The Rocky Mountain Coal Mine is an amazing place to visit. It is a heritage property and if you can find it it is very easy location to see. The expansive facility includes at least 15 buildings. There were bunkhouses, power plant, heating plant, core sample warehouse, a couple clerical buildings, several maintenance / shop buildings, and a very interesting and dangerous load out building. The load out building was half collapsed but has the interesting setup for dumping the mining cars and then returning them to the mine. There are several mining cars laying around the facility and the main mine entrance is still in place; however it was blasted shut when the mine closed.
I assume the plant closed sometime in the 1970s however that is just an educated guess by the amount of decay and the type of electrical equipment that was on site. Time has been tough on this place, but it must have been amazing to see when it first closed. Even now it offers everything you would expect to see in a mountain coal mine. It’s too bad it wasn’t turned into a museum as places like this are fairly rare. However it is pretty far gone now and I expect it will continue to rot until it is gone all together.
The old mining carts outside the mine entrance
The mine entrance – blasted shut when the mine closed
Some interesting machinery in one of the buildings. I have no idea what this would be used for.
Generators in the power plant
A warehouse full of thousands of core samples
Unloading structure – the mining carts would be dumped here and then sent back to the mine
Looking back to the entrance of the unloading structure
There was a cart still in this in place. The coal would be dumped to the level below and then loaded onto rail cars.