Craig Daily Press

Craig — Article from the Steamboat Pilot—Feb. 28, 1906

Written for the Pilot by Charles E. Baker

No other part of the Bear River Valley is so well adapted to a townsite location, the valley being broad and level and well above the river.

None of the drainage or surface water mingles with the subterranean flow, which affords most excellent water for domestic use. As a natural commercial center, Craig stands without a peer.

Its highways, stage and telephone lines reach out like tentacles to all parts of the county and adjacent territory, giving her a prestige that should make her the metropolis of the Western Slope.

The town is founded on a bed of coal which reaches from 10 to 30 miles on the north and northeast, terminating in the anthracite of Pilot Knob. This same coal series extends down the river 65 miles and south 20 to 30 miles, being cut off by the intrusive rocks of the White River Divide. One vein on the dry fork of Little Bear north of Craig measures 23 feet in thickness: 8 miles to the south, another vein of high-grade bituminous measures 18 feet. Five miles to the west is Cedar Mountain, once an active volcano. A vein of coal dips under this mountain three miles from its base, at which point the coal is so hard it can scarcely be pierced with a pick. Nearer the mountain this is supposed to be anthracite, although no development has ever been made to prove that the usual theory holds good in this case.

In the 1940s, the Colorado-Utah Coal Co. (this mine later went under the Colowyo Coal Co. name) bought the old Streeter coal mine in Axial Basin. They erected their coal tipple in Craig and hauled coal from the mine in trucks. That is when Craig first became a big coal shipping point. At some later date Senator Sam Taylor opened a coal mine in the vicinity of where the now idle Empire Energy Mine is located south of Craig; this mine also hauled coal in trucks and had a loading point in Craig. The Colowyo Coal Co. underground mine ceased operation in 1974. The W. R. Grace Co., having bought the underground mine and all the coal land holdings, opened a strip pit.

And this was the extent of coal shipping in Craig; later a spur railroad line was extended south to the Empire Energy Mine, and out to the Colowyo Coal Co. property.