Coalmont, Colorado

Coalmont is an unincorporated community and U.S. Post Office in Jackson County, Colorado, United States. The town is named for the open-pit lignite coal mines in the area, from which coal was shipped out on the Union Pacific Railroad to the mainline at Laramie, Wyoming.



Geography
Coalmont is located at 40.5625°N, -106.4444°W at an elevation of 8216 ft.

Climate
Spicer is a weather station roughly 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Coalmont, at an elevation of 8,385 ft (2,556 m). Spicer has a subalpine climate (Köppen Dfc), bordering on a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb).

Geology
Coalmont, Colorado, is the type locality of the Coalmont Formation.

Mining history
Coalmont was a mining town associated with the production of coal from the Coalmont Coal District. In the Coalmont Coal District, commercial coal mining from the Coalmont Formation started in 1909 and continued until the close of World War II when coal production ceased. Since then, the mines were inactive, until 1959 when a new open pit mine was opened and some coal was mined and sold in the Denver, Colorado area. However, coal mining ceased a year or two later and there has been no production of coal since that time, despite some coal prospecting in 1964 and 1965. The estimated coal production in 1941 was 1,438,355 tons, and the original reserves at 177,450,000 tons of subbituminous coal.