Trona Precursors

Trona Precursors. Trona Trail Historic Mine Byway. Just prior to World War II, the Union Pacific Railroad verified the existence of trona and the immense size of the trona patch through core drilling across its vast land holdings. Prior to development of the trona industry in the 1940s and 1950s, entrepreneurs in Green River tried their hand at several chemical and energy industries, including sal soda, a hydrated sodium carbonate used as a general cleanser. , Side-bar on the right , Sal Soda: The First , In pursuit of oil, the Green River Fuel and Oil Company drilled the first well at Green River in 1896. Instead of oil, the company found saline water that the State University at Laramie (now the University of Wyoming) identified as containing high-grade sal soda. Professors at the university valued the sal soda higher than oil. Sodium carbonate from the trona beds below probably combined with ground water to create the saline mixture. , In the early twentieth century, a series of owners and lessees attempted to profit from additional wells of sal soda, selling it to the Union Pacific Railroad as a water softener and to local laundries and soap manufacturers in multiple states. , A power plant was developed to support production of sal soda. This private utility provided Green River's first electricity. The efforts to produce saleable quantities of sal soda were only occasionally successful, and production of sal soda occurred sporadically in Green River during the early twentieth century. , Side-bar on the left , The City of Green River , Green River began as a stage station on the Overland Trail. The Union Pacific Railroad located facilities here in 1872, making Green River a busy U.P. town. Historic economic drivers for the region were the railroad and ranching. These eventually gave way to oil and natural gas development as well as trona mining and processing.