Coal mine operations at Reliance began in 1910 under the coal mining company of the Union Pacific Railroad, and the first coal loading facility was built here in 1912. The stone foundations of the earlier wooden tipple still remain east of the later metal tipple, which was completed in 1936 and still contains machinery from its operating years. Few tipples survive from the era when coal was king, because modern mining methods and the shift to gasoline- and diesel-powered locomotives made underground coal mining with early twentieth-century technology too expensive to compete, leading such structures to be torn down and their equipment sold for salvage. In Wyoming, the Reliance tipple alone remains as an example of a large industrial coal handling facility, tied to the miners and families who established homes in southwest Wyoming and to the men who lost their lives in the coal mines of Sweetwater County.