What's Really Hiding Under Wyoming

The baking soda in your kitchen almost certainly started its life as rock, more than a thousand feet under a stretch of high desert in southwest Wyoming. So did a big share of the glass in your windows. So did roughly a third of all the coal mined in America, and a good part of the clay in every cat litter box in the country. All of it comes out of the emptiest corner of the lower forty-eight, a state with fewer people than Memphis. These are 30 facts about Wyoming and the ground it sits on: the largest trona deposit in the world, one county that digs a third of America's coal, a gas plant that supplies about twenty percent of the world's helium, rare earths nobody has mined yet, and a volcano bigger than anything in human memory. And at the end, the strangest part of all. Who actually owns it? A railroad checkerboard from the Civil War, public land locked behind corners, and a split estate, where a family owns the ranch and the federal government owns the coal, the oil, and the gas underneath. Chapters: 0:00 The emptiest corner of the lower 48 0:45 Trona: the baking soda and glass under the desert 2:58 Coal: one county, a third of America 6:03 Clay, uranium, helium, and rare earths 9:14 Stingrays, dinosaurs, rivers, and a supervolcano 13:38 Fewer people than Memphis 15:12 Who owns Wyoming: the checkerboard and the range wars 19:12 The richest county and the next boom 22:30 A savings account and a split estate This video is only for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes. Figures are drawn from public sources (Wyoming State Geological Survey, Wyoming Energy Authority, federal energy and mining data, U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional Research Service, Bureau of Land Management) and from company statements, and are simplified for a general audience. Some figures are company-stated or estimates rather than measurements, including the helium share and carbon capture at Shute Creek, the Halleck Creek rare earth resource, which is not a proven mine, the planned size of the Cheyenne data center, and the acreage of public land locked behind corners. Historical figures, such as what the Wind River tribes actually received in 1905, vary between sources. Where sources disagree or a claim is disputed, as with the idea that Yellowstone is overdue, the video says so rather than presenting it as settled fact. Nothing here is legal, financial, investment, or real estate advice, including about mineral rights or access to public land. #Wyoming #Yellowstone #Geography #USGeography #SplitEstate #PowderRiverBasin #StatesExplained