Coal Regions of the United States
by Jeffrey Gerard, AmeriCorps OSM/VISTA
Twenty-six states throughout the U.S. produce coal in three general regions: Appalachian, Interior, and Western. To some degree, the geography and geology of these regions also differentiate the types of coal mined in these areas.
Stretching from Pennsylvania to Alabama, the Appalachian coal region contains vast beds of high-quality bituminous coal. Because bituminous coal has the greatest heating value, it is preferred in the steel industry. An exception to the bituminous deposits, northeastern Pennsylvania holds the only anthracite coal reserves in the United States. Anthracite is a hard coal once preferred for home furnaces because it burns cleanly with little smoke.
Today, about 35% of the nation’s coal comes from Appalachia. However, the Appalachian coalfields were mined much more heavily during the 19th century to fuel the country’s industrial revolution. It is because of this intensive, unregulated mining history that the Appalachian region has the most abandoned mine lands in the country.
Composing the Interior coal region, the coal of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma is also almost exclusively bituminous. However, the reserves are not as extensive as the Appalachian reserves, and the Interior region produces 13% of the nation’s coal, most of which is surface-mined. These states also have abandoned mine problems, though their extent mirrors the smaller level of coal production.
In the West, sub-bituminous coal lies within the Rocky Mountains. Containing around 40% carbon, sub-bituminous coal is geologically “younger” than bituminous coal and has less heating value. Still, surface mines in the Western coal region extract just over half of the nation’s coal production, especially in the Powder River Basin along the Montana-Wyoming border, which has the largest surface mines in the world.
Outside these three regions, lignite, a fuel that falls between coal and peat, is mined in North Dakota and in the Gulf States, especially Texas. Furthermore, mining for metals or various rocks is widespread across the United States, and often creates its own acid mine drainage recipe, containing pollutants such as copper or zinc.
Map of U.S. Coal Fields
from the U.S. Geological Survey
Coal Energy, for kids
from the DOE Energy Information Administration