Fossil Rock Coal Mine

(former Trail Mountain Coal Mine)

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This page was last updated on January 28, 2025.

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Overview

Now known as the Fossil Rock coal mine, the Trail Mountain mine in Cottonwood Canyon, northwest of Orangeville and Castle Dale, Utah, was developed in the 1950s and was a small mine, selling coal to the local market. As roads and trucks improved, the coal was sold to a wider market, but in competition with numerous other truck mines in the area. The number of employees for all of these small truck mines seldom exceeded 10 for each of the many mines.

Development began in 1975 and continued after 1977 with a series of ownership by out-of-state companies that included three oil companies. The coal produced in these years before 1992 was sold on the open market or by short-term contract. Beginning in 1981 coal was trucked to the C. V. Spur loading site south of Price, and loaded into rail cars for shipment to Nevada Power. The sale to Arch Mineral in 1987, and then Arco Coal later that same year continued the development of the mine, but the mine was still among the lower coal producers in the state at less than 1000 tons per day.

Utah Power & Light bought the Trail Mountain mine in 1992 to expand its coal reserves, replacing the mined-out portions of the adjacent Deer Creek and Wilberg mines. All three mines were taking their coal from the same coal seam, with the Trail Mountain mine being farther to the west from the two other mines. This was the same year that Utah Power & Light became PacifiCorp and within a year the underground connection between the Wilberg mine and the Trail Mountain mine was completed, along with a ventilation fan portal in Cottonwood Canyon adjacent to the previous Trail Mountain mine surface facilities.

PacifiCorp's Trail Mountain mine was changed to the Fossil Rock mine in 2011.

Abbreviated Timeline for Trail Mountain Mine

Before PacifiCorp (Before 1992)

The original coal mine that later became the Trail Mountain mine was owned by Earl Robertson, who operated it as a small truck mine selling coal to the local market. The first reference in available online newspapers was in late December 1956 when an explosion in an adjacent mine killed three, including Robertson's son Ted, and two young boys visiting him at the time. Robertson's mine was close enough for him to hear the underground explosion in the adjacent mine and rush to the aid of anyone injured. (Emery County Progress, December 27, 1956)

Earl J. Robertson, Orangeville, died Nov 17, 1972, age 76. Owner and operator of Trail Mountain Coal Mine for 25 years. (This suggests that Robertson opened the Trail Mountain mine in 1947.)

July 1, 1962
The Trail Mountain Coal Company was awarded the federal lease of coal in the original Trail Mountain mine site. The lease was transferred from Trail Mountain Coal Company to John Bell on August 4, 1980.

September 1975
Exploratory holes were drilled in September 1975. Applications for mining permits were submitted in September 1976. The existing surface facilities were located on private land, and surface ownership of planned mine was administered by U. S. Forest Service. The mine was proposing to expand on to 40 aces of federal coal lease land. If approved the mine operations would expand from 11 miners to 100 miners, working on two shifts. The mine was owned by John Bell.

April 1977
Trail Mountain Coal Company submitted a request for a permit from the U. S. Department of Interior to mine 285,000 tons of coal from a 40-acre plot of federal land. The permit (U-082996) was approved in July 1979.

May 1978
The Trail Mountain mine was one of four active coal mines in the Huntington Canyon area. Swisher, Deer Creek and Rilda were the other three.

November 1, 1978
John Bell sold the Trail Mountain mine to the Fetterolf Group of Somerset, Pennsylvania. John Bell had been the owner since 1975. The coal seam was between 6 and 9 feet thick and production in February 1979 was to be about 200,000 tons per month. (Sun Advocate, February 14, 1979)

July 1980
Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining cited Fetterolf's Trail Mountain Coal Company for violation of several requirements of Utah law concerning coal mines, notably failure to have a reclamation plan, failure to cover toxic materials, failure to minimize disturbance of water features, and failure to revegatate reclaimed areas. A joint state and federal inspection was completed on July 15, 1980, confirming the violations. In September 1980, a fine of $38,200 was leveled against the company. A total of 33 violations were noted as the result of 12 inspections.

In December 1980 the Trail Mountain coal mine was shown owing almost $8000 in delinquent property taxes.

In January 1981 the Trail Mountain mine was reported as mining in the 8-foot Hiawatha seam. Fetterolf had purchased the mine from John Bell in November 1978, at which time the mine had 13 miners working, using a single continuous miner. The mining method in use was the room-and-pillar method. Under Fetterolf management the mine had 70 miners working two shifts, using two continuous miner machines, taking out 35,000 tons per month. Coal was loaded into trucks and transported to C. V. Spur for loading into rail cars and shipment to power plants in Nevada.

January 28, 1981
Natomas Minerals, and its newly organized company Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Company agreed to buy the Trail Mountain mine from the Fetterolf Group. The reported purchase price was $24 million. (New York Daily News, January 29, 1981, "yesterday")

March 1981
The Trail Mountain mine was sold to Natomas Energy of Houston, Texas. In February 1982 the mine had contracts to furnish Nevada Power with 25,000 tons per month, Beaver Creek Coal with 14,000 tons per month, and to export 125,000 tons per month. (Sun Advocate, February 10, 1982)

During 1982 the Natomas Trail Mountain mine produced 600,000 tons of coal, which was shipped to Nevada Power, and to Beaver Creek Coal to help that company meet its orders.

February 10, 1982
The following comes from the February 10, 1982 issue of the Sun Advocate newspaper.

The new Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Co. is a subsidiary of Natomas Energy of Houston, Texas with another subsidiary in San Fransicso and Natomas Coal in Denver. Natomas has interests in the U.S. and Canada ranging from geothermal development and offshore oil to real estate and a truck line. Their largest coal interest is in Kentucky where they have eight mines.

Since the takeover in March of 1981, Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Co. has gone from 69 employees to 117. More importantly production figures show a substantial increase. The year to date average is 2285 tons per day and the December 1981 average was 3343 tons per day. Those figures break down to 21.2 tons per mine man day (yearly) and for December 28.6 tons per mine man day. The cumulative total for 1981 was 560,000 tons.

Mine officials say that the increased production is directly attributed to improvements made by Natomas. Projections call for 700,000 tons to be mined this year without expanding the mine. Present Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Company contracts include; Nevada Power at 25,000 tons per month, Beaver Creek Coal at 14,000 tons per month and export contracts at 125,000 tons per year.

(A photo in the same newspaper shows that the coal was being loaded into trucks by a large wheel loader, from a coal pile at the base of a conveyor at the mine portal.)

December 22, 1982
"Trail Mountain Coal Co. recently sold for $23.9 million." (Sun Advocate, December 22, 1982)

January 26, 1983
The following comes from the January 26, 1983 issue of the Emery County Progress newspaper.

Expansion of Trail Mountain has been rapid. When Fetteroff acquired it from Tom Bell in 1978 the mine employed one shift of 13 men using one continuous miner. Then it went to three shifts of 70 workers and two mining machines, turning out 35,000 tons a month of high grade bituminous coal from the 8 foot Hiawatha seam.

Production capacity is now 4,000 tons daily from two operating sections and two continuous mining machines. In three years production has increased from 2,000 to 75,000 tons per month. Last year's output was 650,000 tons.

Rice says the coal is extra-hard, clean and very free of rock as it comes from the belt. Trail Mountain's property contains a potential 50,000,000 tons of easily accessible coal.

Current production goes to Nevada electrical plants on long-term contracts and the open market. New markets are being explored and contracts sought.

The coal is screened and sized to specification and trucked to Beaver Creek's C. V. spur for unitrain shipment.

Natomas Trail Mountain is a subsidiary of Natomas Coal Co. of Englewood, Colorado, which in turn is an affiliate of the Natomas Company of San Francisco.

August 30, 1983
Shareholders of Diamond Shamrock and Natomas approved the merger of the two companies on August 30th. The merger took effect the next day [August 31], with a new Diamond Shamrock Corp. being the surviving, jointly owned company. "For now, the Trail Mountain mine will operate much like it has been. But all coal properties belonging to Diamond Shamrock and Natomas, including the Trail Mountain mine, will become part of Diamond Shamrock's coal unit based in Lexington. Ky." (Salt Lake Tribune, September 7, 1983)

January 18, 1984
"Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Company, whose mine is located in Orangeville Canyon, Emery County, is now owned by Diamond Shamrock Corporation of Lexington, Kentucky. The transaction took place in September 1983. Inoperative since October 1983 because of the coal market slump, the property was re-activated this month. It is expected that production will stabilize at 37,000 tons a month in 1984." (Emery County Progress, January 18, 1984)

January 2, 1985
The Trail Mountain Coal Company received a federal permit to mine coal for 5 years. "Coal has been mined on a small scale since 1946. Trail Mountain Coal Company was formed on September 1, 1983 as the result of a merger between Natomas Corporation and the Diamond Shamrock Corporation, and was known as Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Company before the merger. Natomas Trail Mountain Coal Company purchased the coal lands described previously from the Fetterolf Group of Somerset, Pennsylvania, on March 2,1981. The permit area will cover approximately 773 acres. Surface disturbance at the site is limited to 8.8 acres. Maximum mine production is at a rate of 400,000 tons of coal per year over five years." (Emery County Progress, January 2, 1985)

Also in January 1985, Utah Power & Light was taking bids for contracts to replace the coal production lost due to the fire in the Wilberg mine. The Trail Mountain mine was one of the prospective suppliers. The coal would be used at the Hunter power plant. Research has not yet found if UP&L began buying Trail Mountain coal at this time.

(The Wilberg Mine Fire occurred on December 19, 1984, killing 27 miners and management personnel. -- Read the Wikipedia article about the Wilberg Mine)

January 16, 1985
"Trail Mountain Coal Company, A Mining Subsidiary of Diamond Shamrock Corporation." (Emery County Progress, January 16, 1985, advertisement)

January 22, 1985
"Mr. Taylor said UP&L wants to test-burn coal, to assess its quality, from the Trail Mountain Mine in Emery County and Southern Utah Fuel Co. mine near Salma before continuing with the bidding process. The tests begin tomorrow at the Hunter power plant near Castle Dale." (Salt Lake Tribune, January 22, 1985)

"While Trail Mountain Coal Company is listed among local mines for Hunter delivery, Mr. Taylor said that because of a concern regarding high sodium content in that coal, test bums will have to be conducted before a contract is finalized. However, he said the facility, which is just west of the Wilberg, could produce 50-60,000 tons per month for UP&L." (Emery County Progress, January 23, 1985)

March 12, 1986
Diamond Shamrock was reported as offering to sell the Trail Mountain mine. The company was offering to pay for improvements and to act as the contractor in the improvement of the county road that accessed the Trail Canyon mine, desiring to have the improvements completed by the time of the sale. In May 1986 the county agreed to use its share of federal coal lease funds to pave the road to the mine, a total of $1.1 million. (Emery County Progress, March 12, 1986; May 21, 1986)

April 11, 1986
"Trail Mountain idled its operation in September 1984 because it had lost its contract from Nevada Power. When the contract was reinstated in July 1985, Trail Mountain returned to work but with a higher work force because Nevada Power requested 400,000 tons of coal a year rather than 300,000 tons like in previous years. In March 1986, Nevada Power reduced its contract amount back to its previous 300,000 tons." (Salt Lake Tribune, April 11, 1986)

July 22, 1986
The following excerpts come from the July 22, 1986 issue of the Lexington Herald Leader newspaper.

Arch Mineral to pay $135 million for Diamond Shamrock of Lexington - Diamond Shamrock Corp. announced yesterday that it would sell its Lexington-based coal company to Arch Mineral of St. Louis for $135 million, which analysts say is half of its actual value.

Arch Mineral, [50 percent] owned by Ashland Oil Inc. and the Hunt family of Dallas, already owns three mines in Lynch formerly owned by U.S. Steel Corp., and has been looking for more properties to build up its holdings in Eastern Kentucky.

The sale, which is expected to be completed by late September, includes all of Diamond Shamrock Coal Co.'s Kentucky and West Virginia properties but excludes the company's Alaskan reserves.

Diamond Shamrock Corp., the Dallas-based parent company, announced in March that it planned to sell the company as part of its plan to concentrate on its oil and gas businesses.

Wall Street analysts said the purchase price was low compared with the value placed on the company before the sale. One analyst familiar with the company placed the value at more than double the $135 million price tag.

But others said the current depressed coal market limited the price any buyer would pay. "Value is in the eye of the beholder," said Robert E. Garbesi, president of Diamond Shamrock Coal. "The market determines the price. People today aren't buying dreams."

Diamond Shamrock management agrees that the new ownership will be healthy for the coal company because the two coal companies have similar operating philosophies. "Arch is a strong, aggressive and progressive coal company, and they realize there is money to be made in the mining business."

Because of the similarities, the company's 1,750 employees will see little initial change in operations.

In addition to its Lynch properties, Arch Mineral, has other surface mines in Alabama, Illinois and Wyoming. Its mines produced a total of about 13 million tons of coal in 1985.

Properties owned entirely or in joint ventures that will be included in the sale are: Falcon Coal Co. in Breathitt County; Hawkeye Coal Co. in Pike County; Brown Badgett in Muhlenberg and Ohio counties; Amherst Coal Co. in Logan County, W.Va.; Gateway Coal Co. in Prosperity, Pa.; and Trail Mountain Coal Co. in Orangeville, Utah. The sale also includes extensive reserves in West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, Texas and Mississippi.

For Diamond Shamrock, completion of the sale will leave it with its core businesses of oil and gas companies. It recently announced the sale of its chemical operations to Occidental Petroleum for $800 million.

February 8, 1987
Diamond Shamrock was restructed to make the company less attractive to a hostile takeover by T. Boone Pickens. Included in the restructuring was a return to focusing on oil and natural gas production. The two top officers of the parent company, the chairman and CEO, and the president and COO, that oversaw the movement into coal operations were replaced. In the past year, the coal mining subsidiary Diamond Shamrock Coal Co., reduced its employee count from 2000 persons in the coal operations, to 1550 persons. Coal production dropped from 8 million tons produced in 1985, to 7.5 millions tons in 1986. The reduction was blamed on a soft coal market and environmental concerns of burning coal. The bid from Arch Mineral to purchase the coal operations for $135 million, announced in July of 1986, had been withdrawn due to a difference in price. (Lexington Herald Leader, February 8, 1987)

April 17, 1987
Trail Mountain Coal Company was purchased by Arch Mineral from Diamond Shamrock. The proposed sale was announced in March 1986, and Arch Mineral of St. Louis was supposedly to be the buyer. The sale was for the Trail Mountain Coal Company as a subsidiary of Diamond Shamrock Coal Company, which in turn was a subsidiary of Diamond Shamrock Corporation of Dallas, Texas. The sale to Arch Mineral was to be completed "by the end of the third quarter" (about the end of September) of 1986, with a reported sale price of $135 million, but talks were called off in mid October. Talks resumed and the sale was agreed upon on April 17, 1987, with the removal of a coal property in Pennsylvania from the sale due to a disagreement as to its value. (Salt Lake Tribune, July 23, 1986; Louisville Courier Journal, October 18, 1986; Lexington Herald Leader, April 17, 1987)

September 1987
Arco Coal Company purchased the Trail Mountain mine from Arch Mineral Company "last week." Arco already owned the Beaver Creek mine. The Trail Mountain mine employed 45 persons, and was producing 300,000 tons per year. The mining permit was transferred from the Trail Mountain Coal Company, to the Beaver Creek Coal company. (Sun Advocate, September 29, 1987)

(The Beaver Creek mine was the former Swisher Coal mine in Gordon Creek Canyon, with the name change being made in 1980. Arco had owned the Swisher mine since 1979, and also operated the Wildcat Loadout and the second loadout at C. V. Spur. In 1988, Arco transferred all of its coal operations in Utah to the Beaver Creek Company. In 1991, after closing the Gordon Creek mine, Beaver Creek became the Mountain Coal Company, also an Arco subsidiary.)

(The Beaver Creek name came from a creek in a canyon over the ridge north from the Swisher coal mine in Gordon Creek Canyon. From the point nearest the Swisher mine, Beaver Creek flows north and empties into the Price River near Kyune.)

October 1, 1990
Beaver Creek Coal Company took over the lease of the six sections west of Cottonwood Canyon that made up the Trail Mountain mine, known at the time as the Trail Mountain Mine No. 9, being Arco Coal's 9th mine in Utah, unrelated to the actual mine location.

1991
"During early 1991, Beaver Creek Coal Company merged with its sister company, West Elk Coal Company, located in Colorado, under the collective name of Mountain Coal Company. Mountain Coal Company is now In the process of commissioning a continuous haulage system at the Trail Mountain Mine that will deliver coal from the face to the section conveyor. This is an innovative technology that was originally developed in Canada and will improve the efficiency as well as the safety of this mine operation." (1990 Utah Coal Report, dated August 1991)

June 4, 1991
The mining permit for the Trail Mountain mine was transferred from Beaver Creek Coal Company, to the Mountain Coal Company. (Emery County Progress, June 4, 1991)

(Both companies were subsidiaries of Arco Coal, which in turn was a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield.)

1992
"Mountain Coal Co., which changed its name from Beaver Creek Coal Company last year, successfully installed its continuous haulage system in 1991 and increased its efficiency as well as its safety. Since the decline of the coal spot market in late 1991 and early 1992, Mountain Coal decided not to pursue that market and reduced its work force the past few months to serve its existing contracts more efficiently." (1991 Utah Coal Report, dated November 1992)

Nevada Power's Reid Gardner Plant purchased a total of 1.38 million tons of coal during 1992. Approximately 880 thousand tons of this purchase came from Utah with the remaining half million tons coming from Colorado. The four units of the Reid Gardner Plant relied almost entirely on Utah coal, with one of four major coal contracts with Utah coal producers being with with Arco subsidiary Mountain Coal and its Trail Mountain mine. In 1992, Arco sold its Trail Mountain mine to PacifiCorp but continued shipping coal to Nevada Power from its other properties in Utah and through some local purchases. However, in 1993, the major portion of Arco's obligation was fulfilled by production from its West Elk mine in Colorado.

PacifiCorp Ownership (1992-2014)

October 6, 1992
PacifiCorp purchased the Trail Mountain mine from Mountain Coal Company, a subsidiary of Arco Coal, which in turn was a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield. The economic conditions were making the mine's room-and-pillar and continuous miner methods more expensive than the low-cost longwall methods of other mines. PacifiCorp would lay off the Trail Mountain's miners, shut down operations at the Trail Mountain mine, and expand its own opertions into the Trail Mountain mine's coal reserves. "The area will eventually be mined from the Cottonwood operation." The two companies were mining coal from the same coal seam. PacifiCorp's current Cottonwood underground workings and operations were two miles distant from the Trail Mountain reserves, but would be linked within a year. (Emery County Progress, October 6, 1992; Salt Lake Tribune, October 29, 1992)

PacifiCorp acquired the idle Trail Mountain mine from Arco Coal Co. subsidiary Mountain Coal (previously previously known as Beaver Creek Coal Company; both subsidiaries of Arco). Some rehabilitation work was completed in 1992 and was to continue in 1993. Production from the Trail Mountain mine was to resume in 1994 as part of the Cottonwood Mine expansion.

The Trail Mountain mine was sold to PacifiCorp, but Mountain Coal's loadout facility and the coal stockpile at C.V. Spur were not part of the sale. The loadout at C.V. Spur was sold to Savage in 1994. (Beaver Creek's loadout at Wildcat had been retired in 1987.)

(Read more about the Trail Mountain mine under PacifiCorp ownership, from 1992 to 2014)

In 1995, PacifiCorp installed a tube conveyor from the Cottonwood fan opening in Cottonwood Canyon, to the Trail Mountain mine's coal preparation plant. This conveyor would allow coal mined in the western areas of the Cottonwood-Wilberg complex, and the long-wall areas of the Trail Mountain mine to be transported less distance than to the Cottonwood-Wilberg surface facilities in Grimes Wash. The tube conveyor from the Cottonwood mine was removed in late 2014 at the same time that the Cottonwood portal area was reclaimed.

Cottonwood Canyon Diesel and Tube Conveyor Portals -- Developed in 1994-1995, the diesel and tube conveyor portals were used for underground access from the Trail Mountain Mine (Sold in 2015) into the Cottonwood Mine. The tube conveyor was built to transfer coal from the Trail Mountain mine through the Cottonwood Mine to the tipple and loadout facilities in Grimes Wash.

After PacifiCorp purchased the Trail Mountain mine, new areas of the mine were developed using long-wall mining methods, and the mine was connected underground to the west areas of the Cottonwood, and the coal was transported to the new Cottonwood portal, and its tube conveyor. Long-wall production in the Trail Mountain mine began in 1996.

The original Trail Mountain mine, with its portal on the west side of Cottonwood Canyon, was closed in 2001 due to its room-and-pillar mining method being inefficient. Both the federal and state governments were complaining that the room-and-pillar method was too inefficient and was not producing the royalties each thought were possible. The original Trail Mountain mine's surface coal preparation plant and truck loadout, remained and was used by the above mentioned Cottonwood portal and tube conveyor from the east side of Cottonwood Canyon. (Documents on file with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality)

After PacifiCorp

Fossil Rock Fuels

In June 2011 PacifiCorp organized a new subsidiary to manage its regulated coal reserves. The new company was Fossil Rock Fuels and was incorporated on June 9, 2011. Its first property was the Cottonwood Lease of 2007, which had been awarded in 2008 to Ark Land, as a subsidiary of Arch Coal. Ownership of the Cottonwood Lease passed to PacifiCorp in 2011.

Ark Land Company had been awarded the Cottonwood lease on January 8, 2008. It was a Utah State coal lease. This lease encompassed about 8200 acres in parts or all of 18 of the 36 sections in T17S, R6E, located northwest of the Trail Mountain mine opening, and Cottonwood conveyor portal in Cottonwood Canyon.

In mid-2011, the Cottonwood lease was transferred from Arch Coal subsidiary Ark Land to Fossil Rock Fuels, as a subsidiary of PacifiCorp and Rocky Mountain Power, as part of a settlement of litigation between Arch Coal and PacifiCorp. The Cottonwood tract is adjacent to PacifiCorp's existing, but inactive, Trail Mountain federal lease. (2013 Utah Coal Report)

In June 2011, Fossil Rock Fuels, a wholly owned subsidiary of PacifiCorp, acquired the Cottonwood coal reserve lease in Emery County Utah, which contains an estimated 47 million tons of recoverable coal. PacifiCorp intends to sell the rights to the Fossil Rock coal reserves to a third party in the second quarter of 2015. (Documents on file with the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining)

(Mid-2011 was when the Trail Mountain mine became the Fossil Rock mine.)

Letter from PacifiCorp to various state regulatory bodies, dated June 21, 2011.

Notice of Subsidiary Formation -- PacifiCorp's intent to form an affiliate, Fossil Rock Fuels, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company for the purpose of transacting business with PacifiCorp's regulated operation and document an affiliate transaction by virtue of an Operating Agreement that will be entered into by and between PacifiCorp and Fossil Rock in the near future.

Fossil Rock will be formed as a wholly-owned direct subsidiary of PacifiCorp.

PacifiCorp intends to make a capital contribution to Fossil Rock in the amount of $20,020,000. Fossil Rock will use the contribution to acquire two leases related to the Cottonwood coal mine. PacifiCorp received the right to mine the coal minerals in the Cottonwood mine as part of a settlement of litigation PacifiCorp brought against Arch Coal Sales Company (Arch Coal) pertaining to the coal supply agreement Arch Coal has with PacifiCorp. Fossil Rock is scheduled to accept transfer of the coal leases for the purchase price payment of $20,020,000 and assumption of remaining lease payments in the amount of $5 million. This purchase price is equivalent to Arch Coal's original bid and obligations for these coal leases when Arch Coal acquired them from the Utah State Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA). The coal lease tracts are adjacent to the Company's existing, but inactive, Trail Mountain Mine federal coal leases. These reserves will be used to supply coal to PacifiCorp coal fired generation plants.

Fossil Rock Resources, LLC

Fossil Rock Resources, LLC, was organized in Delaware on August 29, 2014 and is owned 100 percent by Canyon Fuel Company, which in turn is 100 percent owned by Bowie Resources. Canyon Fuel Company was organized in Delaware on December 10, 1996, which in turn is owned 100 percent by Bowie Holdings.

On December 12, 2014 PacifiCorp. (under the name of Fossil Rock Fuels, organized on June 9, 2011 as a subsidiary of PacifiCorp.) agreed to sell its Trail Mountain mine to Bowie Resource Partners.

The sale to Bowie was finalized on June 5, 2015. "In the future the Trail Mountain Mine will be referred to as the Fossil Rock Mine. The Fossil Rock Mine is owned by a new company, Fossil Rock Resources, which is wholly owned by Canyon Fuel Company."

June 2015
PacifiCorp sold the Cottonwood preparation plant and the Trail Mountain coal reserves to Bowie Resource Partners in June 2015. These were located in Cottonwood Canyon, 3.5 miles due west of the Wilberg mine's surface facilities, and were connected to the Cottonwood-Wilberg mine by extensive underground workings and passages. The site today is known as the Fossil Rock mine.

Bowie became Wolverine Fuels on October 15, 2018.

(Read more about Bowie Resources, now known as Wolverine Fuels)

(The surface areas at the Deer Creek, Wilberg, and Cottonwood mines were closed, sealed and reclaimed in early 2018. This meant that PacifiCorp was no longer in the coal mining business, and buys all of its coal from other mines in the area.)

(The Cottonwood mine portal opening on the east side of Cottonwood Canyon was originally a ventilation fan opening, but was changed to become a coal conveyor outlet in 1995. The opening, known as the Belt Portal Area, was sealed in 2018. The surface facilities and coal preparation plant in Cottonwood Canyon remained in place. The covered tube conveyor from the Cottonwood opening to the prep plant was removed, also in 2018.)

The original Trail Mountain room-and-pillar mine was closed and sealed in 2001. Wolverine retains the rights to the coal reserves within the former Trail Mountain mine, as well as the coal reserves within the former Cottonwood-Wilberg complex (which includes the former Deer Creek mine), all under the Fossil Rock name.

The Fossil Rock mine under Wolverine ownership encompasses all four of these former PacifiCorp mines. These mines (Deer Creek, Wilberg, Cottonwood, and Trail Mountain) are all interconnected through their extensive underground workings.

(The area covered is essentially everything under what is labeled by USGS as "East Mountain," between Huntington Canyon on the north and Straight Canyon on the south, Joe's Valley on the west and Castle Valley on the east, an area of approximately 110 square miles, or 70,000 acres, with the actual area of land under federal and state coal lease, both relinquished and active, being considerably less.)

In January 2025, Fossil Rock Resources and the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) announced that the Fossil Rock mine would be reopened, and would produce up to 3 million tons per year, with royalties passing to the Utah Trust Lands Administration for the benefit of Utah schools. The Utah Trust Lands Administration became to owner as part of the land exchange between the U. S. federal government and the State of Utah in 1998 with the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The federal government took full ownership of each section of the land within the boundaries of the new monument, including the six sections of the 36 sections of each township set aside as income producing land for the nation's schools. In return, Utah took full ownership of the former federal lands that encompassed the sections where the PacifiCorp coal mines were located.

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