In the dusty stretch of West Texas where oil derricks have long defined the landscape, a different kind of energy extraction is humming along. Hut 8 Corp’s Salt Creek facility, a 63-megawatt Bitcoin mining operation near Orla, Texas, represents one of the more ambitious purpose-built mining sites in North America.
The facility went from groundbreaking to energization in roughly three months, coming online in April 2024.
What’s actually running at Salt Creek
Salt Creek sits in the Permian Basin. The facility connects to the Rio Grande Electric Cooperative grid. Hut 8 developed and manages the site, while American Bitcoin Corp, formerly known as Gryphon Digital Mining, handles the actual mining operations under colocation and management agreements.
The operation uses advanced ASIC miners, the specialized hardware designed exclusively for Bitcoin’s SHA-256 hashing algorithm. Hut 8’s proprietary Reactor software manages energy consumption and optimization across the site.
At 63 MW of capacity, Salt Creek is a meaningful operation. For context, 63 MW is enough to power roughly 50,000 average US homes.
Why West Texas keeps winning the mining game
Hut 8’s broader mining portfolio includes other sites like Alpha and Medicine Hat, but Salt Creek holds particular strategic importance. The facility was the company’s first greenfield development, meaning it was designed and built from scratch specifically for mining rather than retrofitted from an existing industrial site.
The partnership structure between Hut 8 and American Bitcoin Corp reflects an emerging trend in the industry. Rather than one company handling everything from facility construction to daily mining operations, specialized roles are being carved out. Infrastructure companies build and maintain sites. Mining operators focus on fleet management, hash rate optimization, and treasury strategy.
What this means for investors
The colocation and management agreement structure allows Hut 8 to generate revenue from its infrastructure without bearing all the direct risk of Bitcoin price volatility. Hut 8 still collects fees for hosting and management.
Proprietary software like Reactor is becoming a competitive differentiator. The ability to optimize energy consumption in real time can be the difference between profitable and unprofitable operations.
The facility’s continued expansion, evidenced by active job postings for onsite roles as recently as mid-2025, suggests that Salt Creek’s operators see sustained economics in the operation.