Gilsonite mining digital photograph collection, 1934-1949

HISTORY OF GILSONITE MINING IN UTAH

Gilsonite is a hydrocarbon mineral similar to coal and petroleum in its chemical makeup. The name comes from one of its early promoters, Samuel Gilson; its scientific name is "Uintahite." It is found in commercial quantities only in the Uintah Basin of eastern Utah, and has been mined there since the 1880s. It was first mined in the area near Myton and Fort Duchesne, Utah, although later veins were explored and exploited farther east, near the Utah-Colorado border and south of present-day US Highway 40. Gilsonite, being easily fractured, was for many years mined with simple miner's tools, sacked in cloth bags, and hauled in wagons to markets via the Nine Mile Canyon road to Price, Utah, where there was a connection with the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. By the turn of the 20th century, however, these veins were being only intermittently mined because of depletion of ore and a number of spectacular fires and explosions that destroyed the mining machinery and timbering in the mines. The discovery and exploitation of the veins near the Colorado border made the route to Price, Utah, impractical, so ore was hauled in wagons to Craig, Colorado, and only occasionally to Price. Starting in 1903, a railroad was built from Mack, Colorado (just west of Grand Junction, Colorado) to the towns of Dragon, Watson, and Rainbow, about sixty miles southeast of Vernal, Utah. These towns became centers of gilsonite mining until the late 1930s. The miners, the employees of the Uintah Railway ('The Gilsonite Route'), their families, and associated workers lived in these towns, which had stores, saloons, warehouses, churches, schools, and other infrastructure. Additionally, the railroad served as the primary route to the other towns of the Uintah Basin, especially Vernal, Utah. A stage routeBat first horse and later automobilesBwas established to link Vernal with the Uintah Railway. The difficulty of maintaining the route of the railroad, the depletion of ore, and discovery of new veins near Bonanza, Utah, caused the focus of gilsonite mining to shift to that area. The railroad was abandoned in 1938, and the tracks were taken up the next year. The three small towns were abandoned and today virtually nothing remains of them. To overcome the problems of getting gilsonite to market, the American Gilsonite Company-successor to the many companies that tried to mine and market the mineral-finally built a slurry pipeline from their Bonanza mines in 1956. The gilsonite ore-- which is almost unique among minerals in that it requires no refining, smelting, or other processes to be used-- was mixed with water and pumped some fifty miles over the Tavaputs Plateau (following, for the most part, the route of the Uintah Railway) to a refinery near Mack, Colorado, which was built by the American Gilsonite Company at a cost of $16 million. Today, gilsonite is still being mined, and is used in plastics, varnishes, paints, oilfield applications, inks, and many other products.