The owner of Belle Ayr Mine near Gillette, a northeastern Wyoming coal town, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Coal's been hit hard by bankruptcies, new pollution rules and the decline of a once-promising export market, and now, the federal government's blocking of new coal sales has left people in a pessimistic mood.

GILLETTE, Wyo. — Like a trusty pickup truck, Gillette has bounced through tough times before and pulled through, thanks to coal.

Lately the bumps for an industry that’s brought wealth and jobs to this town are getting bigger — bankruptcies of major producers, pollution rules that have made burning coal more expensive and the decline of a once-promising export market.

Now, another threat has struck coal’s remaining U.S. stronghold: A potential end to relatively easy and cheap access to billions of tons of the fuel held in publicly-owned reserves across the West.

President Barack Obama’s administration has ordered a three-year moratorium on sales of federal coal reserves, and it’s putting a rare mood on folks in Gillette, a ranching-turned-energy town of 32,000: pessimism.

“Most of the time it comes back. This time, I don’t know,” said Bobbie Garcia, watching her daughter summit a two-story climbing structure at the town’s $53 million recreation center largely built with coal money.

Until recently, the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana remained a rare bright spot for the industry. Even as Appalachian mines shut down and cheap natural gas started crowding out coal as a power plant fuel, economies of scale kept the region rumbling.

Massive strip mines sprawled across tens of thousands of acres produce roughly 40 percent of the nation’s supply of the fuel.

For Gillette and other communities, that means more than 7,000 mining industry jobs. And not just fly-by-night, roughneck gigs, but the sort that sustain families year after year, pointed out Michael Von Flatern, a state senator who has lived in Gillette since the early 1970s.

“I cannot picture myself in Gillette without a coal mine,” Von Flatern said. “That’s a big part of it, the steadiness of it.”

Along with oil and gas revenues, coal has brought money for the state and local governments to build top-of-the-line schools and the rec center, which features a 200-meter indoor track and an aquatic center.

Signs of economic troubles first appeared a few years ago, when drilling for natural gas trapped in water-saturated coal seams went bust.

Then last year, mining company Alpha Natural Resources filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Industry giant Arch Coal followed in early January. Each company has two major mines in Wyoming. Arch’s Black Thunder mine ranks among the largest in the world.

Less than a week after the Arch bankruptcy came the Obama administration moratorium on new coal lease sales.