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I suspect the difficulty you're having in locating the Powder River Basin is that a "basin" in geologic terms is a structural feature of the subsurface geology, not a surface feature you can see with your eye. If you look in the October 2003 Map of the Month it shows the exact demarcations of ALL the western coal basins. The Powder River Basin is named for the river that drains this area. It run north-south in eastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. The Hanna, Wyoming, area coal fields are not in the Powder River Basin; which can be seen not only by physical separation but that the coal type in this field and the nature of the seams is completely different than in the PRB: for instance: Medicine Bow Mine, Hanna Field: 10,400 Btu/lb. 0.6% sulfur, 14% moisture, 7% ash, 33% volatile matter Black Thunder Mine, Powder River Basin: 8,800 Btu/lb., 0.32% sulfur, 27.0% moisture, 5.5% ash, 29-35% volatile matter In other words, when you buy a ton of PRB coal, you're buying 540 pounds of water, whereas when you buy a ton of Hanna coal, you're buying 280 pounds of water. However, Hanna coal is in thinner, steeply tilted seams, so is more expensive to mine and thus less competitive. The November 1989 issue had a large, thorough article on the PRB and its railroads. It's probably still available as a back issue from Kalmbach.
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