Mixed news for coal. .. and a glance at Glenrock.

Wyoming's largest utility to retire majority of coal-fired power plant units by 2030

Wind Farm north of Glenrock as viewed from Muddy Mountain south of Casper.

This includes units at Dave Johnson, outside of Glenrock.

At the same time, the sale of mines to a Navajo corporation has been given the go ahead in spite of some questioning by members of the Navajo nation on whether the purchase is a good idea.

The reason that  might be questioned is because a person might legitimately look at the trend line for coal and not be too optimistic about it.  The closure of coal fired electrical generation units right withing the state really puts that into focus. Most of the coal  mined in Wyoming goes elsewhere, but if generating units are being closed down in the state, where transportation costs are obviously the lowest, there's reasons to be pessimistic about coal's future in general.  Particularly when the owners of one of those plants announced one of the units was being converted to natural gas.

Glenrock may be in the very epicenter of what we're seeing in terms of changing times and reflective of them.

I like Glenrock.

Indeed, in an odd tidbit, I guess, my wife and I spent our first night as a married couple in Glenrock where we stayed at the Hotel Higgins.

The little Converse County town between Casper and Douglas was originally Deer Creek Station, an Army post along the Oregon Trail.  It shares that sort of history with Casper, which of course was the site of at least three "stations" during the 1860s, and which is bordered on both sides, if you include the neighboring communities, by the locations of former Oregon Trail bridges.  In being an Oregon Trail place marker, Glenrock also shares a common history with Casper, as it was a marked place on the trail.  A small batholith there was the "rock in the Glen".

Glenrock as a town is at least as old as Casper, or at least I suspect it to be.  It supported ranching in the area, when transportation was much more primitive, and was an established compact town prior to World War One.  Oil was discovered between Casper and Glenrock in 1913 and the Big Muddy field was in development by 1916, fueling the refineries in Casper.  A refinery was built in Glenrock in 1917 to take advantage of the production which was closer to Glenrock than to Casper.

My father took this photograph of sheep in a pen, but I don't have any of the other details and can't quite tell where it is. It's clearly on a railroad, and the building in the background makes me suspect that it's near Glenrock, but I don't know for sure.

Following that, like all of Central Wyoming, Glenrock was tied to the oil and gas industry, and it has been ever since. But at some later point, and I don't actually know when, the major Dave Johnston Power Plant was built there.

Dave Johnston borders the North Platte River and is just a few miles away from a coal bed that at one time fueled it.  It became the economic hub of the town for decades.  It's been there my entire life and its so much in the background that its one of those things I don't ever think of as having not been there.  At least one of my earliest memories involves me going with my father to hunt east of Dave Johnston when I was no more than five.  My father's 1956 Chevrolet truck became stuck and we started to walk out, but a railroad crew stopped and pulled us out before we had to walk too far.  I recall my father was impressed that I hadn't been worried by the event.

St. Louis Catholic Church in Glenrock.

During the 1970s and 1980s Dave Johnston was a mock target for the Strategic Air Command, and occasionally you could see B-52 bombers flying low over it, using it as a mock Soviet target.  And during winter months you always take note of the plants steam rising up from a distance, a marker that you are near Casper if you are heading that way, or not far from Douglas if you are going in the other direction.

For many years now, the workforce at  Dave Johnston has been declining, and the town has been hurting as a result.  During  the oil boom of the 2000s the town picked up in economic activity as oil and gas workers passed through it.  Some lived there, but  many more were temporary residents or Casper residents, pulling off of the Interstate Highway to access the oilfield north of town.  An effort to boost the local agricultural community by putting in a sale barn failed, as modern transportation, perhaps, continued to give Riverton and Torrington, the established barns, the regional advantage.

And as wind has been coming in, the same is true.  Now, when you go by Glenrock, you not only see the massive coal fired power plant steaming just east outside of town, but massive wind turbines turning north of town.  If you take the highway out of the town, you run right past them on the highway.

Where this leads is yet to be seen. Converse County is having a major oil boom right now.  And it has a lot of wind turbine construction going on at the same time. The ranches in the area remain, but the town has also seen, very slowly, a unique retirement phenomenon in which Casperites retire there, wanting to stay in the region but tired of Casper's growth.  No fewer than three of the men I've served with in the National Guard have settled their in retirement, with two in Glenrock.

Glenrock was a way station on the Oregon Trail. Then a small ranching town.  Then an oil and gas town, and a power company town.  Where it's headed can't be known, but through Wyoming's boom and busts, it's remained remarkably viable, if not always fully well, compared to many other Wyoming communities.  It likely will weather the storms it seems to be facing fairly well.