I have driven Highway 13 many times and have passed Mount Streeter without knowing it is there. Today, without its buildings and mine structures, it is totally unremarkable. It is fenced off and marked with formidable private property signs for a good reason, so please don’t trespass. As I drove close to the original mine site, I spotted a vent of smoke poking out of the hillside along the highway. I was surprised to see that the 1952 coal seam fire was still raging underground. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. I grew up in Lafayette, Colorado, an old coal mining town. I remember several times when sinkholes would appear in backyards, smoke rising like Indian telegraph signals. Dump trucks would be called in to fill the dangerous holes with sand and gravel. The area was surveyed not so long ago. The ground above the old mine is hotter than an oven. A test hole revealed that the rock below was blast furnace hot at 1,100 degrees. Compare that to melting lead at 621 degrees. The fire may never be quenched until all the coal is spent. On the East side of the valley, an exposed wall of rock revealed a prehistoric coal seam fire. The heat and gases had tinted the rocks red. Of the Mount Streeter townsite, nothing remains. The buildings are long gone, and the area has been responsibly reclaimed. Driving farther North toward Craig, you can see part of the railroad spur that Colowyo and Tristate uses to transport coal to the power station outside Craig. Morris Streeter would have been proud to know his dream of a railroad was fulfilled, just sixty years later than planned. He was right. Without efficient transport, the full potential of the Streeter coal seams could never happen.
In the late 1970s, with the prosperity of the Colowyo mining operation, new hope emerged for the railroad spur. Colowyo was already selling to power plants in Colorado Springs and customers all over the country. The coal was being trucked to Craig and then loaded into rail cars headed east. Plans were made for tracks to supply the new Craig power plant being built beginning in 1981. The spur became operational in 1984. It was boasted that a rail car could be filled in one minute, 10 seconds. The railroad envisioned by Morris Streeter and Dr. Pattison finally made it to Craig. It didn’t follow the exact 1920’s survey. The present day spur is about 18 miles long. I have to wonder if the Wild West promoters from South Bend Indiana had first started laying rails in Craig before developing the mine, would the mine and town of Mt. Streeter have boomed instead of busted.
My thanks to Terry Mobley and others who suggested and aided my research. The Museum of the Northwest, the Colorado Historical Newspaper archives, The Rio Blanco Historical Society. I dedicate this to the coal miners, engineers and others, past and present who have been keeping us comfortable and supported American industry.
BY ED PECK
