steam engines.

During the 1970’s the opening of immense open pit mines producing coal for power plants began Wyoming’s climb into it’s current spot as the nation’s the #1 coal producing state.

We now produce about one third of the U.S. coal from 22 open pit mines and it takes eighty trains a day, each a mile long with 110 cars, to haul it away!