Union Pacific Coal Company
Compiled by Don Strack
This page was last updated on October 4, 2009.
April 1890
Union Pacific organized the Union Pacific Coal Company as a subsidiary to manage all its coal properties in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. In May 1868 Union Pacific had signed an agreement with two coal dealers in Missouri, Thomas Wardell and Cyrus O. Godfrey, to operate and manage coal properties that might be developed from Union Pacific's government land grant.
(Trottman, p. 42, gives July 16, 1868 as the date of the agreement.)
The fifteen year contract provided that the two men would mine the coal at their own expense and furnish it, at least for the first two years, to the railroad at $6.00 per ton. It also provided the men at least a 10 percent profit over the term of the agreement, which was signed on July 16, 1868. (Athearn, p. 139)
Wardell and Godfrey organized Wyoming Coal Company in August 1868. The Wyoming Coal Company was reorganized as the Wyoming Coal & Mining Company in January 1869, with Union Pacific's directors having 90 percent control. Wyoming Coal owned seven mines in Wyoming; four in Rock Springs, two in Carbon, and one in Almy, near Evanston.
(Central Pacific owned the Rocky Mountain Coal Company near Evanston.)
The Wyoming Coal Company made high profits from the "exorbitant" prices that it charged the railroad, which used coal as fuel for its locomotives. When the management of the railroad changed in 1874, the coal contract was ended and the railroad took control of the coal company, through its "coal department". (Trottman, pp. 43, 110; Klein, pp. 329, 330, 518) Union Pacific president Charles Adams called the coal operations "the salvation of Union Pacific; those mines saved it". (Klein, p. 334)
###