Abstract In the Powder River Basin of southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, coal beds exposed by regional erosion have burned naturally from as early as the Pliocene to the present. Layers of reddish clinker, formed by baking, welding, and melting of sediments above burned coal beds, cover over 4000 km 2 and cap ridges and escarpments throughout the dissected landscape of the Powder River Basin. Fission-track (ZFT) and (U-Th)/He (ZHe) ages of zircon grains from baked sandstones in clinker provide new insights about rates of regional erosion as well as episodic advance of coal fires into hillsides. Older, resistant clinker layers up to 60 m thick, formed by the burning of thick coal beds, cap summits and broad benches. Younger clinker rims, from thinner coals, form ledges on valley sides. ZHe ages of clinker, mainly from the Wyodak-anderson coal zone of the fort Union formation in the Rochelle Hills east of Wright, Wyoming, and from the Wyodak-anderson and Knobloch coal zones in the Tongue River valley near Ashland and Birney, Montana, range from 1.1 Ma to 10 ka. These dates generally agree with ZFT ages of clinker analyzed in the early 1980s, but they are a more precise record of ancient coal fires in the region. Our data indicate 0.2–0.4 km of vertical erosion in the past 1 m.y. Spatial-temporal patterns of clinker ages may prove to be useful in deciphering the patterns of fluvial incision and basin excavation in the Powder River Basin during the late Cenozoic and in weighing the relative importance of uplift, variations in climate, and base-level change.