Atlantic City US Steel Iron Mine Pit, Wyoming

The old mining region around Atlantic City, Wyoming, had a second boom when US Steel opened a modern iron mine nearby in 1962, and operated it until 1983, employing as many as 500 people. Over those 20 years, US Steel shipped concentrated iron ore to the Geneva Steel Mill south of Salt Lake City, more than 200 miles away, by rail, forming an open pit that is now filled with water, next to the highway, as well as sprawling waste piles and a recontoured landscape. To get the ore to Utah required building 80 miles of new track to connect the mine to the existing rails at Rock Springs. The railway US Steel built, in 1962, went through the historic pass at South Pass, and was the last railway to be built over the Continental Divide. The tracks were removed after the mine closed in 1983, though the roadbed remains, next to the old immigrant trail.