"Where Wind Farms Meet Coal Country, There’s Enduring Faith in Trump"

"Hoping for more unfettered production of coal, oil and gas even as it erects wind farms, a Wyoming county sees the president as a key to job security."

"GLENROCK, Wyo. — No place is more likely than this one to benefit from President Trump’s promise to make the United States a dominant energy force in the world, or more likely to be disappointed if the promise is not kept.

A sparsely populated expanse of windswept rolling meadows and sharp bluffs filled with pine trees and the occasional ranch and hay farm, Converse County also has some of the country’s richest resources: the nation’s third-largest coal mine, its largest uranium production facility, four big wind farms, more than a thousand oil and gas wells, and a large coal-fired power plant.

But diversified in nothing but energy, the county and nearly the entire state of Wyoming are acutely vulnerable to commodity prices. And while oil and coal prices have headed higher of late, they remain far below the levels of recent years, resulting in layoffs and plummeting tax receipts."

Clifford Krauss reports for the New York Times with photographs by Damon Winter December 14, 2017.