Mine Communities Supply Miner Needs

The camp's end came from outside it. In 1920 most of the smaller mines were folded into the Sheridan Wyoming Coal Company, and Peabody bought the larger ones soon after. By the 1930s machines had cut the need for miners while raising the cost of working underground; the Second World War brought one more boom, and then diesel locomotives took away the railroad's demand. Monarch, the last large underground mine, closed in 1953. The camp buildings were sold, abandoned or taken apart, and many of the houses were moved into Sheridan, where people live in them still.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sheridan Inn — 7.3 mi
  A hunting-lodge hotel with sixty-nine gables, where Buffalo Bill is said to have auditioned Wild West acts from the porch.
• Trail End State Historic Site — 7.5 mi
  A Texas trail hand's Flemish Revival mansion, five years in the building, that he barely lived in once Wyoming sent him to the governor's office and the Senate.
• Connor Battlefield State Historic Site — 8.0 mi
  In 1865 General Connor's troops attacked Black Bear's Arapaho village here while many of its men were away; women and children died with the warriors.
• Rosebud Battlefield State Park — 22 mi
  The ridges where Crook's column was stopped eight days before the Little Bighorn, remembered by the Cheyenne for one woman's ride.

More markers nearby

• Mines Shape a Community — 2.6 mi
• The Black Diamonds of Wyoming — 2.9 mi
• Crook Monument — 7.5 mi
• Site of the First Cabin Built in Sheridan — 7.7 mi