Coal
Bituminous coal has been mined by underground methods in the Denver Basin, at Superior and Louisville, Colorado and other locations along the western edge of the basin. The coal comes from the Cretaceous Laramie Formation. Mining began in the late 1850s and stopped in 1979.
Large lignite deposits are present in the Paleocene Denver Formation in the central part of the basin, in a north-south belt east of Denver and Colorado Springs, in Adams, Arapahoe, Elbert, and El Paso counties. Some mining was done from about 1886 to 1940, but was reportedly minor.
Read more about this topic: Denver Basin, Natural Resources
Famous quotes containing the word coal:
“Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In those days, the blag slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the side of our hill. Not enough to mar the countryside nor blacken the beauty of our village. For the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers between the green.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)
“Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.”
—Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961)