Neil McCandless sat in a Craig coffee shop, reminiscing on his 94 years in a town that has gone from sheep ranching to coal mining to power production but which is now moving toward an uncertain future.

Coal mining is ending in Craig, and the closure of power plants is in sight.

And the latest tranche of coal mine layoffs is on its way.

Colowyo Coal Co. filed the required federal paperwork on Nov. 4, announcing permanent closure of the surface mine and 133 layoffs effective Jan. 6.

That’s according to a WARN notice filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The company halts coal production by December 2025 and transitions to reclamation under Kiewit Mining Group.

Settlers had scraped coal from outcrops in the region for heating and blacksmithing in the 1880s, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report. Geologists found large deposits northwest of Craig by 1906, spanning 520 square miles with seams up to 20 feet thick, the report said.

Commercial underground mining started at Colowyo in 1908, accelerating after Moffat County formed in 1911 to meet railroad and homesteader needs, according to the Colorado Encyclopedia. Surface mining launched at Colowyo in 1978. Tri-State, the current owner, eventually purchased the mine.

Production crested in the early 2000s, and the mine earned safety and reclamation honors, according to press reports at the time. In 2013, the mine’s 259 employees drew $28.2 million in wages, with 75% living in Craig, according to the Craig Daily Press.

Coal mining declined over the decades, with five area mines closing since 1951. None of those closures was tied to the imminent closures of the Hayden and Craig power plants mandated by Gov. Jared Polis’ greenhouse gas reduction road map and regulations advancing “net zero” energy by 2040 — until now.

Craig had flourished early on in its agricultural heritage, with sheep ranching dominating the economy. In May 1956, the Craig Wool Warehouse handled 3.5 million pounds of wool shipments, according to the Northwest Colorado Cultural Heritage Tourism Project.

McCandless, the local veterinarian in Craig for more than 50 years, said sheep men grew wealthy from shearing and lamb sales, buying wide swaths of grazing land at 50 cents per acre.

McCandless, born in 1931, described the Craig of his youth as a quiet agricultural center with 2,000 people, unpaved roads and scant traffic.

“When I was a boy — my dad ran a newspaper — I could walk down there in the evenings and not see a car except parked along the road,” the lifetime resident told The Gazette. “Nothing driving, no streets were paved — a little sleepy town. They figured there were 2,000 or 2,500 people maybe in those days.”

Today, more than 9,000 people live in Craig and the surrounding area.

The shift from sheep ranching to mining occurred after World War II, when coal moved from occasional local use to large-scale operation, in part thanks to the railhead in Craig, built initially to ship wool to market.

McCandless recalled trucks hauling loads of coal from the Axial Basin and Gilsonite mined in Utah to Craig for shipment. Oil from Rangely followed the same path. Uranium boomed in the 1950s near Maybell, where McCandless’s brother worked.

Today, that rail line is in Polis’ sights for tourism from Denver to the Steamboat–Craig area.

Moffat County forecasts 437 job losses and a 43% decline in property tax revenue from the closure. County officials demanded $118 million from Tri-State in June 2024 as compensation for the mine closure and inevitable loss of property and sales tax income.