After years of respect, coal has become bogeyman of our nation's energy supply

The history of coal’s significance to Wyoming’s economy is being written today. It is beginning to look like a swan song.

Wyoming’s long love affair with coal can be written in five brief epochal paragraphs:

First, plentiful underground coal in places like Hanna, Rock Springs and Kemmerer were key determining factors in the Union Pacific Railroad choosing a route through the future state of Wyoming in the 1860s. Without the railroad, the state, as we know it, would have not come into being. Coal was a very big deal in our early days.

Second, when the railroad switched to diesel, the coal mines...