Wyoming Mining, America’s Uranium Engine and a Rare Earth Frontier

Wyoming does its mining at scale and mostly out of sight. It is the nation’s uranium leader, home to the world’s largest deposit of trona, and the stage for one of the most important new American stories in decades: rare earth elements on US soil. This is our living master report on Wyoming mining, updated as Season 1 of Hunting Hidden Treasures crosses the state.

From South Pass gold to Powder River coal

Wyoming’s first rush came in 1867 at South Pass, a short-lived gold boom on the emigrant trail. The durable wealth turned out to be softer and stranger: coal seams that fueled the transcontinental railroad, and trona, discovered deep under the Green River Basin in 1938. That single basin holds the largest known trona deposit in the world and still supplies about 90 percent of America’s soda ash, the industrial ingredient behind glass, detergents, and baking soda. The Powder River Basin later became the largest coal-producing region in the United States.

Uranium joined the story in the 1950s, when discoveries in the Pumpkin Buttes, Gas Hills, and Shirley Basin set off a Cold War staking frenzy. Wyoming has led the nation in uranium ever since and holds the largest uranium reserves of any state.

Wyoming today

Modern Wyoming uranium looks nothing like an old open pit. Operators use in-situ recovery, circulating solution through wells and pumping uranium-bearing fluid to the surface, so a working mine can look like a quiet field of pipes and wellheads. Ur-Energy runs its Lost Creek plant and is building out Shirley Basin, and Cameco’s Smith Ranch-Highland complex ranks among the largest US uranium operations. Demand from reactors, and the small modular reactors behind them, has put the state back at the center of American energy security.

The newest chapter is rare earths. Bear Lodge in northeast Wyoming ranks among the highest-grade rare earth deposits in North America, American Rare Earths is advancing the massive Halleck Creek project near Wheatland, and Ramaco Resources’ Brook Mine near Sheridan pairs coal with coal-hosted rare earths, part of the first wave of new US rare earth mining in generations.

Who matters in Wyoming

• Ur-Energy, producing uranium at Lost Creek and building Shirley Basin.
• Cameco, operating the Smith Ranch-Highland in-situ uranium complex.
• Rare Element Resources, advancing the high-grade Bear Lodge rare earth project.
• American Rare Earths, developing Halleck Creek, one of the largest rare earth resources in the country.
• Ramaco Resources, opening coal-hosted rare earths at the Brook Mine near Sheridan.

We add companies to this report as work in the state moves, whether or not they are tour partners.

On the Season 1 tour

Wyoming gets two episodes late in the run, timed for the good-weather months. Episode 9 follows uranium from wellhead to yellowcake, and Episode 10 walks the new rare earth ground that could rewire the magnet supply chain for EVs, wind turbines, and defense.