The Union Pacific Coal Company was formed in 1874 as the Union Pacific Coal Department by the

Union Pacific Railway The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

. The company was formed because Union Pacific's former coal supplier, Wyoming Coal and Mining Company, was selling coal at highly inflated costs to the railroad.

Founding

Before 1874 the Union Pacific Railway owned all of the mineral rights along its right-of-way but not a mining company, thus the Wyoming Mining and Coal Company provided

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

to the railroad. This was a problem for UP because the coal company's stock was owned by Oliver Ames, the Wyoming Coal Company president and five members of the

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

for UP. Wyoming Coal was able to sell its product back to UP at highly inflated costs. The railroad's reaction was to form the Union Pacific Coal Department in 1874.Mining, Then and Now
" Historical Mine Information, Wyoming State Geological Survey, ''University of Wyoming''. Retrieved 7 May 2007.

History

After the coal company's formation it began to find ways to make money from coal mining. The company was able to stop competition by influencing the railroad to charge high shipping costs to other coal companies. The

United States Secretary of Interior The United States secretary of the interior is the head of the United States Department of the Interior. The secretary and the Department of the Interior are responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land along with natural ...

stated, on December 2, 1874, that UP was selling

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

coal in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

for

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

9 per ton while they charged other coal companies $10 per ton to ship their freight. By 1890, the Union Pacific Coal Department was replaced by the Union Pacific Coal Company. The UP Coal Company was producing most of Wyoming's coal in mines located near Rock Springs.

References

{{reflist Wyoming Territory Coal companies of the United States Properties of the Union Pacific Railroad