Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. LEADVILLE, Colo. – Here below a ring of magnificent peaks, the scenery features a maze of tailings piles and the decaying architecture of mines, mills and smelters that outsiders might see as ugly and meaningless. But locals like Carl Miller enjoy the sight of […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
A radical approach to mine reclamation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. SILVERTON, Colo. – The Sunnyside Mine near here is an odd place for marking progress. The mine offers gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc, but has a treacherous history. Different companies have tried to make it work since 1874 and have shut it down […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Homestake shows how good a mine can be
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. MCLAUGHLIN MINE, Calif. – Homestake Mining Co.” s Ray Krauss ambles along the banks of a lake his firm built to supply water to its McLaughlin Mine in Northern California. He talks glowingly about his 17 years as manager of environmental affairs. First he […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
This reclamation plan uses waste to bury waste
Note: This article accompanies another feature story in this special issue on hardrock mining and reclamation. WELLPINIT, Wash. – At 7:30 on the evening of April 4, 1954, twin brothers Jim and John LaBret loaded a finicky $54 Geiger counter into Jim’s blue “46 Chrysler and set off on a moonlight mission to find uranium. […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Is our love of the West destroying Chile?
I was drafting this essay, when Bill Brewster, former congressman from Oklahoma and now president of a Washington lobbying company, stuck his head into my office: “Do you know any companies that would be interested in buying gold concessions in Azerbaijan? Their Minister of Privitization is a friend of mine, and he wants to put […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Give the mining industry a second chance…
Dear HCN, As a thrice-starved-out Montanan, I have a different take on mining than writer Heather Abel in your Dec. 22, 1997, issue. There are aspects of mining and its politics that High Country News should not have glossed over. A prime example is the so-called Clean Water Initiative, I-122. It failed in the 1996 […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
…but let’s not forget about the past
Dear HCN, In your Dec. 22, 1997, issue, I was quoted as saying, “What it might take is for some people to die before people start sitting up and saying, ‘Take that pollution out of rivers.’ “ I didn’t mean by that there will have to be violent confrontations, or even that people will immediately […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
An 1872 law still calls the shots
WASHINGTON, D.C. – It was a good year. The president was easily re-elected, there was a tight race for the baseball championship, and Congress passed landmark environmental legislation. Some things have changed since then, though. Ulysses Grant is better known for a question about the contents of his tomb than for his accomplishments as president, […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the ‘last, best place’
Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s feature story. Pity Montana. Everyone wants a piece of it. Most desire its trout streams, the solace of its open spaces, its stunning mountains. Mining companies want the metals buried beneath this incomparable landscape. Hardrock mining is already big business in Montana. But it could soon get bigger. […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Montana on the edge: A fight over gold forces the Treasure State to confront its future
Note: several sidebar articles, including a timeline of the Zortman-Landusky mine and accounts by several stakeholders telling their views in their own words, are available in the “Sidebar” section of this online issue. LINCOLN, Mont. – When you ask Lee Pattison whether she thinks a mammoth gold mine will be built a few miles from […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Mine wastes haunt a mythic river
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. On paper, the Blackfoot River, which begins at the Continental Divide and flows 132 miles to the west, doesn’t seem poetic. Roads and clear-cuts line its shores. Mining waste runs through its water. In 1975, a tailings dam broke, spilling sludge into the headwaters […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Gold mines exist in a shaky financial world
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Phelps Dodge sold its share in the McDonald Mine this fall, no one was much surprised. The company had tried to get rid of its 72.5 percent share in 1994, when, after having spent over $42 million, it asked its partner, Denver-based Canyon […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Montana’s army of writers tested the power of the pens
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Writer David James Duncan left Portland for Missoula and promptly became obsessed. It wasn’t supposed to work that way. The author of The River Why and The Brothers K had come to Montana to write his next novel and do some fishing, alongside other […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
A gold mine is a city until the ore runs out
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If the McDonald gold mine is built as currently planned, it will resemble a city of eight square miles. It will be thirsty. Each day it will use an average 2.5 million gallons of water, equivalent to 420,000 toilets flushing. It will also be […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Where one sister sees gain, another sees ruin and loss
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If a single family could illustrate Montana’s love-hate relationship with mining, it would be the Garlands, who run Garland’s General Store, along Lincoln’s main strip. Cecil and Barbara Garland established the store in the 1950s, but their daughter Teresa, 44, is in charge now. […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Don’t worry, says the McDonald Mine’s geologist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. KD Feeback, geologist at the McDonald Mine, is not concerned about the hullabaloo over the environmental impact statement, the clean-water initiative or any opposition to the mine. KD Feeback: “If you look at the history of mine permitting, our EIS process is normal for […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Don’t trust the mining industry, says a retired rancher
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Retired rancher Land Lindbergh doesn’t encourage casual visitors. His ranch is in a secluded canyon along the Blackfoot River, protected by four miles of unmarked dirt road and several locked gates. But once you find him, he is so warm that writer David James […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
A company that moved mountains runs into a wall
Note: This reporter’s notebook article accompanies this issue’s feature story. HAYS, Mont. – When Bill Halver laughs, he throws his head back and bares the few teeth he has left. He is telling how he, a small-time rancher from a remote eastern Montana town, helped paralyze Pegasus Gold Corp., the state’s most powerful mining company. […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
The rise and fall of a gold mining company
Note: This timeline is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. 1855 The Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes move to what will later be known as the Fort Belknap Reservation, named for a U.S. Secretary of War. Late 19th century Pike Landusky and Pete Zortman strike gold in a corner of the reservation. 1895 Threatened […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Miners and Montana were too cozy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. During Kevin Keenan’s 24 years as a water-quality enforcer for the state of Montana, he often criticized the agencies for favoring the mining companies. In 1995, he retired because, “I knew my career was over. I was left out of enforcement issues for a […]