THE OVERLAND EOUTE COUNCIL BLUPES TO OGDEN. 57 



O malia 650 miles. 



Hanna is a coal-mining town in tlie soutli-central part of the 

 Hanna Basin. T^vo beds of coal are worked here, one 24 feet and 



the other 36 feet thick, according to the mine supor- 

 Hanna. intcndcnt. They are separated by about 1,500 feet 



Elevation 6,769 feet, of strata in whicli onc coal bed 18 feet thick has 

 PoDuiaiion 1.892. i^qqh opcjied and several thinner ones are knoAm to 



occur. There are other coal beds below^ the lower or 

 36-foot bed tliat will be valuable sometime, but nothing has yet been 

 done toward developing them. 



Coal was discovered in tliis region by Fremont in 1843 on Platte 

 River. The beds were opened there in 1856 and some of the coal 

 was used in a forge. From 1862 until the Union Pacific Railroad was 

 built these openings supplied coal for emigrants and for the Overland 

 Stage Co. The presence of coal here was one of the reasons why the 

 Union Pacific was built along the southern branch of the Overland 

 Trail rather than along the northern branch up Platte River and 

 over South Pass. Production of coal for the railroad began at Carbon 

 in 1868, after the completion of the railroad westward to this point, 

 and the coal of this field has furnished power for operating the road 

 ever since that time. 



Tlie 



town 



line 



furnished much of the cojil for the road. But when the main line was 

 diverted to pass througli Ilanna the town of Carbon was deserted 

 and the mines there were closed. 



Tlie higher coal bed at Threetown, east of Hanna, lies rather close 

 to the surface, and the falling of the roof in the abandoned parts of 

 the mine makes bad surface sinks. One such hole about 150 feet 

 across may be seen to the right, on the north side of the track, south 

 of Threetown. 



Hanna has a daily coal output averaging about 2,500 tons. The 

 coal is subbituminous and is rather li^jht and free burning. Under 

 the forced draft of the locomotives cinders are throAm out and start 

 numerous fires along the track. Burnmg grass and smoking ties are 

 famihar sights along this part of the route, and even station buildings 

 are sometimes set on fire. It is estimated that 500 square miles in 

 tliis basin is underlain by coal and that 33,000,000,000 tons of coal is 

 available for mining. 



West of Hanna are several deep cuts m which the coal-bearing 

 rocks may be seen to advantage- Conglomeratic sandstones which 

 appear in two of these cuts dip eastward under the coal beds mined 

 nt Hanna. Farther west and lower in the formation there are a gi^eat 

 number of coal beds, many of them thick enough to be of value for 

 mining. These are all inclined about 20° toward the center of the 

 basin and are warped and faulted in some places. The rocks here 



