"A Look Back"

The Stories presented here are about people and events during the early days when this corner of Colorado was first settled.

Mining something
By Shannan Koucherik for the Museum of NW CO

Early settlers in the Yampa Valley saw the richness of the land for ranching and farming, but many also realized that there were other riches under the ground, and those would become a critical element in the development of Northwest Colorado.

The earliest white people in the Valley weren’t necessarily here to settle down and build a town. They found an abundance of wildlife as well as gold and other valuable minerals. Fortification Creek, which today often seems like little more than a drainage ditch, yielded enough gold to keep the prospectors in the area.

As surveys were done, it became increasingly apparent that there were vast resources of coal – some in plain sight. When the railroad arrived in the western part of the valley in 1913, it opened up possibilities for mines to operate and ship their black gold and other treasures of the earth.

Mt. Harris became a town centered around the coal mines there in 1914. With easy access to the new railroad, shipping the coal to the eastern slope became possible. A large storage facility was built in Denver to allow the mine to operate during the warmer months instead of battling the mountain snows during the time when demand was highest. The mines closed in the late 1950s and most of the buildings were sold and moved to towns around the Yampa Valley.

In 1918, the Craig Empire devoted a sizable portion of its front page to a description of a very large coal seam in Axial. Located 30 miles from the new railroad, it was called “the greatest coal mine in the world.”

“Imagine a coal mine where a lady may walk through every tunnel, room and entry, wearing her summeriest white gown and shoes, and never soil a thread on the trip.

“Imagine a big room, immaculate in its shiny blackness, of which the floor, the ceiling and walls are pure coal, nothing but coal. There is no slate, no dirt, no rock – not a thing but solid coal. And imagine a coal mine that has not a stick of timbering anywhere within its workings – the only timber used being the ties of the track upon which the coal cars run.” (Craig Empire December 11, 1918)

The editor of the Empire certainly exaggerated a bit in his flowery description of the Axial Basin seam, but there was no doubt that the entire area was laced with quality bituminous coal – much of which could be accessed without the need for deep tunnels underground.

F.M. Drescher surveyed Moffat County again in 1926 and reported that more than 100 billion tons of marketable coal was under the county’s boundaries. “The survey disclosed that there are 323,856 acres of coal land in Moffat County, or about 11per cent of the total area.” (Craig Empire August 11, 1926)

Drescher’s survey also disclosed a large seam of anthracite coal in the far northeastern corner of Moffat County. This seam was covered by an ancient lava flow. Coal isn’t the only treasure hiding under the open spaces of Moffat County, however. Uranium has also been mined over the years. Large reserves of oil and natural gas were discovered in the county in the 1920s and continue to provide many jobs in the 21st century.

Through the years, many families in the Yampa Valley came to depend on the mines for their livelihoods. Multiple generations of miners removed coal and other minerals and sent it off to other regions of the country. The quantity and excellent quality of the black gold made Northwest Colorado the king of coal.

As the United States went through economic booms and busts, the Yampa Valley experienced the same, but to a lesser degree, thanks to the constant need for fuel in other parts of the country. Miners experienced some layoffs over the years, but the continued demand for fuel and other minerals assured them that eventually the tipples would run again.

The mid-1960s brought a new demand for Yampa Valley coal when the first unit of two large power plants went online within short distances of rich coal beds. The Hayden power plant was fueled by the production of Seneca mine and the Craig station by Trapper Mine.

Seneca closed its strip mining operation in 2005 and Trapper’s expected closure is 2012. Other mines in the area still have vast areas of coal to mine and new mining techniques are making it possible to reach coal that wasn’t touchable even 40 years ago. The equipment is bigger and able to handle the millions of tons that are removed from the earth each year. The power plants are in no danger of running out of coal.

In the early days of mining, there were no regulations about the treatment of the land that was disturbed during mining. It was usually left stripped and barren, but in the past 40 years, as Americans have taken more interest in environmental impacts of mining, reclamation has become standard – and required – practice as the mines move forward across the vast deposits. When reclamation is completed, the land is restored to what it was before, or even better. Companies understand that responsible reclamation is one of the given costs of mining.

The richness of the Yampa Valley continues to move the area to the top of the world when it comes to energy production, and the legacy will continue for many years to come.