• The Great Plains Synfuels Plant at evening.
  • This was among the first stages of getting ready to build the Great Plains coal gasification project northwest of Beulah. Looking southeast, this 1979 photo shows the coal dump site for the Freedom Mine as well as the raw water pond for the adjacent Antelope Valley Station.
  • By November 1981, progress was being made on the massive foundation for the live coal storage building. Round-the-clock loads of concrete often were needed for this and other huge facilities at the gasification project.
  • Construction workers at the coal gasification site begin steel work. The main pipe rack starts taking shape with the installation of two large cooling water lines.
  • Construction of the Great Plains Synfuels Plant is in full swing.
  • Huge crawler cranes were used to construct the large tanks and vessels used in the gasification plant's processing phase.
  • Workers move up and down the special temporary stairs built as the gasification building was being constructed.
  • This photo shows how a drilling mole bored a concrete-lined tunnel about a half-mile long under Lake Sakakawea that would provide water for the gasification project and the Antelope Valley Station nearly 10 miles south of the lake.
  • A special tank carries one of the 170-ton gasifiers from a train to the plant site for installing in 1982. Seven of the 14 gasifiers were built in Japan and were shipped to Duluth, MN, where they were railed to the construction site. The other seven, built in Memphis, TN, were loaded on heavy-duty flatcars and transported by train on a six-day ride to the project.
  • Great Plains Synfuels Plant construction progress in 1981.