Cambria Ghost Town

Located 7 miles north of Newcastle, Cambria was born in 1887 when Frank Mondell, a future Congressman, found enough coal to fuel the construction of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad across northeastern Wyoming. The company built 74 beehive ovens to convert waste coal into coke shipped to smelters throughout the Black Hills, and Cambria coal even contained trace amounts of gold. From 1900 to 1920, between 1,000 and 1,500 people of various nationalities lived here. The community supported three churches, an opera house, a school, a hotel, a sawmill, and a concert band. By 1928, coal deposits were no longer sufficient to mine economically. The mine whistle blew for the last time on March 15. By abandonment, some 12,000,000 tons of coal had been mined at Cambria. Today the Flying V Cambria Inn, built as a resort on the old townsite, still operates. Stone foundations, 365 hillside steps, and mine buildings haunt the canyon walls.