Colstrip, Montana

View south

William Clark could not have foreseen what 20th-century entrepreneurs would make of the low-grade lignite coal he saw in the banks of the Yellowstone River, evidence of the massive Paleocene Fort Union Formation. Colstrip, Montana, pictured above, is a company town at a strip-mine and coal-fired electricity generating plant located thirty miles south of the Yellowstone River.

--Joseph Mussulman