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Cambria Mining Camp
Look for a large hangar at the south end of Afton.
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About 5 miles west is the site of the once picturesque Cambria Mining Camp—now a vacantly ghostly place. In 1887 Frank Mondell, sent by the construction firm, Kilpatrick Brothers and Collins, discovered coal at Cambria. This was the first coal found along a proposed rail route suitable for use in the locomotives of the day.
It made possible the extension of the Burlington through previously isolated northeastern Wyoming, and the founding of Newcastle in 1889.
Cambria was a prideful community of three churches and nary a saloon. Fifteen hundred people of 23 nationalities lived harmoniously there; 13,000,000 tons of coal were mined before seams played out in 1928.
Reminiscing old-timers sigh, “there was never a place like it”.
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