(dramatic music) - [Miner] We're setting foot on ground that nobody's ever walked on before.

(group chats indistinctly) (dramatic music) - Every cut we take and we walk in there to bolt it, it's uncharted ground.

(wind whipping) (lively music) - It's a story of volcanoes, a story of dinosaurs.

It's a story of rivers and lakes and streams.

But it's the story of where we live.

This story is written not in words, but in the buttes and in the roads, streams and rivers we live along.

- When you're driving west on I-80 to go to Salt Lake City, off in the distance, you can see the surface structures of these trona operations.

They're the tip of the iceberg, literally.

Beneath these massive structures are small underground cities, completely functional.

- You know, it's our number two as far as assessed valuation goes.

They're a big ticket for Sweetwater County.

And not just Sweetwater County, but the entire state.

- Our landscape was created by the geology, but it's not just our landscape.

Geology has also impacted our culture and impacted our economy on a massive scale.

- Our job is to get the trona rock out of the mine so that our processing plants can separate the two and make sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate, which is baking soda and soda ash.

- Soda ash is processed from trona, and soda ash is used to make a wide variety of everyday products, everyday necessities: glass, paper products, soap, toothpaste, baking soda, textiles.

And it just goes on and on.

- You need to have this just to have the life that we're accustomed to in a modern world.

People need to have windows in their homes.

They need to have windshields in their cars.

They need to have fiberglass insulation to keep their homes warm.

Now we're looking at the need to have that carbonate source to help with the manufacture of lithium batteries.

- We have these mines, and now there's a thing where they're gonna be producing another 9 million tons of soda ash.

It's gonna double the capacity of the trona patch.

And it's all gonna be done with solution mining.

(kids yelling) (kids yelling) - [Teacher] Gotta be careful.

- [Announcer] Thanks to the generosity of donors and matching support from the state of Wyoming, the Wyoming Public Television Production Endowment helps make programs like this possible.

- It's like going into another world.

Nothing's familiar.

The smells are different.

The dust is, you know, more prevalent than you'd anticipate.

Diesel equipment's going by, and everybody has on hard hat and safety glasses.

And nobody looked like they looked when they were outside.

My wife's father worked his entire career underground.

My grandfather worked his entire career underground.

And a lot of the guys that I was underground with for that seven-year duration retired as miners.

- Just little cups of ice cream.

He wanted ice cream, too.

- Hey, hey, let me get everybody's attention, just for a minute, guys, before you head underground.

Today's a hell of a day.

There a guy standing right over here named Mike Burd.

Hired on out here June 13th, 1977.

- Damn.

- So today's Mike's last day out here.

What'd you say?

46 years, nine months and two days.

- Yeah.

17,077 days of employment.

Not work.

You know, I had some vacation days.

- [Co-Worker] Three days of work.

- This is a guy right here, gave his life to people that work in the mines.

Wish this guy a happy retirement, but more importantly, tell him thanks for everything that you've ever done for the guy that puts on a cap lamp and goes underground every day.

- Appreciate that.

- Congratulations.

- Thanks.

- Enjoy it.

I'm gonna look for you in town.

- Thank you, brother.

- All right.

- Okay.

My turn.

- Give Mike a chance here.

Come over here.

(Mike laughs) - Thanks, Burd.

- You're welcome.

You're welcome.

Hey, remembering back when I started in conventional mining in '77, I was only gonna work for, you know, well, I was quitting next month for the first three years I was here.

Honest to God, I was young and bold, but behind the scenes, I was scared.

I did not feel comfortable having millions of tons of earth over my head.

But the old-timers at the time took care of me.

Anyway, hang around, stick it out.

You know, this is a good place to work.

(group laughs) We're doing really well.

We're doing better than most people in the country.

(somber music) - [Interviewee] Such a significant percentage of the population is employed in the same industry.

It does form, I believe, a sort of kinship, you might say.

(somber music) - [Interviewee] We are sitting on top of a number of large miniature cities, essentially, underground.

(doors creak) - You know, working together, you spend more time with these people than you do your own families at times, so you do develop a close relationship.

- The work ethic and the lifestyle.

It gives you, it gave me independence.

- There's something about guys working in the conditions of underground.

It's not like scary every minute, but you realize there doesn't take much of a hiccup to put yourself in a bind, all of you, and you'd be relying on each other.

And there's just a comradery that develops and you get to know each other.

(chain clinks) (somber music) - Every week, they'd start another class of new miners, and after a while, I mean, only six months, you felt like you were a old-timer.

The true old-timers, who had come there from coal mines, they were a breed apart.

(eerie music) I spent 42 years in the industry, only seven of which were underground.

When I retired, they asked me what I wanted for my retirement party.

Did I wanna go out to dinner or whatever?

I said, "No, I wanna have lunch with the guys in the mine warehouse."

And I got to go down in the mine and sit down with my old buddies.

And my wife got to go underground that day.

Because that was my identity.

I just, I continue to identify.

And there's plenty of people who worked in the face who would say, "He's no miner.

You know, he was never up there shooting rock or running a miner or a shuttle car."

But I just identify with that end of the business in a great way.

- [Miner] Good job, boys.

(group chats indistinctly) - [Miner] He's got good hearing, yet, too.

- [Miner] Yeah, he still has good hearing.

(laughs) (group chats indistinctly) - History is full of ironies, and the trona industry in Southwest Wyoming is one of them.

In 1938, a company that still exists under another name, Mountain Fuel, accidentally, while drilling for oil, discovered trona deposits west of Green River.

And a deal was negotiated between the Union Pacific and a West Virginia company called Westvaco.

And it was Westvaco that sank the first shaft out west of Green River in our, what's called the trona patch, in 1947.

You already, in Sweetwater County, especially in Rock Springs, had a mining DNA in the culture.

So it just followed naturally to shift over to trona.

And over the years, up to the '70s, more and more operations were set up, and it became the immense industry that it is today.

- [Interviewer] How long have you been working in the mine?

- 12 1/2 years now.

- [Interviewer] Are you from around here originally?

- From Rock Springs, yes.

I was born in Wheatland, and then I moved to Rock Springs, and I've been here for about 36 years.

- [Interviewer] When you're outside the mine, do the people that you hang out with and your family and whatnot, know pretty much what you do and understand what it is you do down here?

- Yes, because a long time ago, we made a movie.

(hard rock music) (metal clanging) (hard rock music) ♪ I break the rules ♪ ♪ I walk alone ♪ ♪ I go my own way of heading back home ♪ ♪ I go too far ♪ ♪ Reach for the stars ♪ ♪ I see life the only way I know ♪ ♪ I walk the night ♪ streets singing my song ♪ ♪ Stay a while, but I won't stay long ♪ ♪ Take me in the fast lane, baby ♪ ♪ Don't say maybe ♪ ♪ I got to run to survive ♪ ♪ Take me on the highway, baby ♪ ♪ My way, baby ♪ ♪ They'll never take me alive ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ - Yeah, we're pretty good.

- Looking pretty good, Joey.

♪ I don't look back ♪ ♪ I will attack ♪ - [Announcer] The next step is exciting, and requires very special training.

It is blasting, and is accomplished by individuals with confidence and patience.

♪ Don't tie me down ♪ - Fire!

(explosion erupts) ♪ I'm going where the highway leads ♪ ♪ Don't want any ♪ - [Announcer] This is called barring down, and it's done with a long bar.

♪ Take me in the fast lane, baby ♪ ♪ Don't say maybe ♪ ♪ They'll never take me alive ♪ (group speaks indistinctly) - And how about you?

Do you feel at home doing this?

Is this something you can see doing for- - Oh, man, it is home.

(laughs) I love it.

Especially every payday.

(interviewer laughs) - Okay.

(miners speak indistinctly) (ore cracking) - I wanted to be a sculptor.

Put all my eggs in that basket.

I dropped outta classes, I went to work, so I'd have some money.

I was engaged to be married.

And the irony was, it was the boom days in Rock Springs.

You could get a job if you were willing to work.

Just walk down the street and you could get a job.

It wasn't hard to find jobs.

It was just hard to find good jobs.

So I started putting my name in at every industrial entity, all the trona mines.

And I remember before I went out to start work, calling my grandpa.

It was my mother's father, who'd been a miner all his life.

He'd gone from coal to trona, and then trona to potash.

And he cried and he told me, "I don't want you to spend your life underground.

I've done it.

I don't want you to do it."

"Well, Grandpa, gotta have money.

I got a bride, wanna have a family, gotta have some benefits."

I said, "I think it'll be all right."

I could hear his shoulders shrug over the phone, but that's how I found myself underground.

- Getting close to the end of high school, I talked to my dad about direction I should take, and he suggested this because it's what he knew and it was a good wage and good work.

- In West Virginia, you know, it's pretty much everybody's either coal miners or related to the field.

My dad's dad was a coal miner and dad's brother was a coal miner.

My grandpa was a coal miner on my mom's side, and that's the one I spent all the time with.

His grandpa was a coal miner.

So, and that's as far as I could get back on the history, so five generations.

- You know, right outta high school, dead end jobs were about all that was around town for someone my age until you get into the mining industry.

So that was the route I took.

Go make good money.

I never really thought of it being a career when I was young, but as you start, have more and more years go by being there, and then as you start to develop a family, then you realize it's about more than just you.

So you have to do the right things to provide for them.

- I got 17 years of experience.

I worked in coal for several years, and now I work in the trona mines.

- My dad worked underground and my grandpa as well on my dad's side.

And my grandpa on my mom's side worked up top in the plant for a while.

And it was just kind of a family thing, you know?

- So my dad was at one of the conventional mines when he was 19, and ended up retiring there.

He ended up retiring as the mine maintenance superintendent.

And then, so I got into it mostly because of him.

Went to college at the University of Wyoming, got my degree.

Come back to Southwest Wyoming, got on at the trona mines.

My brother also works at one of the conventional trona mines.

So, yeah, it's kinda, you could say a family thing.

(door slams) So here we are in Southwest Wyoming, and this is a good view of the four conventional trona mines, you can see in front of us.

Another one there, and to the far left, above that butte.

But this is the trona patch right here.

This is what it looks like.

(upbeat music) - Sweetwater County has a large amount of trona.

Generally speaking, it's considered the world capital of trona because there's about 42 different beds beneath us.

That's about 2,000 years of rate at which we are currently mining trona.

Trona, at its core, is what we would call a non-marine evaporite, specifically sodium bicarbonate dihydrate.

Now, nobody outside of someone trying to currently pass their geology degree needs to really know every detail of what I just said.

But about 50 million years, give or take, you are picturing a series of large lakes in Southwest Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.

And this area is massive.

One of these large lakes is Lake Gosiute, 15,000 square miles.

This giant lake surrounds what we would now call Rock Springs and covers most of Southwest Wyoming, including Sweetwater County.

Around the end of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago to about 30 million years ago, the Rock Springs Uplift occurred around what we would now call Rock Springs and White Mountain, uplifting these series of volcanoes.

And as they did, that volcano brought up with it all of the rock around it.

Things like coal and other things that are older than the trona, that should be much deeper, now brought up to the surface.

What that also did is it brought with it the volcanism.

This lake is full of alkaline and various other minerals and elements that are gathering together.

And over time, as that lake slowly faded out of existence, it left behind a form of evaporite.

That form of evaporite is what we would now call trona.

It is a story of rivers, of lakes, of volcanoes, and it is a story of where we live.

Trona isn't the only thing out there.

It's just the one we have 2,000 years' supply of that we've been using for 5,000 years.

It's just the economically viable one.

Every piece of American glass uses Western Wyoming trona, and you can blame that on things like a lake with a giant volcano in the middle of it.

- The lake evaporated, went away.

Dirt and stuff blew in on it, the land shifted, and that is what we go down through to get to where we work.

That's stuff that had blown in later, you know?

I remember how lost I felt the first time I went in that mine.

They're big, and it didn't feel like you would ever totally grip it all, you know, and figure out where you were.

But it's funny how fast you do figure it out.

- [Miner] I've never had to hoist in like that before, so, and I'm not really a fan of heights, so that was different.

- When you go to work in a underground mine, you have to have 40 hours of safety training that's, you know, dictated by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

You have a little bit of a heads-up before you go, but, really, you get on there and you're just kind of looking out the opening, where you can see the concrete shaft, it's just past, going by and going by and going by, knowing that you're, with every few seconds, 10 feet further, 20 feet further, 100 feet further.

- Once I got down in there and I seen how, you know, everything was nice and neat.

And you could stand up and walk around, and not be hunched over and crawling around to work, and how good the conditions were.

There wasn't a lotta water.

Most of the mines I worked in were really wet.

So you're wet and muddy, and every day, you come out soaking wet.

(door rattles) - We're kinda just at the beginning of our day shift here.

And this morning, kinda slash last night, we had our idle shift, which gives our maintenance crews an opportunity to work on the machines, work on the belts, and just kinda get everything ready to go and maintained for two production shifts.

- Yeah, you do a pre-shift on all mobile equipment to make sure that it's fit for duty.

Find something that is not in compliance, then you get that repaired.

Always make sure that it's fit for duty.

(engine revs) (horn honks) (engine revs) - Woo.

- Yeah, watch your head there.

(egine hums) - In this mine, this mine's huge.

This is the biggest mine I've ever worked in.

- You're not driving for a minute or two, you're driving for 25 and 30 minutes to get to a destination.

You're driving many miles underground.

The closest deposit in size to this one is likely Central Turkey.

It's a couple of square miles in size, where just the Westvaco mine lease footprint is currently 38 square miles, and we're one of several producers.

So you look at the hundreds of square miles of leaseable trona in the Green River basin, it is a world-class deposit.

- So the way I figured out where I was going or where I was at, was finding landmarks on my way in or my way out.

Like, there's a box here or there's something painted on the rib here.

However many cross-cuts.

There's a flag hanging on the rib here.

That's how, when I first started here, that's how I figured out my directions and where I was going, was finding landmarks in the mine.

(engine hums) (miners speak indistinctly) (miner laughs) (miners speak indistinctly) - [Miner] Hey, you guys, (indistinct) (tool whirs) - Everything you see here, regardless of the size, the weight, how big it is, came down in the same elevator that you came down in.

You know, everything that comes in the mine is pretty well gonna stay in the mine for its useful life.

If this breaks down, you don't ship it out to the dealership, you don't do that.

Once it gets down here and assembled, that's where it's gonna stay.

Even though we're 1,600 feet underground, we have to have a shop with lifting capability and ventilation and, you know, welding capability and wifi internet so we can do diagnostics on the newer equipment.

(tool whirs) - It's kinda hard to explain because I grew up hearing stories about the mine, but you don't really realize what it's like until you see it.

And when I saw it, it was a completely different thing than I thought it would be, and I was really interested in it.

It was cool.

And as soon as I hired on, it really changed the relationship I had with my grandpa because it gave context to the stories that he had told, and it opened up an opportunity for him to tell more stories that I would understand because I knew the environment that he was in.

(egine hums) - Yeah, if you guys wanna go look at some equipment, we'll let him by.

- All right.

- Go.

- [Miner] You guys have ear plugs?

- There's just that bond between everybody that works down there.

You know, everybody's watching what everybody else is doing, paying attention, because the guy working 20 feet away from you could be doing something unsafe that may impact you.

- Your fellow employees, the crew that you're on, they watch out for you.

They, you know, they try to make you feel welcome and know what kinds of hazards to be looking out for and how to get through every day.

And, you know, shift work was a new thing.

You know, how do you adapt to that with your family and with sleeping and when to eat and how do you, all those kinds of things.

And everybody's been through that, - I don't know what you'd call it, the brotherhood.

The closeness.

I mean, you come down here, you have fun, you do your job, and everybody goes home in one piece.

That's what I tell these guys, too.

I told these guys the same thing when they started.

I wanna come down here, I wanna have a good time, laugh, joke, get our job done, and go home the same way we came down here.

And that's what we do.

That's all I want.

That's what I wanna do.

- There's some good people.

They're all good people down here.

You know, it's like a family.

- You work with these guys, you know what's going on in their life.

That's part of being a supervisor, manager, just knowing your people, knowing what they're dealing with in their life.

If they got their minds on something else, they're more likely to get hurt, so you gotta keep 'em focused.

- The work isn't dangerous, the work is hazardous.

So there are hazards everywhere you go in the mine.

So we have to mitigate those hazards.

- We go into those cave-ins, we bar down a lot.

And bunch of loose pieces and stuff, and it's not bad.

It's fun.

Pretty safe.

Go to bolt and bar down, and we get chunks that come off big as vehicles and stuff sometimes, you know?

So it's like you can hear it popping and stuff all the time.

Popping, you know, it's gonna come down, so.

(engine hums) - Morning.

- Morning.

- [Miner] So here we are.

(crosstalk) - It's a main road, so it sucks.

There's a lotta traffic.

Gotta get outta the way.

(miner laughs) - I was gonna say, this is not a popular place to be bolting, for sure.

Better let those guys through, huh?

(person speaks indistinctly) (horn honks) - [Miner] Generally speaking, leave about a foot below us in the floor, and then we take out nine to ten feet, and then we leave three to four feet above us.

Figuring out how to ensure that the roof, or the top, stays up above us.

So once the miner has cut in there so far, nobody is allowed to walk underneath what we call unbolted top or unsupported top, unsupported roof.

- I probably have the best skilled guys in the mine, and we take them into the worst places in the mine to fix it and make it better.

That's what we do.

We're special projects.

I had safety look up when we had our last recordable, and they couldn't find any.

So these guys are really, really careful about everything they do.

And some of the places they do the cave ins, they do all the sump work and all the mine repairs there.

You can see they're rebolting this entire entry right now.

So they're amazing guys.

- My mom don't like it.

So you know how moms are.

My dad don't care.

He is like, "You go to work."

I worked underground at Bridger too, coal mine, so.

- [Interviewer] How's the trona compare to?

- It's like night and day.

Different, way different.

It was always wet over there, colder.

The top's softer.

Here, it's warm, top's better.

- Mostly dry.

- Mostly dry.

There's some wet spots, but, yeah, it's mostly dry.

- I'm mostly from coal.

I started at Mid Continent Resources in 1989.

I worked at a couple mines here, coal mines here in Rock Springs.

I worked at Lion Coal.

It was a four-foot seam up there on the side of I-80.

And then I got a job at 20 Mile in Oak Creek, Colorado, by Steamboat.

I worked there for 26 years.

And then they were doing some downsizing on salary jobs, so I took a severance package and I came here.

- And my wife always says, "I wish we woulda come out here when we were 18."

And I said, "I don't, because I wouldn't have the experiences I have."

West Virginia and coal made me the person I am.

My grandpa, he give me his dinner bucket a couple years after I'd been in the mine.

So he carried this old dinner pail.

So, yeah, put your food in there.

Put the lid on it.

Fill the bottom of it with water so you have something to drink.

When I was growing up, coal was kind of a boom and bust thing.

And it goes up and down with the market.

And he got laid off towards the end of his career, and tried to get onto another mine that just opened up when things started picking back up.

Well, when he took his last X-ray, it showed he had severe black lung, so he was kinda unable to go forward working in the mines.

Because nobody will hire somebody with black lung already because they have to go back and pay more for their black lung if you work for that company.

So he retired.

And I spent a lotta time with him, and I think that was the biggest impact when I was a child.

I remember sitting around on the back porch, listening to him and the guys he'd worked with tell stories about mining and stuff.

So I'd already knew a bunch about it, you know, just being a kid.

He was a big influence in my life.

Showed me how to garden and raise animals.

And I'd never been prouder than the day he give me his dinner bucket and passed that on to me.

- I've been mining for 4 1/2 years.

I got into mining, my dad was a miner for for 34 years.

I grew up with him working out at these mines, which is kinda what I do.

I'm an underground mechanic.

I train all of the new, incoming mechanics into the mine.

We bring them underground.

We do a full tour.

And then we start them from some of the most basic equipment, some of the most basic skills that they need to know how to be safe in the mine.

And then we start moving them in to the actual production mindset of running equipment and moving rock out of the mine.

- This is my first time underground.

Came from an oil and gas background.

- Trust the process.

- Yeah, you gotta trust it.

- They've been doing it for- - Ever.

- Ever, so.

- They do it in the coal mines, too.

- [Devin] On average, we do have quite a few oncoming guys that are new to mining.

- I'm gonna retire here, and then, hopefully, my son can retire here.

For all the cuts and just what they have planned, there's a lotta work still, so.

- I just met with seven new employees today, you know, helping 'em through their orientation and ask questions.

And guys that haven't ever worked in an underground mine, so they'll have that first day, just like each one of us did, the first time we ever, you know, got on that elevator in the shaft and rode down to the darkness.

- And we look after our own, right?

We are our brother's keeper.

And that's what I've been taught, since I started.

And you look after the younger guys.

(bar banging) - Underground mine mechanic.

Been out here for, since November, so like five months.

(people speak indistinctly) (ore crashing) (bar clanging) - We're running outta old-timers 'cause they're all retiring.

And all we have is really young guys.

And I guess before long, I'm gonna be the old-timer.

(upbeat music) They hired a bunch of guys in the '70s and '80s, and now all those guys are retiring, so there's a bunch of new jobs opening up.

But you have very little experienced guys to pass on the wisdom now.

- You talk about starting there that first day, I remember that.

I got lucky.

I got sent down on a training crew my first day underground, and I got hooked up with a guy named Mike Petrovich.

And Mike was getting close to the end of his time.

He spoke seven different languages, and he was an old slav, he was kinda short, but had a chest about that big.

And I remember, he always had a clove of garlic in his mouth.

(group laughs) He was always sucking on that garlic.

And he'd come up, threw his arm around me one day, and he goes, "You need to pay attention," he said, "'Cause one of these days, you're gonna be the old-timer and you're gonna have to tell them pups that are behind you, take care of 'em, teach 'em the right way to do it 'er else, so that they don't get hurt."

- The old coal miners, is the Greatest Generation, you call them.

The first guy I worked with, my first day in the mine, they say, "Okay, you work with him."

We go down, he walks off the cage, he leaves me.

(group laughs) My light went out.

(group laughs) The guy walked away and left me.

And the only reason I was able to find the three shaft is I could see a dim light a couple of cross-cuts down.

I mean, these guys, they'd lost so many people during the war that until they got to know ya, they didn't really care.

He just, well, Albert Zorko just walked away and left me.

(laughs) - Well, some of 'em were a little odd from all their days being in the coal mines.

It's a cramped little places.

They tell you stories about working at a seam that was less than three foot tall.

So they did all their work on their back.

They'd lay on their back to bolt the roofs.

And they'd tell you stories about that.

But- - Yes.

- Most of 'em were so jumpy that you had to be careful (laughs) how you approached some of them.

If you tap 'em on the shoulder, they might turn and swing at you.

They might holler.

They they do all, of course, some of the newer ones (laughs) still do that, too.

- Coal, the ribs, or what you guys would call walls, I guess, are softer, so they'll actually blow out when they take pressure.

- And my first day down there, when they blasted, was like, you're 1,600 feet underground and everything's shaking.

It's just, it's traumatic.

You're just like, "Oh, my goodness."

You just look at the roof.

I mean, you're sitting back in the lunch nitch, and they're all just having their cake and pie.

And you're like, "Oh."

It's just like, oh, my gosh.

- And when it goes off, the old guys would just put their hands over their food and wait 'til the dust stopped dropping.

- We thought we were rich.

We were making $7.50 an hour.

- My take-home pay was about 240 bucks a week, but a new Chevy cost me $5,100, too, so.

- First paycheck I got, I went to a bar to celebrate, shooting pool.

Guy told me that I couldn't make the eight ball where it was standing.

Bet him 50 bucks.

He said, "You don't have 50 bucks."

And I showed him my check.

I made it, and I went straight next door from the Lake.

Well, it was the Lakeway then.

And there was a little appliance store and bought a vacuum.

(group laughs) My kids didn't go without.

We went on vacations, traveling.

It gives you a lifestyle you couldn't have without it.

- Well, yeah, it's a career at these trona mines.

If you choose to stay there and you could do the job and do your job safely.

And, you know, you don't have to be a superstar.

Just show up and be consistent and steady.

You'll be all right.

If you're a dog, well, the crew kinda took care of the lazy guys.

And they'd flat out tell you, "Man, kid, if you can't cut it, you can't stay.

If you can't hang with us, we don't want you around."

So you either stepped up or you stepped out.

(group speaks indistinctly) (group laughs) - The trona industry in Sweetwater County employs a little over 2,300 people.

That's 10% of the Sweetwater County workforce.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll going into people's pockets and people's accounts.

- We came from a small town, maybe 8,000 people, so there wasn't even maybe one restaurant.

And then you could get pizza from a gas station.

That was all we had in our little town.

You had to drive 20 miles either direction to get to a bigger town that had more restaurants and stuff.

So it was a big change for us.

It's nice to have the things, you know, some of these things around town.

- Well, I'll tell you what, living here in Sweetwater County, look what we got.

It's all from, well, it was oil and gas.

We had the big oil and gas thing, but it's been the soda ash mines.

They have support.

We've got rec centers, we've got swimming pools, we've got the best schools.

- We just saw a lot more opportunities.

Our daughter was only, she was only eight when we moved here.

So we saw a lot more opportunities here, just, you know, with the things that.

She got into gymnastics.

- These kids go to school, and they hand 'em a brand new MacBook computer to do their schoolwork on.

You know, I was studying out of books that my mom and dad was using.

So it's just very good education system.

(audience applauds) - And so in 2022, trona produced $22 million worth of severance tax revenue to the state of Wyoming.

How that in turn transforms into the people's money is that it is generally saved and goes into what we refer to as the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund.

And so those revenues go into that fund, that we then invest.

And so we have seen exponential growth in the fund, to where it currently sits at about $12 billion.

The revenues from the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund go into what we call our general fund, which is our primary operations for state government.

And right now, it's funding about 30% of state government, from those investment earnings on the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund.

It is a fundamental operation of state government, and we rely heavily on those severance taxes and that Permanent Mineral Trust Fund.

- [Announcer] Roping.

That's Genesis Alkali, the world's largest trona mine.

Next year, Genesis Alkali will celebrate its 75th anniversary.

(upbeat country music) - [Keaton] Basically two production taxes with these industries.

And so they'll pay a severance tax that goes to the state, and then they also pay a production tax that goes to the county, which is better known as the ad valorem tax.

Collectively, those make up a large majority of the revenue, both locally and statewide.

- [Announcer] She's headed to Las Vegas in December trying to become Miss Rodeo America.

Thank you to the friends and family of the Powder River.

(crowd cheers) - The state also gets a significant amount through the sales tax.

You know, once the product has been processed, obviously, some of that's gonna trickle back to the cities, towns and counties.

Because of that trona, we're able to remain, you know, a top five contributor, which, how fortunate we are to have an industry like that, that keeps us whole and keeps us a mega producer for the state coffers.

(upbeat country music) (crowd cheers) - So Wyoming is fortunate, compared to our neighbors, to not have an income tax, and we don't have a corporate tax, and we have one of the lowest effective tax bases in the country.

The trona miners in Sweetwater County are contributing to the long-term financial stability of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

And that work is just fundamental from those trona companies right there in Sweetwater County.

- On a night shift, I'll usually sleep until about four or so.

I'll get up, take my boy to baseball practice.

Or if it's not baseball season, do something around the house.

And then I'll leave the house around six, and get to work around 6:30.

And, so we gotta take 80 all the way there, so that can get dangerous in the wintertime.

- This morning was, we drove to work in a snow storm.

Couldn't see barely 20 feet in front of the car.

And semis flying past you everywhere.

I was like, I'm taking the frontage road.

I'm getting away from all these guys, where I can take my time.

- I think it was in the '70s, they actually had the interstate closed for three days.

They took people out on a train.

- October 8th, 1971.

- Is that what it was?

- Woo-hoo!

- They took people out on a train to bring people out to work, and to let (laughs) those guys that were stuck out there go home.

- [Miner] Yeah, well, it's 'cause you can't shut that place down.

They can't shut the plant down.

- [Mike] No.

- Through the military, I've been around, you know, construction-type things and large, heavy equipment, earth-moving-type equipment, that type of stuff.

But a facility like that, to that scale, with those types of operations, I related it to a small city when I talked to, you know, my family members who don't live around here, didn't know anything about it.

It's like, I go to work in this, it's a little city.

And you ride a bus out to work with all these guys, and everybody gets off.

And you may not see 'em for the next eight hours.

So it was a little bit overwhelming.

However, the people that work out there, you know, your fellow employees, the crew that you're on, they watch out for you.

(group speaks indistinctly) - Have a good one.

- My day life here is focused entirely on safety and building connection, and so we can co-create safety together.

But outside of work, my passion is in photography.

I love the human story.

That is something I'm very passionate about.

And my whole goal as a photographer is to show the real fabric of what makes us humans and what connects us all as a community.

(gentle music) The goal today is we'll go meet some of the miners, to try and capture them.

The unity and the community, the bond that is between these miners, before they go underground.

Father, sons, we have brothers going down to provide us with this amazing product that we call soda ash.

(group laughs and chats indistinctly) ♪ When fear is the virtue ♪ - I've been here for a little over 10 years, and I work over in GR3 process plant.

This is my dad.

- Borer operator.

Been in the trona mine for 30 years.

This is my oldest son, Kevin.

- I'm also a borer miner operator.

I've been in the mine for 17 years.

- Can I have you put your hands around them?

Yeah, act like you love your dad.

Come on, now.

♪ I will rise ♪ ♪ I will rise ♪ ♪ I will rise ♪ ♪ I will rise ♪ (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Miner] Yee-haw!

(gentle music) (engine hums) (dramatic opera music) (dramatic opera music continues) - I need a new Hawaiian shirt for casual Fridays.

(dramatic opera music) - See you down the road.

- All right.

You have a good day.

- You, too.

(dramatic opera music) - We're miners.

We're not movie stars.

(laughs) (dramatic opera music) - Well, I was on the miner for 20 years, so it's still exciting.

It's always something new.

(dramatic opera music) (engine hums) (dramatic opera music) - No, I'm usually on the longwall.

I'm just over here helping today.

We're taking a bearing off of a bottom cob on a borer miner so we can repair it, get it back in service.

(metal clangs) - Perfect.

Okay.

(miner laughs) - That's hot.

- [Miner] Lift with your legs, not your back.

(metal clangs) - Okay, let's get this cleaned up.

Knock all that crap outta there, and we'll get this off of here.

(tool whirs) - Oh, I don't know.

It's all the best part.

(laughs) You get to come underground in nice weather and work with some great people.

And I love coming to work.

Just coming off of graves, I doubled into days, and then I'm going on my three days off, so.

(engine revs) - What do I have going on this weekend?

I've got a 2-year-old boy, and just get him out and run him around, and.

- I gotta teach him how to drive a standard.

That might be this weekend.

He doesn't know how to drive a standard.

- Yeah, I know.

- Yeah, on my list of things to do.

We've got some standard equipment down here, and that's why we're teaching him.

My lube truck is a six speed, so we're gonna go to my house and he can drive my old pickup around for a bit.

(footsteps crunching) - It gave me independence because that's when I quit surviving, and started living.

And after that, my boys never went without.

They never had to be ashamed of their clothing or our car or never going on vacations.

You know, they got to see the world because I took 'em.

And I tell little Bert, "You're so lucky you have me because you don't have to help me."

So now my son worked at a coal mine, and he's worked at the rigs, and now he's working trona.

And I am so proud of him now.

And I worried a lotta years, and that... Oh, here he is.

We're talking about you.

- How are you?

- This is Rebecca.

- I'm Rebecca.

- Bert, nice to meet ya.

- [Rebecca] Thank you so much.

- My name's Bert Lucero.

I'm Susan's youngest son.

I've been at Sisecam for four years now as a surface maintenance mechanic.

I do tell my co-workers, I've told a bunch of 'em today, that my mom was one of the first trona miner, or women underground.

And they look at me, and they're pretty impressed with it.

She's always been a big influence to do better and get bigger and do better things, so here I am.

- Well this one here is Aly's.

So, yeah, she worked underground for two summers.

- They gave opportunities for kids whose parents worked underground.

So you could go for the summer and you basically shovel in the darkest (laughs) depths over there.

But you made really good money, and so I took that opportunity.

Well, it was pretty cool 'cause it gave me an opportunity to see what my dad did every day, like to support our family.

So I wouldn't call it much of a miner.

I shoveled for a couple summers, but.

- You should see where they shovel, though.

(Aly laughs) It is our crusher, Mark, and it's not easy.

(Aly laughs) (Bert laughs) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - As far as the operation out here, I had no idea what it was about.

I thought it was mostly just mining.

But now, having worked here for 15 years, I know that it's, you know, it's chemical manufacturing as well.

- Oftentimes, the public's perception of mining ends with just the extraction of the mineral.

We are very fortunate to not only have the mine, but we also have the ability to process the product.

- So this is our two shaft, which is a production shaft.

And you can see it's got a 10-ton ore skip dumping right now.

- We get the rock from underground, bring it up, crush it, dissolve it, filter it, clarify it, and then essentially boil it so we can get a slurry out.

And then centrifuge that, dry it, and then we result from the trona rock into our fine soda ash powder.

There's a lot of different industries that use soda ash.

Customers that are FDA, food and feed grade.

And then we also have our industrial customers, so glass manufacturing, detergents, primarily the main ones there.

- I worked underground for about six years.

Been on the surface for about eight in the powerhouse.

It's a pretty good job.

I wouldn't mind just sticking it out 40 years here and calling it a day.

It goes by fast, too, especially on shift work.

14 years goes by pretty quick.

You wouldn't think it, you know?

Seems like just yesterday we were working in the mine, moving belt and power, you know, so.

(somber music) (somber music continues) (machine creaking) (somber music) - Well, getting those longwalls underground at FMC was a double-edged sword because room and pillar mining, the best you could probably get is about 55% extraction.

Usually it was 50/50.

And there were around 400, 450 people underground when I started in 1977.

And as you get that longwall, and it increased in size and it increased in size, there's about 185 hourly people out there now, and 40-some salary people.

And that longwall puts out as many tons as 450 people did in conventional, and with the drum miners and the borer miners.

And it gets to be about a 80% extraction rate.

So the lease actually lasts longer, you know, 'cause they're not leaving so much ore behind to hold the place up.

'Cause it collapses as it moves forward, so that pressure's taken off.

When the longwalls really, really got up to what they needed, you know, they got the torque they needed, the shears they needed, the motors they needed, and got those huge supports.

The one at Genesis is the longest underground longwall in the world that's not on coal.

And it's made it easier for the trona mines to compete with the Chinese.

China makes most, if not all, of theirs synthetically, which is really, takes a lotta energy.

Really nasty way to build it, too.

So the leases last longer.

They get more ore, they use fewer people.

But when we had the layoffs in the late '80s, I think we lost 700 trona miners out here in the entire patch.

- [Miner] Go ahead and scoot on down a little closer, if you want.

(longwall rattling) - Solution mining in the trona industry is kind of a game-changer, or definitely a game-changer, because, historically, they send, you know, employees underground in large numbers.

So, essentially, there will be nobody underground.

It's all gonna be performed on the surface.

Basically, you inject water at the correct parameters underground.

It goes into a cavern, develops the cavern, and is pumped back to the surface in a brine product, which the brine product is then pumped to the refinery, and through another chemical process, refined into natural soda ash.

They do have the technology proven in Turkey.

They have done it first.

They did it before we started it here, solution-mining wise.

I actually think that it's beneficial when you have somebody that knows what they're doing to come here, purchase an operation, or start an operation.

It provides jobs to the community, it provides income for the state and the county.

And it's been proven that they know what they're doing.

- [Miner] Don't get too close to that drum.

- I think the same thing could happen if they really get developed the way they want them to.

It'll be similar to what happened with the uranium industry around Jeffrey City.

They used to do that with people and trucks and shovels.

They got to using it with in situ mining, water mining.

Jeffrey City became a ghost town.

I mean, I'm afraid that could happen in this area.

That, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people during construction, but if they get to mining that, and it works out as well it they can, it's gonna displace underground miners eventually.

It'll be pumps and electronics.

(ventilation hum) - I don't know how to do anything else.

I've always done this, and, I'm pretty proud of it.

- Coal was huge in Rock Springs when coal was in demand.

Now, coal is still in demand, obviously, in many sectors, but not to the degree and extent that it was in those days.

Coal faded out.

But that isn't going to happen here because of the immense quantities of trona and the demand for trona, the need for trona.

(siren blares) - I don't know what to say.

Love you guys.

Take care.

I hope y'all have a long and happy career.

I hope that the underground mining sticks around.

And godspeed to all of ya.

Have a great day, and be careful.

Be freaking careful.

I never really got hurt in the mine.

I was safer in the mine than I was at home.

Got in car wrecks out in the wild, broke some ribs, broke an elbow, cracked my back.

That was all off the job.

So take care of yourselves, take care of your families.

And, how 'bout solidarity, huh?

(group applauds) (group laughs and chats indistinctly) - This place is gonna be a lot less colorful without ya.

(group chats indistinctly) - See ya, Burd.

- Have a good one.

(group laughs and chats indistinctly) (somber music) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) (somber music continues) - You know, I don't know if I'll ever retire, to be honest with you, but I'd miss going down with these guys every day and talking with them, hearing about their day and, you know, watching 'em work.

(machines whir) There's something about the miner cutting.

You know, the bits hitting the face and the ore going into the car that I just love.

I don't really have very many hobbies other than mining, so I'd probably miss it all, really.

(somber music) (hard rock music) (hard rock music continues) ♪ I break the rules ♪ ♪ I walk alone ♪ ♪ I go my own way of heading back home ♪ ♪ I go too far ♪ ♪ Reach for the stars ♪ ♪ I see life the only way I know ♪ ♪ I walk the night ♪ streets singing my song ♪ ♪ I stay a while, but I won't stay long ♪ ♪ Take me in the fast lane, baby ♪ ♪ Don't say maybe ♪ ♪ I got to run to survive ♪ ♪ Take me on the highway, baby ♪ ♪ My way, baby ♪ ♪ They'll never take me ♪ ♪ They'll never take me ♪ ♪ They'll never take me alive ♪ (people speaking faintly) (no audio) - [Announcer] Thanks to the generosity of donors and matching support from the state of Wyoming, the Wyoming Public Television Production Endowment helps make programs like this possible.