The Trona Capital of the World
Near Rock Springs, Wyoming
West of Rock Springs, buried under the high desert floor, lies the largest known deposit of trona in the world. Trona is a naturally occurring mineral that is refined into soda ash, which in turn is used to make glass, detergents, paper, and dozens of industrial chemicals. The Green River basin holds an estimated one hundred twenty-seven billion tons of the stuff, more than forty billion of it minable with current technology, deposited at the bottom of a vast lake that existed roughly forty to fifty million years ago.
Commercial mining began in the nineteen forties and accelerated sharply after the nineteen seventies energy boom brought investment into the region. Today the mines around Green River and Rock Springs produce the great majority of all soda ash used in the United States and a large share of the world supply. The minable beds lie between eight hundred and twenty-two hundred feet underground and the underground galleries extend for miles in every direction. You drive over them on Interstate Eighty without any sign that an entire industrial city exists beneath your wheels.
