Coal in Campbell County

In his Annual Report of the Territorial Geologist to the Governor of Wyoming 1890, Louis D. Ricketts wrote, "The coal of this district has little other use than that of supplying a local market." Years later, nothing could be further from the truth. The United States uses approximately one billion tons of coal a year, with about 390 million tons coming from Campbell County, Wyoming. Since large-scale commercial coal production began in Campbell County in the mid-1970s, most coal companies have changed names, owners, and boundaries several times. To let those changes go unrecorded would be to lose the very beginning of coal in Campbell County.