Horseshoe Basin District
Commodity: coal
This district (called the St. Anthony district) includes all known coal deposits of apparent value in the Teton coal field, a large area underlain by formations which elsewhere are known to contain coal. It is served by a branch line of the Union Pacific Railroad. The principal property is the Brown Bear, which shipped about 30,000 tons of coal prior to 1924.
The rocks of the district comprise Paleozoic limestone, shale, and quartzite, Mesozoic sandstone and shale with coal beds, and Tertiary lava. There is much folding and faulting, both normal and reverse.
The coal is in beds varying from 1 to 8 feet or more in thickness, commonly steeply inclined and rendered more or less friable as a result of faulting. Much of the coal is of good sub-bituminous grade. Evans estimates that the district contains about 11,000,000 tons of coal. The principal drawback, aside from competition with coal districts in Utah and other neighboring states, is in the large amount of deformation which the coal has suffered, making it relatively expensive to mine, and producing an unavoidably large proportion of fine sizes.
