SWEETWATER COUNTY — On Saturday, May 30, the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office will dedicate the Trona Trail Historic Mine Byway with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Centennial Park at 160 Flaming Gorge Way in Green River. The ceremony will take place at 1:00. Light refreshments will be served.
Trona Trail Historic Mine Byway, Sweetwater County
Driving across the scrubby, wind-swept, seemingly empty Green River Basin as it extends west of the town of Green River, few people are aware of the extensive roadways and bustling activity taking place 800-1600 feet below them in the trona mines. Fewer still know that this deposit of trona (also known as sodium sesquicarbonate) is the by far the largest and purest deposit in the world and that it supplies nearly all the United States’ (and some other countries’) soda ash needs. And fewer still understand the significance of this fact: the ore mines here are used to produce nearly every commodity in their lives as well as to control pollution in the air that they breathe.The Trona Trail Byway can begin or end at Granger Stage Station, or at a pullout on U.S. 530. Visitors can access the trail from east- or westbound I-80 or northbound U.S. 530.