Preliminary report on the coal resources of the Dickinson area, Billings, Dunn, and Stark Counties, North Dakota

The Dickinson area is underlain by the coal-bearing Fort Union Formation (Paleocene). The Fort Union in this area contains nine potentially economic coal beds. Five of these beds are, either all or in part, shallow enough to be economically extracted by conventional strip-mining methods, while the remaining four deeper beds represent future possible strip-mining, in situ, or shaft-mining coal resources. The Fort Union coal beds in the Dickinson area are relatively flat lying (dips are less than 1½°) and only slightly influenced by faulting and both depositional and post-depositional channeling. Topography, coal thickness, and minimum overburden all combine to give the Dickinson area an excellent future coal resource development potential.