The Rawhide Mine is a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

located 10 miles (16.1 km) north of

Gillette, Wyoming Gillette (, '' jih-LET'') is a city in and the county seat of Campbell County, Wyoming, United States. The town was founded in 1891 as a major railway town on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The population was estimated at 32,030 a ...

in the United States in the coal-rich

Powder River Basin The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very s ...

. The mine is an

open pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of minin ...

mine that utilizes a combination of cast blast/dozer push and truck/shovel mining methods to strip an average of 165 feet (50.3m) of overburden off of approximately 105 (32.0m) feet of coal. Rawhide produces a low-sulfur, sub-bituminous coal from the Roland and Smith seams. This coal is used for domestic energy generation and shipped to customers via railroad. The mine is currently owned and operated by

Peabody Energy Peabody Energy is a coal mining and energy company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its primary business consists of the mining, sale, and distribution of coal, which is purchased for use in electricity generation and steelmaking. Peabody ...

. As of 2009, Rawhide had reserves of 388,000,000 tons (352,000,000 tonnes) of sub-bituminous coal and a maximum permitted production capacity of 24,000,000 tons per year. Typical annual production has been in 12–18 mm ton range for the last several years though. In 2010, the mine produced just over 11,225,000 million short tons of coal, making it the 13th-largest producer of coal in the United States. The average quality of the coal shipped from Rawhide is 8,300 BTU/lb, 0.37% sulfur, 5.40% ash, and 1.60% sodium (of the ash). Train loading at the Rawhide mine is done in two passes. The first pass flood-loads the majority of the coal into the rail car while it is under the mine's silos, while a second pass tops off the car to its final target weight ± 250 lbs. Silo capacity at the mine's rail loop, which can accommodate up to three

unit train A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are dist ...

s, is 78,000 tons. The mine also has an intermediate coal silo that has an 18,000-ton capacity for 10"- run of mine coal and loads trains.

History

The Rawhide Mine shipped its first train of coal in 1977 after beginning pre-production work in 1974. Rawhide mine was previously owned by the Carter Mining Company, a subsidiary of Exxon, before being purchased by

on November 1, 1994.

runs the Rawhide Mine via its wholly owned subsidiary, the Caballo Coal Company. Production at the mine has been continuous since its opening except for an 18-month period beginning in late 1999, when the mine was idled due to market conditions. Mining operations resumed at Rawhide in 2001 with coal shipments resuming in 2002. In 1982, Rawhide mine was the recipient of the Sentinels of Safety Award from the

Mine Safety and Health Administration The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) () is a large agency of the United States Department of Labor which administers the provisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (Mine Act) to enforce compliance with mandatory safe ...

(MSHA), in the large surface coal mine category. The Sentinels of Safety is awarded annually by MSHA to the safest mine in each of several categories. Approximately 30% of Rawhide Mine's production was sent to

Monticello Steam Electric Station The Monticello Steam Electric Station was a 1.8-gigawatt (1,880 MW) coal-fired power plant located southwest of Mount Pleasant, Texas in Titus County, Texas. It operated from 1974 to 2018. History Monticello had three units. Unit 1 began operat ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

before closing in January 2018. Another customer from Texas,

Big Brown Power Plant Big Brown Power Plant was a 1.15-gigawatt (1,150 MW) coal power plant located northeast of Fairfield near Fairfield Lake State Park in Freestone County, Texas. It was operated by Vistra Corp's subsidiary, Luminant. The plant operated from 197 ...

, closed the following month.

Production

*No published, public data was found on the internet for these production periods.

References

{{reflist Mines in Campbell County, Wyoming Mines in Wyoming Coal mines in the United States Peabody Energy