 I'm standing inside one of the first natural gas power plants in the world. This power plant supplied seven Natrona County communities and the Salt Creek oil field. This first of its kind power plant was built north of Midwest Wyoming on the edge of Shannon Lake along Salt Creek. At least 2,000 people worked throughout 1923 and 24 to build the plant and the plant began operating in January 1925. The plant was designed and built as a way to use natural gas that was brought to the surface as a byproduct of oil production in the Salt Creek oil field. As electric pumps were being deployed in the oil field to recover the oil, using the excess natural gas to provide the power to the pumps rather than simply flaring the gas made good sense. A pipeline was built from the oil field to feed the power plant. The boilers burned gas to heat water from the lake and made steam to drive the turbines. Water from the plant made Salt Creek one of the first electrified oil fields in the world and it also provided power to the first fully lit high school football game in the country, played in Midwest in 1925. Although it closed in 1958, the Midwest Electric Plant demonstrated the viability of natural gas for electric generation and put Wyoming on the forefront of oil field technology from the University of Wyoming Extension. I'm Mae Smith, Exploring the Nature of Wyoming.