the mine next door

Celebrating 25 Years of Reclamation and Partnership at the Idarado Mine written by Samantha Tisdel Wright designed by Rick Bickhart sponsored by Newmont Goldcorp From its compelling origins as a base metal producer in support of the US war efort during World War II to its

innovative, award-winning reclamation that got underway Top photo: Track threshold at the Treasury Tunnel in 1993, the Idarado Mine in the San Juan Mountains of on Red Mountain Pass, circa 1987. The faded sign southwestern Colorado has stamped its legacy on Ouray, above the “Idarado Min- ing Company” sign reads: “The metals mined by the Telluride and the mountains that connect them. men working here help to keep America strong.” This 10-part series, originally published in 2018 in the (Photo by Rick Trujillo) Background photo: A historic Ouray County Plaindealer and the Telluride Watch, view of Idarado’s Treasury Tunnel site on Red celebrates that story. Mountain Pass. (Ouray County Historical Society collection) the mine next door

The Pandora Site — A Joseph E. Byers photo from 1903 showing three of the mills formerly located at the east end of the Telluride Valley. From left to right are the Pandora Mill, Smuggler-Union Cyanide Mill, and Smuggler-Union Red Mill.

etting to know day-to-day maintenance and reclamation tasks at the complex forces that have combined to create if we get into bad air underground, and talks me the Idarado Mine the aging decommissioned mine. the giant mine next door that is — and will al- through a safety briefing and an Activity Hazard Analy- is a little bit like Together they face avalanches and blizzards, ways be — our neighbor. sis. Then we climb into his pickup truck for the short that poem about rock falls and wind storms, stale air and unstable drive from the office up to the Mill Level Tunnel, one the blind men ground, tourist traffic and occasional dirty looks Going Under of the two main entrances into the Idarado Mine. and the elephant. from local passersby to ensure Newmont contin- The only way to really get to know a hardrock The portal is tucked discretely into a forested Depending on ues to meet its environmental responsibilities and mine like the Idarado is to go inside of it. And hillside just above the Pandora Mill near Marshall which part of the commitment to getting things done safely in this that’s what Mark Parker and I are about to do on Creek. Parker takes a couple brass tags off the elephant each man encounters, he declares it to be wild, mountainous corner of the planet. a mild winter morning in early February, 2018. tag-in board mounted to the portal’s concrete a wall, a tree trunk, a spear, a fan, a snake — never Just like an aging person, the Idarado Mine Parker, a quiet, serious man in his late 50s, has collar, and hands one of them to me to stick in my Ggrasping the whole animal for its bewildering array needs long-term care — although new technol- been on Idarado’s reclamation team for 25 years, pocket. We’ll replace them when we come back of parts. ogies may come along that reduce or transform working his way up from hay bale bucker to heavy out — a simple way to keep track of how many Likewise, it’s hard to imagine that the scattered what that care looks like. equipment operator to Pandora site manager and people are inside the mine at any given time. remnants of the Idarado Mine could possibly all In this 10-part series, we will be mining the worrier-in-chief. Then he pulls back a green plastic tarp, checks belong to the same entity: Idarado for its stories — exploring the imprint He has been kind enough to let me borrow in with the toplander to ensure someone knows The wooden trestle that stretches out like it has made on the landscape; bringing to life the some gear for this occasion: a yellow reflective we are under the mountain, and we enter the a watchful dinosaur skeleton along a hairpin legacy that has shaped the nearby communities; vest, a brand new hardhat and clear plastic safety dark, wet underground world of the Idarado. curve on Highway 550 below Red Mountain celebrating its remediation milestones; and un- glasses, knee-high waterproof muck boots, and a At 8 feet high by 10 feet wide, the tunnel is plenty Pass. The ponderous boarded-up mill and infil- earthing the challenges, changes, and opportuni- utility belt cinched around my waist with a heavy wide enough for us to walk side by side along the tration lagoons just east of Telluride below Brid- ties that still lie ahead. cylindrical self-rescue device attached to it that old rail bed, even accounting for the drainage ditch al Veil Falls. The hydroelectric plant that teeters These stories aim to uncover the humanity in can convert carbon monoxide into breathable air. that runs like a gutter along one side. Back when at cliff’s edge beside the falls. The network of the people who work at the Idarado, and spotlight He shows me how to strap the device to my face the mine was active, groundwater seeping into the concrete diversion channels further up in Sav- tunnel from the workings up above would have age Basin and Marshal Basin that funnel snow- been channeled into this ditch and out the portal, melt away from waste rock piles and the thirsty keeping the center reasonably dry. But now the gaping mouths of old mine workings. The piles whole floor of the tunnel (or sill, as miners call it) of tailings above Ironton Park and on Telluride’s ripples with an ankle-deep sheet of icy water. valley floor. The daylight filtering in from the portal gradu- Even harder to imagine are the miles of ally fades as we wade into the darkness. My hard- invisible innards that honeycomb the mountains hat keeps tipping forward from the weight of the between Telluride and Ouray, connecting some headlamp clipped to its crown, and I can’t quite of the richest, most fabled mines in the region. figure out how to turn it on, so Parker reaches When Newmont Mining Corporation (now over and does it for me. Its yellow beam slices Newmont Goldcorp) came along in 1939, it began into the tunnel’s inky void. consolidating these old workings into the Idara- From its portal at an elevation of 9,062 feet, do Mining Company – the largest mine operation the Mill Level Tunnel drives two-and-a-half miles ever to exist in the San Juan Mountains. Millions into the base of Ajax Peak, intersecting with most of dollars’ worth of precious and base metals of the mine’s important veins beneath all of the were recovered from the mine over the next four other workings. decades until stagnant base metal prices, rising Thousands of feet beyond that, via a maze of production costs and other factors conspired to tunnels on 29 levels connected vertically by dor- shut it down for good in 1978. mant skips or hoists, the mine opens up on its Here’s where the story takes a twist. eastern side at the Treasury Tunnel on Red Moun- For the past quarter century (after a decade or tain Pass. If we were to follow that route, we’d so of legal wrangling with the State of Colorado) traverse merely a fraction of the Idarado’s entire Newmont has undertaken a mammoth reclama- network of underground workings. tion project at the Idarado Mine, greening and It’s a slow, strangely disorienting journey trav- stabilizing its tailings piles and cleaning up the eling back into the mine — almost like we are metal-laden water that flows out of its portals. walking in place through a rift in the space-time Today, a skeleton crew of five long-timers and Mill Level Tunnel Portal — The portal to the 2.5-mile-long Mill Level Tunnel is tucked discretely continuum — the dark, damp dimensions of the two summer contract employees (who hope to into a forested hillside just above the Pandora Mill near Marshall Creek. It is one of the two main tunnel never changing. one day achieve long-timer status) take care of entrances into the Idarado Mine. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) Then pow! A large manmade chasm suddenly

2 opens to the left, with a silvery cascade of water gushing down from old workings above us. Parker points his headlamp up into the chasm. “This is a really low flow right now,” he says. “In the spring, it’s actually kinda scary. It makes weird noises. There’s a column of water, and then it’s like it takes a big breath. And then another column of water, and a big breath. It’s like it’s breathing.” “Like being inside of a body,” I say. “Yeah,” Parker agrees without missing a beat. “Mother Earth.” We continue on, and are swallowed up once again into the seemingly endless tube of raw wet rock. Another cavern opens to the left. Parker points to stacks of old barrels in its shadowy re- cesses, explains that they are filled with drinking water, ancient cans of food and other emergency supplies. This, it turns out, is a long-forgotten nuclear fallout shelter for the Town of Telluride — a remnant of Cold War disaster planning, still creepily relevant today. A little further up, a tunnel breaks away into the darkness to the right, with yellow webs of “CAU- TION” tape draped across its opening. Treasury Tunnel — From its portal at 10,600 “It’s a dead end,” Parker explains. “You don’t feet on Red Mountain Pass, the Treasury Tunnel drives westward for 9,000 feet on the 1200 want to go back in there. The air’s no good. You Level of the Idarado Mine. The oldest portion of can walk back there 10 feet, and it’s a totally dif- the tunnel dates back to the late 1800s. It was ferent atmosphere. It’s dead. When that happens, signifcantly extended during WWII to intersect Red Mountain Site — An old metal shop building dating back to the 1930s is one of the it’s not a good place to be.” the Black Bear vein with its rich reserves of base only structures left standing at the Idarado Mine’s Red Mountain site on Red Mountain Pass. Parker learned about bad air the hard way after metals. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) getting caught a couple times in blasting smoke as a young man mining in uranium country. The first day has to do with controlling and cleaning up as I walk gingerly behind him, entering Idarado’s crew for a few minutes before making the short time it happened, he survived by tearing a hole in the water that flows out of the Mill Level Tunnel, innards now from its eastern side at an elevation walk back out to the portal. a vent bag and sticking his head inside. through an infiltration ditch and interactive sys- of 10,600 feet. Schoenebaum, the Red Mountain As I trudge along in the darkness behind Mine remediation is a tamer gig than that, tem of infiltration lagoons. site manager for the Idarado Mine, saunters along Schoenebaum (the Treasury Tunnel’s not wide though just as challenging in its own way. “I call And it seems to be working. The Idarado’s wa- with an ease that reflects the countless times he’s enough to walk side by side) I’m thinking about it reverse mining,” Parker says. “You mess it up, ter sampling regimen shows that it has met the journeyed into the Treasury Tunnel over the past what Newmont’s emergency response coordina- and now you gotta fix it.” State of Colorado’s zinc concentration compli- 25 years. But it’s my first time. tor Dorsey Manson said at a safety meeting earlier We’ve been walking along for over an hour and ance objective in the San Miguel River for 12 of The tunnel has held up surprisingly well in the 70- in the morning before we went underground. are a mile and a half inside the mine when all of the past 13 years. (Cleaning up the water on the odd years since its completion — especially consid- “A human being is the softest thing inside a a sudden, there’s light up ahead. We move toward other side of the mine in Red Mountain Creek has ering that US 550 now runs right over the top of the mine. If it comes to a contest between a miner it like moths toward flame, the void around us been more problematic; but that’s a future story.) portal. It’s older and colder, higher and dryer, and and a piece of steel or machinery or rock, the echoing now with the sound of men’s voices and “We’re pretty happy — when you consider a much narrower than the Mill Level Tunnel. miner is not going to win.” metal clinking on metal. mine site the size of this one,” Parker says, as we From time to time the small amount of water That’s why a fully loaded mine rescue trailer is The tunnel opens up to twice its former width amble over to take a closer look at the infiltration that the Treasury Tunnel generates is pumped parked just outside the tunnel, equipped with re- as another passageway branches off to the left lagoons. “Everything is staying where it should. through a pipeline all the way through the mine breather units that trained mine rescuers can wear toward the Montana vein — bringing with it a I’ve looked at a lot of reclamation sites all over, and out the Meldrum Tunnel portal near the Brid- for up to three hours in a smoke-filled tunnel; and fresh air breeze from some mysterious place even and I think we have one of the best.” al Veil Power House above Telluride. From there, an empty stretcher has been staged in the shop deeper inside the mine. But a lot of Telluridians aren’t so sure. Park- it flows into a jumbled field of boulders and soaks building nearby — just in case — with custom- We arrive at a work area where we meet four er and his colleagues see evidence of this un- into the porous ground. designed wheels that can maneuver through the contract miners wearing diggers and hardhats. certainty all the time, lurking beneath jokes on One of Schoenebaum’s daily tasks is to check narrow contours of these old mine tunnels. They have been hired by Newmont to do some Facebook about the mine’s “unsettling ponds”, or on that pump and make sure it’s still running. But tunnel rehab work to protect the mine’s access within worried looks from passers-by who think on this day, we’re heading a little further back to Ghost Mine to its innermost artery, the Treasury Tunnel raise, the mine is dumping chemicals in the water. look at another rehab project that has recently Back outside, a spiteful spring wind spits tiny and prepare for a future project scheduled for “A lot of locals do think that we are the big gotten underway. snowflakes in our faces. But we take a few minutes next year. bad mining company,” Parker acknowledges. “I Some of the contract miners on this Treasury anyway to poke around the yard. “The old timbering here was all dry rotted, and would hope they would realize that we are help- Tunnel job are the same ones I encountered in There’s actually not much left to look at besides when it fell off, that let the rock loose,” Parker ing. We are trying to make things good.” the Mill Level Tunnel a month or so before. They the stunning scenery — Trico Peak rising up above explains as we look around. are all professionals, committed to getting their the Treasury Tunnel to the west, the Red Mountains Now, the caved-in area has been mucked out, Tunnel Vision job done as safely as possible. The work they are rolling across the horizon to the east. The mill, and it feels super-solid with newly installed steel It’s springtime now, and a frigid San Juan-er doing is challenging — mucking out collapsed warehouse, company general offices, boarding sets ready to catch the dead-weight of any rock has blown in overnight, turning Red Mountain portions of the tunnel, cutting heavy lengths of house and other structures that used to be here that may continue to collapse. Pass into a sheet of ice. But inside the Treasury steel and lifting them into place. at the Treasury Tunnel site have long since burned The work crew has just wrapped up for Tunnel, the weather is the same as always: cold Schoenebaum and I inspect their progress. down or collapsed under snow, and been hauled the morning, and they’re about to head out- with a (very good) chance of dark. The new steel sets fit perfectly together like very off as part of the cleanup effort. side for lunch in their battery-powered tram- Eric Schoenebaum’s reflective company-is- heavy puzzle pieces to hold back any rock that All that’s left standing now is an old metal mer. They offer us a ride, so we climb aboard sued jacket glows in the beam of my headlamp may still want to crumble. We chat with the work shop dating back to the 1950s, the iconic wood- and slowly roll back down the tunnel, a tiny en trestle that leads away from the portal toward speck of daylight appearing in the distance, an old waste rock dump, a reclaimed tailings growing larger and brighter as we approach pile, the concrete stumps of the mill’s foun- the portal. dation, and a handful of century-old company Suddenly we are there. All that infinite dark- houses across the highway. ness is behind us. We grind to a halt, the motor Pretty soon, the shop, whose old foundations quiets down, and we stroll out into the impossibly are slowly slipping away down the hill after 65 bright winter day. The sunlight stabs my eyeballs years of faithful service, will be gone too. It is and I suck in lungfuls of fresh air, feeling my chest slated to be scraped and replaced with a modern, expand with relief to be back outside. much smaller building in 2020 that will be more energy efficient, with indoor plumbing. Pandora’s Box In the meantime, a small heated corner of Just below us sits the Pandora Mill. Construct- the cavernous structure serves as Schoene- ed in the 1920s by the Smuggler-Union Mining baum’s office. His most frequent visitor (besides Company, this was the heart of Idarado Mining Idarado’s water compliance and safety officer, Company’s milling operation from 1953 to 1978. Joe Smart, who regularly stops by to sample the The hulking structure still dominates the eastern water in Red Mountain Creek) is a wily pine terminus of Telluride’s valley floor like a ship- martin that breaks into the shop most nights wreck marooned in time, surrounded by piles of and gets into everything, leaving behind a trail cribbing and old metal pipes. of chaos and muddy paw prints. The mill building is gutted now, its equip- “It’s like having a pet monkey,” Schoene- ment sold at auction for pennies on the dollar baum sighs. in the ’80s. “It’s pretty much now just a big old It’s hard to fathom how busy and industrious shell,” says Parker, squinting down at the mill’s this place once was, with its legions of miners boarded-up dormer windows and steep-angled arriving by the busload every morning and head- acres of rusty roof. “It’s just there. It’s the king of ing underground, and its warehouse workers the valley.” and mechanics and carpenters and shift bosses Hunkering in the mill’s shadow, a shop building and accountants and managers and everyone shelters a motley assemblage of heavy equipment else that it took to run this mine. and an aging unplugged Pepsi machine that still All that’s left now is the business of cleaning says 35 cents. The two-story mine office also sits it up. nearby, clad in the same rusty metal armor as the But deep inside the earth, the Idarado still mill. It’s a fairly sleepy place these days, but still thrums to its own pulse. The water still flows, and retains a faint whiff of the time when it was a nerve the wind still blows, from the Treasury Tunnel all center of a multi-million-dollar mining operation. The Idarado Team — The men who take care of day-to-day maintenance and reclamation tasks at the way through to Pandora. Much of what goes on at the Pandora site to- the aging decommissioned Idarado Mine. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) Meet your mine.

3 Miles of Tunnels Bill Mahoney enters the Mill Level Tunnel on a mine bicycle in 1967. (Bill Mahoney collection) A Brief History of the Idarado Mine

he history of the Idara- The mountains that Fallon and Wightman sur- On a hunch, Hammond now probed the high do Mine is as long as veyed on that fateful day would soon be filled with gray mountains that rose up just beyond the cal- the tunnels and as rich fabulously wealthy mines like the Tomboy and dera to the west. He hoped to intercept a rich belt as the ore veins that rid- Smuggler-Union that eventually became part of of parallel veins in a formation called the “Snef- dle its guts. Its stories the Idarado – with gold ore so rich in some plac- fels Sag” that nearby mines like the Revenue-Vir- are stoked by volcanic es that the Italian miners would call it “polenta”, ginius, the Tomboy, the Liberty Bell and the Smug- tantrums, and sculpted and plentiful base metals down below. gler-Union chased from different directions. by the winds of history Hammond never struck it rich, but he did drive that blew Americans across the West. The Snefels Sag his Treasury Tunnel some 2,000 feet into the moun- How far back do you want to go — World War In 1896, as Thomas Walsh was discovering the tainside, and found enough ore to turn a small profit TII? Manifest Destiny of the 1800s? Dominguez and storied Camp Bird Mine in the Sneffels Mining before returning to Pittsburgh 10 years later. Escalante in 1776? The Tertiary period 35 million District above Ouray and the mines around Tel- The project sat mostly dormant for years, as years ago, with its great belching supervolcanoes luride were booming, a mine developer named glittering ore veins and crystal caves remained and collapsed calderas that spawned the fabled William J. Hammond, Jr. of Pittsburg, Pa. headed buried in the dark gray country rock beyond the ore bodies of the San Juan Mountains? up into the Red Mountain area to start a mining tunnel’s reach. It would take an industrial scale All had a role to play in the rise of the largest venture of his own: the Treasury Tunnel Mining mining enterprise with deep pockets, a broad vi- mining operation that ever existed in the San Juans. and Reduction Company. sion and a long game plan to finally unlock this A previous mining boom-gone-bust in the Red hidden treasure trove. The Big Bonanza Mountain Mining District had plundered rich ver- As far as Rudy Davison is concerned, the Idara- A trammer pulls an ore car behind an electric- tical silver chimneys inside the acidic ring faults War and Peace do Mining Company’s origins near Telluride start powered motor inside the Idarado Mine, circa 1940. of the Silverton Caldera, leaving an oozing mess In 1939, as the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in Marshall Basin, where two lucky prospectors (Bill Mahoney collection) of abandoned mines in its wake. and swept across Europe to occupy France, New- named Fallon and Wightman struck San Miguel mont Mining Corporation trekked into the San County’s first bonanza back in 1875. Juan Mountains, looking for potential sources of Davison is the erstwhile publisher of the Telluride base metals with an eye toward supporting the Al- Times and author of the guidebook, Rudy’s View, lied war effort in Europe. which contains a comprehensive history of the An eccentric and brilliant exploration-geol- Idarado Mine. ogist-turned-Newmont-executive named Fred “It all started there,” he says, pointing to a huge Searls Jr. led the charge. He showed up at the landscape painting that hangs above his living room Treasury Tunnel in his old cloth cap, yellow min- couch in his spacious, southwestern-style home ing boots and signature red “jazzbow” necktie, near Durango. The painting clearly depicts an oxi- with a plan to extend the Treasury Tunnel thou- dized yellow-orange rocky outcrop stitching its way sands of feet deeper into the mountain to service through the pale green tundra of Marshall Basin. a block of historic mining properties up above. Davison imagines Fallon and Wightman hiking His first target was the Black Bear Mine, an from Silverton to Ouray, up and over the ragged old gold and silver producer straddling the spine of Virginius Pass and down into the basin. divide between Ouray and San Miguel counties “And they were like, ‘That’s it!’” he reckons. in Ingram Basin, thought to have large untapped “That” being the infamous Smuggler vein that soon reserves of zinc. became synonymous with the word “bonanza” and Searls began buying up or leasing key claims triggered a gold rush to the high country above throughout the district and convinced Sunshine present-day Telluride. Mining Company of Wallace, Idaho to go half- Manifest Destiny was in full swing. The newly sies with Newmont in a joint venture to develop penned Mining Act of 1872 had just spelled out the project. With a nod to the shared Idaho and the rules for prospecting and mining on federal Colorado ownership interests of the venture, they public lands. The Brunot Agreement of 1873 had called it the Idarado Mining Company. The proj- then conveniently pried open the San Juan Moun- This group met at Idarado headquarters in Ouray in 1943 to check progress in driving the Treasury Tunnel. ect was off and running, but was soon sidelined tains for mining by removing 3.7 million acres From left: Roy Bonebrake, Newmont; Oscar Johson, Mine & Smelter Supply; a Mr. Nicholson; Johnny Edgar, when the first ore body they encountered inside from the Ute Reservation in western Colorado. Idarado manager; and Long John Austin, tunnel driver. (From “Men and Mines of Newmont”, Octagon Books, 1973) the tunnel assayed poorly.

4 Everything changed in 1941, when the Japanese the Mill Level Tunnel and come out the Treasury bombed Pearl Harbor, catapulting the United portal 40 minutes later. States into the global conflict. The nation suddenly, “I would go to the dry room, change clothes, urgently needed zinc, lead and copper to make spend the day in the office, then ride back over to warships, warplanes and bullets. Telluride,” he said. The U.S. Government’s Gold Closing Order of Miners weren’t the only ones to travel through 1942 forced all gold mines across the country to the mine. One time, when an avalanche shut down shut down, shifting the mining labor force toward Red Mountain Pass, a whole bus-full of stranded producing war-related metals. Meanwhile, the War passengers were ferried underground all the way Production Board had created an agency called to Telluride. the Domestic Metals Procurement Program (later known as the Metals Reserve Company) to help The Beginning of the End finance the production of these strategic metals. Around the time of the famous hippie inva- The Idarado’s Treasury Tunnel project was a sion of Telluride in the early 1970s and the birth prime target for this program. of the Telluride ski area, stagnant base metals The Metals Reserve Company leased Idarado’s prices, rising costs, a severe labor shortage group of mines in June 1943, and the U.S. govern- and a strike at the smelters conspired to spell ment footed the bill to drive the Treasury Tunnel financial trouble for Idarado. For the first time, 7,000 feet deeper into the mountain. The legend- the company was unable to pay dividends to its ary Colorado tunnel driver “Long John” Austin shareholders in 1971. and his crew were hired for the job, and hit the The mine briefly rebounded, however, due in Black Bear vein in no time flat. It was as rich in part to the development of a fat ore body in the ore as Searls had hoped for. basement rock of the Telluride conglomerate But a lot of development work still remained called “replacement ore” that could be mined before the Idarado Mine could begin producing more cheaply and easily than the narrow fissure The Idarado’s Red Mountain surface plant in the 1940s included a mechanical shop (far right), connected by — from driving the 600-foot Treasury Raise or a horizontal trestle to an ore crushing plant (center) that reduced ore to a fne powder. It was then transferred veins in the volcanic rock up above. “T-Raise” to intersect and drain the old Black to a tall fne ore bin (at left) attached to the the milling plant via an upward-sloping sloping conveyer housed “From ’72 to ’74 there was a lot of activity,” Bear workings, to driving drifts along the vein, to in a snow shed. The mill itself is mostly hidden in this photo by a large two-story boarding house and bunk said Rick River of Ouray, who worked in the Trea- building ore chutes to fill the haulage trains, to house at far left. The lake in the foreground accumulated mine drainage and provided water for the crushing sury Tunnel warehouse at that time. “We were blocking out stopes for eventual ore extraction. and milling operations. The ore was processed thru a series of fotation cells that extracted the copper, lead, opening up a bunch of new mining areas, hiring By the time all this was done, the dust of D-Day and zinc from waste tailings, facilitated by gravity which is why the mill building sloped downhill to Red everybody we could hire. We were in a big expan- was settling in Normandy, and an Allied victory shone Mountain Creek below. (Photo courtesy of the Ouray County Historical Society) sion phase. We used to have two 40,000 pound on the horizon. No Idarado ores went to World War truckloads of dynamite a week that came in from II, but the Korean War soon came along, and Idara- Salt Lake City.” do production was in full swing by then. By the end of 1974, Idarado was the second In June 1944, Newmont and Sunshine bought biggest mine in Colorado (after Climax Molyb- back their lease from the Metals Reserve Compa- denum near Leadville). That year, it reported a ny, reimbursed the government for the money it record income of $21,200,000 in gross sales, had spent on the tunnel extension, and began to $2,700,000 in net income and a healthy dividend develop the property in earnest. of $1.38 per share. The mine had almost 500 em- ployees and was milling a whopping 1,800 tons ‘Telluride Saved!’ of ore per day, with 21 miles of active tunnels un- The first matter at hand was to build a new 250 derground and three major raises between Red ton-per-day mill at the Treasury Tunnel. By Janu- Mountain and Telluride. ary 1945 the mill was in business, producing lead, Idarado was by far the biggest employer in copper and zinc concentrates by the truckful. the region, making a huge contribution to the A long slurry-bridge channeled mill tailings local tax base. It also provided community health across Red Mountain Creek and down to Ironton care through clinics in Ouray and Telluride — Park (the bridge span across Corkscrew Gulch was and affordable housing — for its employees and one of the longest suspension bridges ever built in their families. Colorado) while specialized “con trucks” hauled Ironically, Idarado’s best year was also its last the concentrates down Red Mountain Pass, through to operate at a profit. In 1975, the smelters in Ouray, and on to the Rio Grande Railroad load-out in Leadville, Colo and Corpus Cristi, Texas that Montrose day and night. The din of their jake brakes processed the Idarado’s concentrates both shut on the steep descent into Ouray became such a fa- down. The mine had to start sending its concen- miliar lullaby that the townspeople couldn’t sleep at trates much farther away, and shipping and treat- night if the trucks stopped running. ment costs suddenly soared from $1.8 million to Before long, Idarado was raking in a modest $11 million per year. The Idarado Mining Company acquired the Pandora profit. Newmont bought out Sunshine and became plant near Telluride in 1953 from Telluride Mines Inc. “No matter how efficient we got as far as tons majority owner of the Treasury Tunnel project. as part of a merger of the two companies. After the per man shift, we couldn’t overcome that cost,” Meanwhile, Telluride Mines Inc. (formerly Veta merger, the mine workings of the two companies River said. “We just couldn’t do it.” Mines) had been steadily expanding and consoli- Liberty Bell miners, circa 1880s. The Liberty Bell became inter-connected by a series of drifts and The mine was struggling for other reasons too. dating its own holdings over on the Telluride side and other famous old mines around Telluride were raises, with access to any area in the mine to be had “It was economics — the price of metals, plus we of the mountains, and had recently driven the Mill eventually absorbed into the Idarado Mine, making from either the Mill Level Portal at Pandora (eleva- were out at the last remnants of all the major ore Level Tunnel to get underneath some of its older it the largest mining operation ever to exist in the tion 9,070 feet) or the Treasury Tunnel Portal at Red bodies,” said Swerdfeger. “Productivity dropped. workings. But when the market prices of lead and San Juan Mountains. (Bill Mahoney collection) Mountain (10,620 feet). (Bill Mahoney collection) We were not mining the heart of ore bodies, and zinc sank in 1952, it was more than the mining they were a farther distance from the mill.” company could bear. was refurbished and expanded. Meanwhile, the Idarado began hemorrhaging money and On April 27, 1953, Telluride Mines Inc. an- mine workings were reconfigured so that all of the laying off employees. It shut down for good in nounced it would shut down. Its 230 workers ore could be transported across upper levels of the 1978. Dozens of families in the region lost their — representing 90 percent of Telluride’s male mine and dropped through a series of ore passes means of livelihood. “A drive through the resi- work force — would be out of a job. “It’s like to the Mill Level Tunnel on the Telluride side, with dential districts shows ‘for sale’ signs sprouting the death of a loved one,” the editor/publisher of a straight shot to the Pandora Mill. up like claim stakes did a century ago,” wrote the the Telluride Tribune wrote. The new system worked brilliantly. Silverton Standard. But just two weeks later, the paper ran a jubi- By 1959, the Idarado Mine was working double Newmont placed its Idarado property on an in- lant banner headline: “TELLURIDE SAVED!” The shifts and churning out 400,000 tons of ore annu- definite care and maintenance status, hoping that Idarado Mining Company had come to the rescue ally. The Pandora Mill operated around the clock, base metal prices might recover enough to allow in the eleventh hour, and was buying Telluride transforming that ore into rich concentrates and the mine to reopen. It never happened. Instead, Mines Inc. for $1 million cash, consolidating the rich profits. Newmont auctioned off its mining and milling claim ownership of the two companies, and ulti- Idarado was a good place to work, and equipment and prepared for reclamation, ending mately putting Telluride’s miners back to work. morale ran high. The American Mining Con- a century of mining, and a way of life, in Ouray The merger of the two companies made Idara- gress named it the “best underground mine and Telluride. do the largest mining operation that ever existed in the United States”, with kudos to the mine’s in the San Juan Mountains. It now owned all of exceptional management team. A New Beginning the famous old mine properties that Telluride “Dad knew there was so much potential in A sign once hung above the trestle at the en- that mountain,” reflected Johnnie Wise’s daugh- A young Johnnie Wise surveyed the high country Mines had acquired — the Smuggler-Union, Lib- above the Idarado Mine. Wise came to Idarado as trance to the Treasury mine yard at Red Moun- erty Bell, Tomboy, Montana, Argentine and oth- ter Linda Wise, who still spends her summers in chief engineer in 1943 and ascended to the position tain. It read: “The metals mined by the men work- ers — along with the Pandora Mill, the Bridal Ouray. “To consolidate all of those mining claims of general manager, president and director, oversee- ing here help to keep America strong.” For those Veil Hydroelectric Plant and many more assorted that were between Red Mountain and Telluride, to ing a crucial phase of mine development from 1953 men and their families, the memories of their remnants of Telluride’s early boomtown days. build a new mill on Telluride side and take the ore to 1963. (Photo courtesy of the Wise family) time at Idarado are still as thick as rock dust, as all the way through that mine — I think that was pungent as blasting smoke. ‘Best Underground Mine in the US’ just really visionary. The ore prices were so chal- the mine now meant that a miner could catch the “Sometimes I lie in bed and think about min- Over the next five years, Idarado mine manager lenging. It was a horrible risk. Yet through inno- mine bus at the corner of Main Street and Sec- ing — driving a shaft, doing stoping or raising,” Johnnie Wise and his second-in-command Bob Hi- vative mining and milling techniques, they made it ond Avenue in Ouray, ride up to Red Mountain, said Bill “Senior” Mahoney, a Telluride old-timer lander (who went on to become mine manager in happen. It was ultimately really profitable.” commute through the Treasury Tunnel and down of renown who worked at Idarado for a quar- the 1960s) spearheaded a program to integrate the a series of raises, then spend his shift working ter-century. “We drove miles of tunnel in those meandering maze of workings in the mountains Quite a Commute alongside miners from the Telluride side who had mountains — Jesus.” between Telluride and Red Mountain Pass, with the Idarado’s two main access portals, the Trea- entered the mine through the Mill Level Tunnel. Other times, as Mahoney stares out the window goal of making all of the old mines into one. sury Tunnel at Red Mountain and the Mill Level Dick Swerdfeger, chief engineer at the mine in of his new home in Montrose trying to catch a Logistically and geographically speaking, Tellu- Tunnel at Pandora, were five-and-a-half miles the 1960s, brought in a fleet of four-wheeled mine glimpse of the distant Sneffels range, he dreams ride was a better spot for a mill than Red Mountain. apart on opposite sides of the range with a 1,600- bicycles to help people get around faster inside of carving turns in deep white snow. That’s where So in 1956, the Treasury Mill shut down and the foot difference in elevation. the rambling mine. If he timed it just right with the future of Telluride would lie. And Mahoney Pandora Mill (aka the old Gray Mill) in Telluride But the newly-built physical connections inside the hoists, he could ride his bicycle in through would lead the way.

5 Snow is the New Gold

A young Bill Mahoney skied behind his dad’s car down the main street of Telluride in 1939. (Bill Mahoney collection) Telluride’s Transition from Mining to Skiing

n a small upstairs room at the Tellu- Mahoney’s dad, a miner, had started skiing at ride-Miners-Hospital-turned-Histori- the turn of the 20th century in Bonanza, Colo. The cal-Museum, Bill Mahoney’s first skis family moved to Telluride with their pack of boys are mounted to the wall, convalescing in the 1930s when Mahoney was three years old. like stout wooden soldiers beside a “What there was to do in the winter in Telluride window that looks out over the ski area was either sleigh riding down Oak Street or ski- he helped create. ing,” Mahoney said. The next room over, a handful of Ma- The Mahoney boys didn’t have a sleigh. But honey’s mineral specimens sparkle inside a glass they did have their dad’s old skis, and they found case. Tidy little cards identify what they are, where he another pair in the house they moved into. Be- Ifound them — mostly deep within the Idarado Mine. fore long, they knew everything there was to know If you stare at the specimens long enough, they about skiing in Telluride. take on a glow — like the mysterious contents There was skiing on Catholic Hill. Rope- of Indiana Jones’ Lost Ark in the bowels of the tow skiing at the beaver ponds, Grizzly Gulch University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute – hinting and Firecracker Hill. Power line skiing. Skiing at the hot violent juiciness of their creation, and behind cars. Tub skiing. Riding the Penn Tram the thrill of their discovery. up and skiing down. Summertime skiing on Billy Mahoney loved to mine. sugar snow in the high mountain basins. That He loved drilling dog holes. He loved sink- Skiing was popular in Telluride long before the Telluride Ski Area was a thing, as this photo of the Telluride Ski was about it, back then. But Mahoney longed ing shaft. He loved the stopers, the buzzies, the Club on Lizard Head Pass, circa 1924-25, can attest. (Bill Mahoney collection) for more. sprags and the stulls, the Montgomery Ward “When I was in high school, I used to sit at my hitches, the pecker poles and the rock bolts and desk and look out of those south-facing upstairs the scaling bars. The trams that crisscrossed the windows of the old school house and draw pic- high country like spider webs. The salty, wise tures of the ski runs I imagined,” Mahoney said. old miners like the Blixt Brothers and Whisper- “I laid out the whole mountain up there. I knew in’ Jim. Telluride would make a good one.” There was nothing quite like the satisfaction of driving a crosscut 1,800 feet through solid rock The Man with the Plan and hitting the vein spot on, or the thrill of break- Joe Zoline thought so too. ing into a giant crystal-lined vug hole filled with In 1968, the California lawyer and business- a primordial pool of aquamarine water — like man who would later become known around being on another planet. town as “Joe Zoe” arrived from Beverly Hills, by The incessant forward motion of the jackleg way of Aspen, with a big idea to build a real hon- drill matched Mahoney’s own work ethic, his est-to-god ski resort in Telluride. compulsion to push through whatever got in his He had already taken a wild leap, and bought way, to get things done. A short dynamo of a man an entire property, sight unseen, that would form with crystal-blue eyes and a flashing smile, he had the ski area’s core. Now, he had come to take a risen through the ranks at Telluride Mines, Inc. look at what he’d bought, and realized it was a and then Idarado, from tram loader to mine fore- critical — but only tiny — piece of what was man, and he fiercely loved his job. required. He needed local support and guidance But he knew that mining in Telluride wouldn’t now, to make his vision a reality. last forever. Even Idarado, as big and booming as So he pitched his idea to the local Rotary Club it was in the late 1960s, would surely eventually down at Kate Mulvey’s Roma Restaurant (the very go bust. Then what? same place where her goateed father Carlos Giar- Mahoney dreamed of creating a ski area in his Miners rode their own version of the Gondola a century before the modern, high-tech cabins di had been busted back in 1940 for a notorious cruised above Telluride Ski & Golf Co. slopes, as this image of Smuggler Union miners in a quiet dead-end valley, like the ones that were al- tram bucket reminds us. The photo is part of a mining heritage display next to the Gondola highgrading operation). ready cutting steep white swaths through forested terminal in the Oak Street Plaza in Telluride that features two of the original tram towers from Standing in front of the crowd like an old-time mountainsides in other parts of Colorado as he the Penn Tram, moved by helicopter from their original location near the Idarado Mill in 1997. mine promoter, Zoline promised that the Telluride was growing up. (Telluride Historical Museum collection) ski area would be “bigger than Vail, as large as

6 Ajax, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk combined, from Prospect Basin to the old Gorrono ranch and and twice as big as Mammoth in California.” But down the front hillside, trying to knit the complex the Rotary Club members were unimpressed. They terrain into a set of potential runs and lifts. had seen other ski area proposals come and go. Ten days later, leaving miles of ski tracks in his Who was to say Zoline could follow through? wake, Allais concluded that Telluride definitely “It was a little bit like L.L.Nunn talking to his had potential. He gifted Mahoney with his own ski unbelieving public about alternating current, with bindings as a token of his friendship. the exception that people at least knew what skiing Not long after that, Mahoney announced to his was,” wrote Richard and Suzanne Fetter in Tellu- wife Twylla and kids Mona and Billy Junior over ride, From Pick to Powder (Caxton Press, 1979). dinner that he had decided to quit his job at the Zoline, like Nunn, believed unswervingly in his Idarado Mine to become mountain manager for vision. All he needed was a like-minded visionary the proposed ski resort being developed by Zo- who understood the nature of this place, and the line. It was an epic cliff huck into bluebird sky. local ground game, to help make it happen. So “Bill Mahoney is a perfect example of Tellu- after the Rotary meeting, Zoline turned to Mulvey ride’s transition from mining to skiing and how it and asked, “Who can I talk to?” And Mulvey said, can all come together in one person,” reflected Joe “Talk to Bill Mahoney. He’s a nut for skiiing.” Smart, a longtime Idarado employee who lived in It was the beginning of a beautiful partnership Telluride through this time and now oversees the — and a new era for Telluride. Idarado’s safety and water quality compliance pro- grams. “It wasn’t that the miners went away and the skiers came in. It was truly an organic transition.” Dawn of a New Era If you could pinpoint the year that Telluride committed to its new destiny as a ski town, it would probably be 1972. That’s when the U.S. Forest Service granted a 50-year special use permit for the ski area and the first five double chairlifts went in – all at once – just like the tram building frenzy around Telluride of a century ago. “Five lifts, 440 beds, SKI AREA IS FULL GO” pro- Skiers drop into Revelation Bowl on a bluebird day at Telluride Ski Resort. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) claimed a banner headline in the May 11, 1972 issue of the Telluride Times, reporting on a recent raised at the Idarado Mine where his father was The New Face of Telluride community meeting at the Nugget Theatre. 300- the Pandora Mill superintendent. “They thought In November 1978, just as the chairlifts start- plus Telluridians had packed the floor of the old that the miners were a bunch of dummies.” ed scooping up skiers for their first turns of the movie house to hear Zoline’s most recent progress Tempers flared to the point where the Fourth season, Idarado closed for good and just like report. He promised the crowd that by the end of of July parade had to be cancelled one year after that, Telluride’s hundred-plus years as a mining the year, there would be “five miles of lifts capable devolving into a drunken brawl. It was the Wild town skidded to a stop. Now the new ski economy of carrying 1,200 skiers per hour and handling West, all over again. would have to carry Telluride into the future. Johnnie Stevens, sporting his best retro ski attire, took 2,500 skiers per day on the mountain.” “A lot of the issues had to do with concentrate Ron Allred, a dentist-turned-developer, and his a breather up top during a day on the job as head Most people in the ski industry thought he’d trucks going up Main Street. It had to do with tail- business partner Jim Wells bought the ski area of ski patrol at the Telluride Ski Area in the 1970s. A never make it. ings blowing. There was some reasoning behind from Zoline, just a couple weeks before Idarado Telluride native and lifelong skier, Stevens grew up in “And quite frankly, we maybe should not have their attitude,” Stevens acknowledged. “But the shut down. Pandora, where his dad was the mill superintendent made it,” reflected Stevens, who became the in- disrespect for a lot of what we had been — the It was pretty tough times in town. Not only were at the old Gray Mill. Ultimately, he became COO of the fant ski resort’s second full-time employee shortly mining community — was pretty inexcusable, in the miners out of work. A lot of the local busi- ski company and was inducted into the Colorado Ski after Mahoney signed on. “We had a great hun- my opinion.” Hall of Fame. (Bill Mahoney collection) nesses had shuttered, and the local bank was on dred-year-old community. We had a great poten- The disrespect could go both ways, of course. the brink of insolvency as people withdrew their tial ski mountain. And other than that, we had not Telluride’s authoritarian town marshal, Everett Mor- life savings and left town. Knitting Up the Mountain much. But we had a belief. We just kept plugging row, kept a wary (some would say malicious) eye “I saw those people packing up their cars and Over the next few years, Mahoney moonlighted away at it. We were young. We just worked and on the strangers coming into town as he rolled his boarding up their houses,” Allred recalled. “They as a ski area development consultant for Zoline worked and worked and worked and skied and cigarettes one-handed. The Telluride Times report- loved living here. They didn’t really want to leave while continuing to work full-time as a foreman skied and skied and skied. In the end it all turned ed that he once walked in on a Seder service at the but they had no choice.” at the Idarado Mine. His reputation as a tough, out, but it was tough.” Senate along with the state liquor inspector to inves- With Mahoney’s help, Allred was able to put determined, take-charge guy preceded him from One day shortly after opening, they only sold tigate the serving of wine at the ritual service, stoking some of the unemployed miners back to work on the mine to the ski mountain. seven lift tickets. Often they sold less than 100. outrage in the town’s nascent Jewish community. the ski mountain, where they proved their mettle “He and my dad made a tremendously strong And in the winter of ’76-’77, it barely snowed at doing the hard physical labor of clearing ski runs connection with each other,” Zoline’s daughter all. But slowly, slowly, the ski area gained mo- Common Unity and building roads and lifts. Pamela Lifton-Zoline said. “Billy knew everything mentum, and names like “Spiral Stairs,” “Pick In 1974, less than two years after Zoline had “These people were workers,” Allred said. “If my dad didn’t know and my dad knew everything and Gad” and “Pandora” became more associ- blown the whistle that started construction on the they needed to dig a tree, they’d do it by hand if Billy didn’t know — about how the world works, ated with ski runs than the mining claims and Telluride Ski Area, a slate of young newcomers they didn’t have a piece of equipment. I’d always about how Telluride works, about how finance features they were named for. wrested control of the Telluride Town Council ask ‘Do you think you can do this?’ And they said, works. They put it together. If you had designed As Telluride schussed toward its new resort away from the old guard, winning five slots that ‘Damn right.’” two people, it probably would have been hard identity, it was still very much a mining town, were up for election, including mayor. Their first Mahoney and Stevens teased Allred mercilessly to find such a good, complete fit in terms of the too, with dirt streets and dust all over the place. action was to suspend Marshal Morrow. about his baby blue jumpsuit and girly mittens and skills that were needed.” Idarado was, in fact, just entering its peak pro- Many in the mining community perceived awkward skiing style, but they stuck faithfully by his While Zoline focused on promoting and fi- duction years. the slate’s success as a hostile takeover. Others side and saw Telski through its next phase of devel- nancing the new ski area, Mahoney zeroed in on “People don’t realize there was this overlap shrugged and carried on with the civic-minded opment and expansion. All three were eventually land acquisition and the Forest Service permitting period to start with,” Lifton-Zoline said. “The ski business of the town, just as they had always done. inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame. process, bringing Telluride native Johnnie Stevens area started in ’71 and the mine didn’t close until When Joe Smart came to Telluride in 1972 to work Slowly, a new Telluride emerged from the old, and a few other local “ski nuts” on board to help. ’78. So there was a seven-year period when the in the Pandora Mill, he followed their lead. and its fledgling ski area metamorphosed into an By 1970, they had cut a few ski trails and were ski economy was getting off the ground while at He served as Exalted Ruler of the local Elks international ski and golf destination with world- doing Sno-Cat tours, guiding people from the top the same time, mining trucks were roaring down Lodge. He volunteered as an EMT for the Telluride class terrain, high-speed lifts and a gondola tran- of Prospect Basin all the way down to the very through Main Street all day long.” Ambulance Association, and was a reserve deputy sit system that whisked folks for free from Tellu- bottom of the mountain. for the Sheriff’s Office. He coached Little League ride to Mountain Village, just as the tram systems That same year, Zoline flew to France and talked Culture Clashes baseball and was a Scout master. Occasionally he’d of a century ago had ferried miners and ore up to Emile Allais about assessing Telluride’s poten- The community was changing fast — and not take home a hungry kid whose parents were out and down the mountainsides. tial as a ski area. Allais, a former French world just because of skiing. As Mahoney explained it, partying at the bar, and feed him dinner. When Chuck Horning purchased Telluride Ski champion skier, had already developed eight of the “That was when the hippies come to town. Young The Idarado Mining Company, in those days, and Golf in 2003, he heard about the big bad mining world’s top ski resorts. Mahoney took some time rebel kids.” still wove its way through the community fabric company up at the end of the valley. He decided to in- off from the mine and guided Allais all around the The Vietnam War had boiled up beneath in countless ways, providing affordable housing, vestigate the situation for himself, and was a little sur- mountain. Together they rode its chutes and glades, America’s thin skin like a raw red carbuncle in a town doctor, and mass transit long before it was prised to learn about what Idarado had actually been an acidic caldera of social unrest. Wandering a popular catchphrase. up to over the past decade, working to heal the open hippies spilled across the country in a tie-dyed “I was always encouraged by Idarado to be part sores of a century of mining, while preserving the tide, surging into places like Telluride that were of the community,” Smart said. “If I had to go on a open space and mining heritage of the high country. beautiful, cheap to live in, far from the insanity fire or ambulance run, there was never any ques- “They did first-rate work up there,” Horning of Vietnam, and free (or so they imagined) from tion. I was doing all these community things and acknowledged. “They are really looking to be a the smothering establishment and the material- the mine was always supportive of it. They were responsible neighbor. They are good people.” istic world. trying to foster a community. Common Unity.” Of course, not everyone saw it that way. “They began drifting in: long hair, scruffy cloth- Looking back on those years, four decades lat- ing, beads and an unabashed love for marijuana er, it is easy to see that a new kind of common Blowing in the Wind in a conservative town long noted for its produc- unity was crystalizing in Telluride, deep within the There is a story that some of the Telluride hip- tion and consumption of straight whiskey,” wrote faults of those fractious times. pies danced in the streets the day Idarado shut David G. Lavender in The Telluride Story: A Tale “The sense we all had to depend on each other down back in ‘78. No more trucks of concentrate of Two Towns (Wayfinder Press, 2007). was more evident than it is now,” Lifton-Zoline would be rumbling through the town they had What could possibly go wrong? said. “You might find political enemies, but then claimed for themselves. Almost right away, pinballs of animosity started they’d be driving the ambulance when your child On windy days, though, for years afterward, zinging every which-way around the town. “For got hurt.” silky clouds of dust would rise off the tailings some unknown reason, the hippies didn’t cotton “Things were a lot easier back then,” Smart piles and swirl through the streets like a dirty to Joe, a successful business man out of LA,” Ma- agreed. “If we had a problem, we talked about secret that could almost be forgotten. Bill Mahoney (at left) and Emile Allais poured over honey said. “They let the air out of his tires. They it, maybe even shouted about it, maybe even took The dust obscured the armies of lawyers their plans for how to design the Telluride Ski Area were mean to him.” it outside, and then you forgot about it and went and consultants that were gathering on the during one of Allais’ visits to Telluride in the early A lot of the newcomers also “had a total dis- and had a beer and it was yesterday’s problem, horizon to mount a decade-long legal battle over ’70s. (Bill Mahoney collection) regard for mining,” recalled Stevens, who was long forgotten.” Idarado’s remediation.

7 It’s a RAP

The Idarado Legacy Trail follows the course of the San Miguel River from Telluride to Pandora, ofering views of the reclaimed tailings pile formerly known as the Toxic Twinkie. The Battle over Idarado’s Reclamation

ocals called it the People across the nation were freaking out, and Rick River, who played a lead role in overseeing Utah, and converting most of Ironton Park into a Toxic Twinkie. for good reason, about the impacts of heavy Idarado’s reclamation. massive, passive water treatment plant. By the time the Ida- industry on the environment. Instead of settling, Idarado/Newmont and the In March 1987, the State released a Record of rado mine shut down In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Colorado Attorney General’s office squared off and Decision that outlined its final proposed solution for in 1978, the enormous Environmental Response, Compensation, and Lia- prepared for a legal battle. cleaning up the Idarado Mine. loaf-shaped mound of bility Act (CERCLA), more commonly known as Su- All of the Idarado tailings would be consolidated tailings at the edge of perfund, authorizing the Environmental Protection Competing Visions for Cleanup into two enormous piles — one at Telluride’s No. 5 Telluride — otherwise Agency to investigate and clean up messes like Love The following summer, a frenzy of field work got and 6 tailings pile and one at the No. 4 tailings pile in known as the Number 6 tailings pile — had taken on Canal. States were granted a brief window under the underway to characterize the environmental condi- Ironton Park. (A giant conveyor belt would be built a life of its own in the town’s collective consciousness. new law in the early 1980s in which to sue alleged tions at the Idarado Mine. Both sides hired teams of to transfer tailings from the Treasury Tunnel area LOn gusty days, 20-foot-tall dust devils lifted off polluters for natural resource damages. consultants who fanned out across the high country down to Ironton Park.) Each of these piles would be the tailings and swept through town, inspiring Colorado was one of a number of western between Ouray and Telluride, sampling everything capped with a four-foot layer cake of bentonite clay, KOTO (Telluride’s local radio station) to broadcast mining states that jumped at the opportunity to they could get their hands on — surface water, mine cobble and topsoil that would either be trucked in or “tailings alerts” warning town residents to take prosecute its own CERCLA cases. It sued Idarado/ water, soil, waste rock, and of course, tailings. harvested from “borrow” areas nearby. cover. No one really knew what was in that dust, or Newmont and five other Colorado mine sites for “We were pretty much doing parallel studies,” Underground water from the upper mine work- what it might do to them when they breathed it in. natural resource damages in 1983, just as a dead- said Sherm Worthington, a longtime environmental ings on the Telluride side would be diverted via a Some folks joked (and perhaps secretly fanta- line for states to file under the federal Superfund consultant for Idarado/Newmont. “Initially there trans-mountain diversion to the Red Mountain side sized) that the Toxic Twinkie would roll out of town law was approaching. was a fair amount of friction between the State and to dilute Red Mountain Creek. Lime or limestone one day of its own accord, like a giant jellyroll filled Most of the mining companies opted to settle with Idarado. When we would go out and sample, they would be added to make the creek less acidic, with slime. the State out of court. But Idarado took exception would be watching what we were doing, and we causing the soluble metals in the water to take on a Instead, it was transformed into a grassy green to the State’s allegation that it was responsible for were watching them.” more solid, sludge-like form so they could be con- meadow as part of the Idarado Mine’s cleanup effort mining impacts in the region that stretched all the The State soon published a Remedial Investi- tained and treated. in the 1990s. The innovative reclamation project, way back to the 1870s, when Idarado hadn’t even gation Report that characterized the hazardous This heavy, metals-laden sludge would be car- guided by a sort of “cookbook” of environmental formed until 1939. materials and the extent of contamination at the ried along in the creek until the terrain flattened out remedies called the Remedial Action Plan, was a ”We didn’t think we had damaged natural re- Idarado Mine, closely followed by a Feasibility in Ironton Park. There, the State’s plan required strange love-child born out of an epic legal battle be- sources to the extent that the State alleged, and we Study that cited six remedial options it was con- excavating seven large settling ponds, which would tween the State of Colorado and Idarado/Newmont also never felt comfortable with the fact that they sidering. These ranged from doing nothing, to consume most of the Ironton Park area. When that spilled across a decade like something out of would come back after us for remedial charges trucking thousands of tons of tailings from Tellu- water from the creek flowed into those lagoons, Game of Thrones. anyway,” explained retired Idarado site manager ride and Red Mountain Pass to a disposal area in State experts explain the water would slow down enough to make the sludge drop to the bottom of Superfund Me the lagoons, while cleaner water would flow on It started with the tailings. into the Uncompahgre River. In 1975, Telluride citizens complained to the On the Telluride side, underground mine water Colorado Department of Health’s Air Pollution outflow from the Mill Level Tunnel and Meldrum Control Division about the wind-borne menace that Tunnel would be captured at another settling frequented their town. Their complaints launched pond, to be built in Royer Gulch. And if this didn’t a pair of studies by the Colorado Department of prove to be effective, an industrial-scale water Health, and the United States Public Health Service, treatment plant would have to be built on the Centers for Disease Control, which determined the Telluride valley floor. Idarado Mine had caused significant environmental Idarado/Newmont released its own remediation problems in the area. proposal, outlining a simpler, cheaper and less in- Soon after those studies were complete, the trusive solution that preserved, to the extent it could, Town of Telluride drilled two test wells not far from the integrity of historic mining relics in the area. For the blunt yellow toe of the No. 6 tailings pile as part several years, they had already been successfully of an effort to augment the municipal water sup- experimenting with stabilizing their tailings piles ply, and discovered an industrial pollutant called in place — mulching them with hay and manure hexavalent chromium in the water. It was traced to and lime and things so that grass could be grown a reagent used at the Pandora Mill. Idarado landed right on top of them. They called this process direct squarely on the State of Colorado’s official “naughty revegetation, and proposed now to apply it to all of list” of mines. their tailings in Telluride and on Red Mountain. Meanwhile, the environmental pollution disas- To improve water quality in the San Miguel ter known as Love Canal had literally exploded River and Red Mountain Creek, Idarado/Newmont in Niagara Falls, N.Y. that same year, leaving proposed a variety of source control methods to chemical-soaked neighborhoods, birth defects, prevent clean water from getting contaminated. miscarriages and leukemia in its toxic wake. Unremediated tailings between Telluride and Pandora, circa 1990. In the high country, surface water would be

8 diverted around waste rock piles and collapse fea- a local Telluride paper, and served as a San Miguel tures that led into the mine. In underground workings, county commissioner during the formative years of mine water would be piped around metal-rich ore the project’s development. He was also appointed passes and old stopes. to be a citizen representative on a Local Negotiating Committee set up by Gov. Roy Romer in the early The Community Weighs In ‘90s to give local citizens and government officials The local communities of Ouray and Telluride had in Telluride and Ouray more say in the final Idarado plenty of opportunities to vet the proposed cleanup cleanup remedy. options at seemingly endless rounds of public meet- A self-described “Haight Ashbury hippie and ings hosted by Idarado/Newmont and the State, both Earth First guy,” Goodtimes admits he went into the before and after the looming trial. negotiating process feeling pretty jaded, and wary of Ouray’s attitude was colored by a general anti- Newmont’s motives. But, he added, “I think it was re- government sentiment. With no documented health ally impressive that Newmont/Idarado stayed in the hazards on the Ouray side, most everyone agreed game and worked through it rather than taking the that Idarado’s plan would be less disruptive to the court case, winning and leaving this big mess. I think town’s economy and would pose less environmen- we arrived at a win-win-win situation for Newmont, tal risk than what the State proposed. As one Ouray Telluride and the environment. Everybody won on local put it, the State’s cleanup plan “seems like Mark Worth and Art Goodtimes inspected the In the years leading up to the RAP, environmental this one.” swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer. You may underground workings on the 1230 level of the consultants for both Idarado/Newmont and the Most people on the Ouray side feel good about kill the pest, but break your arm doing it.” Idarado Mine in 1990. Goodtimes was a citizen State of Colorado collected countless water samples the way things have turned out, too. They are happy Ouray locals also worried that their town would representative on a Local Negotiating Committee in an efort to characterize the environmental that the high country mining relics on Red Moun- bear the brunt of a burdensome and invasive clean- set up by Gov. Roy Romer to give local citizens and conditions at the Idarado Mine. tain Pass have been left intact, and that the beautiful, up over the State’s concern that the newly built government ofcials in Telluride and Ouray more wild wetlands in Ironton Park haven’t been dug up Ridgway Reservoir down-stream would become a say in the fnal Idarado cleanup remedy. to make way for settling ponds. catchment basin for the heavy metals pouring in “I have no objections to the cleanup — I think from the mining district. it’s wonderful. It seems they have done a remarkable In Telluride, meanwhile, opinions radically di- job,” said Bill Fries (the country western singer also verged over what to do about the cleanup. Some re- known as C.W. McCall), who was serving as Ouray coiled from what they saw as the State’s “We’re from mayor while cleanup negotiations were underway in the Government and we’re here to help” approach the 1980s. Fries strongly opposed the State’s plan at and said that their kids had eaten tailings and were that time, preferring the Idarado Mine’s less intru- doing fine. Others felt the State’s plan did not go far sive remediation proposal. enough to scour away every speck of Telluride’s dirty “I hate government stepping in, you know?” he mining past from the environment. said. “I am a friend of the miners and the mines. Nobody in Telluride really liked what either the We moved here because of the mountains and the State, or Idarado, proposed to do. But as former history, and mining is a big part of that history.” KOTO news director Jon Kovash recalls, Telluride’s objections to the cleanup “were mostly focused on The Toxic Twinkie Rides Again the state’s insistence on a four-foot earthen cap, Before the Idarado cleanup got underway, Tel- which would have entailed all kinds of disruption.” luridians worried that the tranquility and harmony of their valley would be compromised during the Here Comes the Judge The late U.S. District Judge Jim Carrigan. Former Colorado Governor Roy Romer. reclamation period. That didn’t really turn out to be Armed with their competing plans, the State of (Carnegie Branch Library for Local History) the case — largely because the tailings remained in Colorado and Idarado/Newmont prepared to go to place, and did not receive the four-foot earthen cap trial. First came the discovery period. The State sent RAP Sheet Five years later, River had placed a neat little the State had called for. its lawyers to the Idarado offices on Red Mountain The State’s vindication was short-lived. check mark beside almost every item on the RAP But as the State and Idarado nailed down the final Pass, where they set up a sleek fleet of Xerox ma- Idarado appealed to the 10th Circuit Court, and sheet. The Colorado Department of Health (which details of the RAP back in the early ‘90s, Telluride chines and settled in to review 480,000 pages of in December 1989, a three-judge panel overturned has since morphed into the Colorado Department locals were still deeply unhappy about their options. mine records going all the way back to 1945. Judge Carrigan’s decision on the grounds that the of Public Health and Environment) kept close watch An article Kovash wrote for the Aug. 14, 1989 “Every paper had three sets of eyeballs on it,” Riv- district court lacked authority under CERCLA to over Idarado’s progress, granting modifications issue of High Country News captured the sense of er recalled. “The State had its attorneys in one room force Idarado/Newmont to implement the State’s when necessary, and making sure Idarado was frustration that pervaded Telluride at that time. “The going through our records, and we had to look at proposed cleanup remedy. Moreover, the panel meeting its performance objectives. State is being as stupid as the mining company,” everything to see if it was privileged information.” ruled that the district court could not force Idarado A lot of what they did was brand new stuff in the Kovash quoted former San Miguel County Commis- Then came the depositions. River and his boss to evict the residents of the Pandora Trailer Park — world of mine reclamation. (Stay tuned for the next sioner Jim Bedford as bluntly stating. “We’re caught had an ongoing friendly dispute over which one an essential component of the State’s cleanup plan. two weeks to find out just exactly what they did.) between a stupid rock and a stupid hard place.” of them did the most deposition time. “I did 28 The decision had a crippling effect on all of the “It was all completely manageable,” Baker Many Telluride residents still hoped to find a way hours,” River said. “It’s not easy, and it’s not fun. states that had begun filing their own suits under said. But that’s not to say it was easy. “We were to banish the 12 million tons of tailings from their They try to ask you questions to trick you.” But CERCLA, shifting mine cleanups across the country trying to work on and apply contemporary en- back yard. Hauling them all the way to Utah proved River, a tall, lanky man whose fiery temper on the into the cumbersome realm of the EPA. vironmental standards on things that were done impractical — that would have required a truckload basketball court had been legendary when he was The State of Colorado appealed to the Supreme more than 100 years in the past. I think we did a of tailings every 20 minutes for 12 years through the growing up in Ouray, held up just fine under the Court to overturn the lower Court’s ruling, but the great job of that, but it took a lot of creativity and only road in town. But what about stuffing them back intense pressure. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The State’s hard work and money.” inside the mine? Or transporting them out of town Finally, in 1987, the case went to trial in Denver only remaining option was to do the reclamation As time went on, what had started as a relation- with a giant Archimedean screw? Or sluicing them before Federal District Judge Jim Carrigan. At the work itself, and then sue Idarado to try to recover ship of dispute and conflict between Idarado and out to the airport to use as fill for the runway? time, it was the largest lawsuit ever brought by a state costs. But the State didn’t have the funding to do a the State evolved into collaboration and trust as Gov. Romer caught wind of the town’s hate- against a private company. project of this scale on its own. the two parties worked together toward a common relationship with its tailings during a visit to Telluride Dave Baker, Newmont’s retired Chief Sustain- “At this point, Idarado could have walked away goal of improving the environment. at about this time. ability Officer, sat through the whole trial. “It from the whole process and simply implemented Looking back, Baker is pleased with how it has Romer was known for his pragmatic approach was complicated,” he said. “Imprinted on top of its own reclamation plan,” Baker recalled. “Instead, all turned out. “Idarado was always special to me,” to dealing with the environmental issues of the day. the legal complexities were all of the science and we entered a new round of negotiations with the he said. “It’s an incredible area — one of the most In addition to mine reclamation challenges across engineering and technical pieces that went into State to try to come up with a plan both parties could beautiful areas of Colorado if not the West — with a the state, he was also dealing with nuclear waste at the plan on both sides. And those elements were agree to.” rich and robust history. I really love it there and I am Rocky Flats and with the Rocky Mountain Arsenal’s all argued and litigated. So yeah, It was pretty Hence was born a Consent Decree between proud of the work that Newmont and Idarado did in buried reserves of toxic nerve gas. intense, and all-consuming.” Idarado/Newmont and the State of Colorado, with developing and implementing that plan. It was some “A mine tailings pile is a problem, but not as big a Baker was impressed with how much ener- an accompanying cleanup plan referred to as the really good work.” problem as atomic waste,” he observed. gy Judge Carrigan put into understanding it all, Remedial Action Plan — RAP for short — which “There are still some things to be done, but we The solution, in Romer’s mind, lay not in solving, even taking a field trip to Telluride and Ouray and methodically spelled out all of the cleanup activities have had a lot of successes,” Idarado counsel De- but mitigating the problem, as the RAP itself pro- traveling all the way through the underground that Idarado/Newmont agreed to undertake. It was a nise Kennedy concurred. “And we are not going any- posed to do. “You can’t stop the wind. You can’t truck workings from one side to the other. flexible, living, collaborative document that could be where; we are continuing to work on it.” all of these tailings away, or stuff them back inside Ultimately, after weighing all of the evidence and modified as time went on. the mine. That doesn’t make sense,” he remembers testimony, Carrigan was not convinced that Idara- The two parties signed off on the RAP in 1992, Win-Win-Win saying. “You need to take what you are faced with and do’s plan would work. In a landmark ruling that and the cleanup got underway in earnest in 1993, Telluride poet and environmentalist Art Good- tell people there are no ideal solutions.” marked the first court conclusion to a state-pros- exactly a decade after the State filed suit against times knows a lot about the Idarado clean-up. He Eventually, Telluride made reluctant peace with its ecuted CERCLA trial, Carrigan ruled in favor of Idarado/Newmont. wrote an in-depth series of articles about the RAP for Twinkie, and the green wig of grass it soon sported, the State of Colorado, and entered a mandatory as the newly remediated waters of the San Miguel injunction requiring the defendants to execute the River beckoned in recompense to fly-fishers and State’s cleanup plan. kids on inner tubes on hot summer days. Carrigan’s conditions for the massive cleanup RAP at a glance included consolidating tailings piles in Telluride The Idarado Reclamation Action Plan, a 174-page document, was an innovative fve-year Red-Headed Stepchild and Red Mountain, capping them with four feet of program (1993-7) developed for remediating the impacts of historic mining activities in In Ouray, meanwhile, most locals didn’t give earthen material as the state had called for, and sta- the San Miguel River and Red Mountain Creek (Uncompahgre) drainages. The RAP included much thought to the strangely named, strangely-col- bilizing them with a flood-control structure; moni- guidelines for completing certain remedial tasks within a given timeframe. ored river running through their own town. The toring lead levels in the blood of Telluride children Uncompahgre River had always been that way, they for five years; relocating Pandora Trailer Park resi- The RAP has two primary objectives: pointed out — since the time of the Utes — and dents from contaminated land where cleanup would 1. Stabilize mine tailings through direct revegetation; its Ute name could be loosely translated as “stinking then take place; revegetating mined land areas; 2. Improve water quality in Red Mountain Creek and the San Miguel River through a variety water,” or “bad water,” or “water that runs red.” improving aquatic habitat and stocking fish in the of source control measures. But Idarado’s water remediation experts would San Miguel River; diverting water from contaminated spend the next two decades giving the Uncompah- Many of the remedial elements in the fve-year program were completed ahead of areas; and treating already contaminated water. gre River — and its tributary, Red Mountain Creek The ultimate cost of the cleanup plan was schedule. The successful implementation of the Idarado RAP has become a model environ- — lots of thought, as they wrestled with the greatest pegged at $40 million or more, and the State mental remediation project, completed in close cooperation with State agencies and local challenge of the whole Remediation Action Plan: planned to ask for up to $200 million more in citizen groups. improving water quality in the acidic, mine-riddled environmental damages. Silverton Caldera.

9 A Tale of Two Watersheds

The Red Mountains are full of rich deposits of pyrite, or iron sulfde, which contribute to the challenges of remediating Red Mountain Creek. (Photo by Don Paulson)

eep inside the guts of found him, leaning up against the rib of the the San Juan Moun- tunnel beside the ore pass. tains, thousands of Berry thought he’d had a heart attack. feet beneath the rag- “George!” he yelled. “Are you alright?” Cap- ged ridge line that pis was an old hand, as solid as they come. He’d parts the mighty San worked at the Idarado almost forever, and not Miguel and Uncom- much could faze him. But when he lifted his head pahgre river water- and stared at Berry, his face was as white as a sheet sheds, two headlamps bobbed along like buoys in of paper. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. In- an inky sea — Alfred Berry in front, George Cappis deed, he had. Dright behind him — on the abandoned 2000 level “I can still hear his voice. And see his light down of the Idarado Mine. there,” Cappis muttered. That’s how Berry found out that a young rookie miner had fallen down the 2030 ore pass, years ago. And that Cappis had pulled that miner’s bro- ken, lifeless body out from the bottom of the chute, along with the broken ore, 900 feet below. People had died over the years in various parts of the Idarado Mine — most of them well before the historic mine workings on the Telluride side were even consolidated into Idarado in the 1950s — with no one left to remember who they were or how they’d died. Under the watchful eye of their supervisor Jer- ry Heldman, Berry and Cappis and the others on The Yankee Girl head frame stands sentry over the Red Mountain Mining District. Historic mine tunnels the skeleton crew were now slowly, methodically and shafts driven into the Red Mountains produce hundreds of gallons per minute of extremely degraded, preparing the Idarado itself to die — tending to acidic waters that pollute Red Mountain Creek. The Genessee Mine is the worst ofender, contributing the underground workings in anticipation of the about a third of all the dissolved zinc in the creek. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) extensive mine remediation that would soon take place, when the State of Colorado and Idarado/ 1992 to tackle the various elements spelled out of the places we saw, nobody will ever see again. Newmont finished duking it out in court. in the RAP. They have been abandoned forever.” It was strange work for miners accustomed to Berry, at 25, was foreman of the high country/ doing everything they could to keep a mine vibrant- underground crew on the Telluride side. Among High Country Highlife ly alive. A little bit like a doctor caring for a patient the men he hired were miners who had been his Berry’s crew had the best of both worlds. on death row. mentors when he started out at the Camp Bird In the winter, they had the run of the under- Alfred Berry (center) and underground/high Mine as a kid fresh out of high school. Now, the ground mine. And in the summer, they re-inhab- country crew members Scott George and Bryan Boy Boss tables had turned and Berry was in charge. They ited the mountain basins high above Telluride that Pace, circa 1995. In 1992, the State and Idarado finally finished called him Boy Boss. the miners of a century ago had burrowed into like negotiating their Consent Decree and agreed on The first task at hand was to finish the work that so many jackrabbits, leaving mounds of yellow The year was 1991. Idarado was proactively a Remedial Action Plan, a five-year remedy to the pre-RAP skeleton crew had started, bringing waste rock and rusty old equipment behind. working on mine closure, even before the Remedial help the environment heal from the impacts of a Idarado’s underground workings up to MSHA safe- Throughout the RAP years, the crew lived to- Action Plan that would ultimately guide that closure century of mining in the region by Idarado and ty standards for the years of remediation work that gether all summer long in a small bunkhouse they was negotiated and signed. A skeleton crew on a its predecessors. lay ahead. dubbed the “Idarado Hilton” perched at 11,000 shoestring budget did the dirty, dark and Besides revegetating the tailings, the RAP Berry and his crew got busy re-timbering rais- feet, just above the portal to the Ophir Mine in dangerous work of re-activating the long-neglected targeted improving surface water quality around es, guiding new cable through aging WWII-era Marshall Basin. underground workings, to make them safe for the Idarado Mine — specifically, by reducing hoists, putting in new power lines, blasting run- They spent their days building miles of concrete future closure activity. levels of zinc in the San Miguel River and Red arounds past caved-in workings that were too interceptor channels that still lace the high country Berry’s skin prickled as they passed the gaping Mountain Creek drainages. Zinc is a particularly unstable to rehab, and constructing a network of today like a bunch of alpine “Slip-n-Slides”, fun- maw of the 2030 ore pass, its black breath rising stubborn heavy metal to remove from surface water, refuge chambers (bunker-like rooms gouged out neling snowmelt and storm water around the old up from the depths to meet him. It was creepy so if they could reduce zinc concentrations, they’d of rock that are stocked with oxygen tanks, food mine dumps and collapsed surface features. It was working alone in this sprawling, empty mine, and be reducing other metals as well. and medical supplies) that still exist inside the grueling, filthy physical labor and in between the he was glad that Cappis had agreed to come along Idarado hoped to achieve this objective mine today. cussing, they loved it. that day to help him rehab a crumbling stretch of through a variety of innovative source control Once they got the mine in shape, they started They pumped water right out of the creek tunnel on the Argentine vein. measures to divert water away from mine waste working on the underground elements of the RAP, and mixed their concrete in a continuous mixer. As they made their way along the tomblike and mineralized areas — both on the surface building a far-flung network of hydrologic diver- Berry’s friend and long-time mining partner Eric passageway toward their work area, it dawned and underground — in order to prevent it from sions, collection points and pipelines to herd the Schoenebaum (now Idarado’s Red Mountain site on Berry that Cappis had been awfully quiet picking up heavy metals. mine water around metal-laden stopes and ore manager) was the pump-master; he was the only for a while. He turned around, and Cappis was Under the direction of Idarado General Man- passes and channel it down and out of the mine. one that could get the cantankerous concrete nowhere to be seen. Berry raced back and soon ager Rick River, Idarado hired several crews in “We went all over that mine,” Berry said. “Many pump to behave itself.

10 Just over the hill in Savage Basin, another man Water (H2O) plus pyrite (FeS2) yields iron camp sprang up during the RAP years from 1993 oxides and sulfuric acid, also known as acid rock to 1997, inhabited by a group of contractors from drainage. The acid leaches other heavy metals out Nielson Construction that had been hired to put of the surrounding rock and into the watershed. in diversion channels around the Tomboy ghost The Telluride region doesn’t have an acid rock town and mining ruins. While the Idarado crew drainage problem. That’s because way back when trucked all of their concrete materials and aggre- the supervolcano near Silverton went kablooie, a gate into Marshall Basin along the rough and nar- bonanza of carbonate rock blasted up into the air, row mountain roads, the Nielson contractors had and splatted down near present-day Telluride. That theirs brought up to Savage Basin in an enormous carbonate goodness remains in the environment Sikorsky sky crane helicopter. today, buffering the water that comes out of the Tragically, the Idarado high country crew lost Idarado Mine above Telluride, and easing remedia- one of its own in August 1993 when Berry’s broth- tion efforts in the San Miguel River basin. er-in-law, Thomas Rice, died in a vehicle accident But the red acidic rim of the Silverton Caldera at half a mile or so above the old Tomboy town site. the headwaters of the Uncompahgre River in the Red “He was making the last trip of the day hauling Mountain Districthas no pH-buffering carbonate some material and his truck ran off the road and material at all. Indeed, if there was ever a geolog- he was killed. It was a horrible deal,” Schoene- Idarado General Manager Rick River (in hat and yellow shirt) inspected the progress of Idarado high country ic lottery for acid rock drainage, the Silverton Cal- baum said. “When you are working together do- crew members as they built a network of diversion channels in Marshall Basin. dera stood in line twice waving its hands in the air ing these jobs you get real, real close. So that was screaming “Me, me, me!” just real tough when it happened. But we went Mining has made the problem worse, but Moth- on, you know.” er Nature is complicit too; natural springs as acidic Their hard work paid off, as the San Miguel as lemon juice have been found well above historic River gradually recovered from the degrading im- mine workings in the Red Mountains. pacts of a century’s worth of mining. Idarado has Long story short, if there’s one thing to know now been meeting its compliance standard for about the geochemistry of the San Juan Mountains, it zinc concentration in the San Miguel River nearly is this: “You are either in the caldera or you’re not, every year since 2004, and the river supports a and it’s very different mineralization depending on healthy fishery. where you are at,” said Ouray geologist Bob Larson. The Idarado Mine is not in the caldera; its Seeing Red workings plunge into the gray-colored mountains Making things better in the upper reaches of the across Highway 550 to the west. But the third-par- Uncompahgre River watershed, where Idarado’s ty mines Idarado agreed to remediate through the Treasury Tunnel is located, has turned out to be RAP are well inside the caldera’s sour belly, and a more elusive goal. Here, the geology, hydrology taint Red Mountain Creek with their acidic, metal- and mining history of the Red Mountain District loaded drainage. present a Gordian knot of challenges that Idarado has yet to unravel. Up Red Mountain Creek The RAP on Red Mountain has two components: Without a Paddle direct revegetation of the tailings, and remediating Contract workers from Nielson Construction built Joe Smart stood at the Idarado Mine’s compliance After years of remediation efforts in the Red water discharges from various portals on both Ida- diversion channels around the mining ruins in point on Red Mountain Creek on a wintery day last Mountain District, Idarado found out in 2012 that rado and non-Idarado property. Savage Basin, circa 1994. March, where he samples the water once a month, it still wasn’t meeting its zinc objective on Red snow or shine. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) Idarado’s Barstow Mine and Treasury Tunnel Mountain Creek. This discovery triggered a contin- on the west side of Red Mountain Creek are not gency plan in the RAP that Idarado is now following that problematic. The water draining out of them to try to get into compliance. is zinc-loaded, but not acidic. It is either piped First came yet another round of water sampling into buried weeplines where it slowly seeps into throughout the basin, which Idarado completed the ground or, from time to time, diverted back in 2012. through the mine to flow out into a boulder field “And we found what we found 30 years ago – below the Meldrum Tunnel on the Telluride side. the major sources were basically the same,” said The system works pretty well. Idarado consulting environmental engineer Sherm The troubles have come from a dozen mines in the Worthington. “Most of the zinc-loading in Red historic Red Mountain Mining District on the other Mountain Creek comes from non-Idarado sources side of Red Mountain Creek. Idarado never owned such as the Genessee Mine, the Red Mountain Adit or operated these mines but accepted responsibility, and the Rouville Mine.” under the Consent Decree and RAP, for cleaning up To more effectively remediate the water seeping their mess. out of these mines (as well as its own), Idarado has These so-called “third-party mining proper- looked at doubling down on tried-and-true source ties” include a who’s who of Red Mountain’s leaky, control remedial measures. It has also been eval- acidic problem-children — the Joker, the Rou- uating different experimental processes for in-situ ville, the Guston, and the biggest, baddest metal passive treatment, using its own Treasury Tunnel as loader in the ‘hood — the Genessee Adit — which a guinea pig. today contributes around a third of all the zinc in A perfectly poured high country diversion channel routed stream water around acidic, metal-loaded historic Newmont’s Senior Engineer for Legacy Compli- Red Mountain Creek depending on the time of year. waste rock piles in Marshall Basin above Telluride. Altogether, there are 26 diversion channels in the Savage ance, Devon Horntvedt, heads up this effort. He The RAP calls for Idarado to reduce zinc in the and Marshall basins, covering some 13,000 feet, and many more on the Red Mountain side of the mine. has evaluated two alternative treatment methods creek by 50 percent from pre-remediation levels — so far and has a third treatment study in progress as measured at a compliance point just downstream this summer, but still hasn’t found the magic bullet. of Idarado’s Tailings Pile #4 in Ironton Park. (We’ll take a closer look at Horntvedt’s ongoing The third-party mining properties named in the work in the last story in this series.) RAP are all upstream of this compliance point, and In the meantime, Idarado dances an awkward leak far more zinc into the creek than Idarado’s tango with the State over the next steps that are own properties. Thus, the most expedient way for required to move forward with the remediation of Idarado to meet its zinc compliance standard for Red Mountain Creek. Red Mountain Creek is by dealing with these other “The State is very open to alternative treatment draining mines. systems,” Worthington said. “But they have to have a By and large, Idarado’s remediation work on the comfort level that what would be implemented has a Red Mountain side looks similar to what was done likelihood of success — that it would work in terms in the high country of the San Miguel River Basin of reducing zinc concentrations.” — some portal collection systems, a few weep Ross Davis is the Idarado Project Manager for lines here and there, and lots of concrete diversion the Colorado Department of Public Health and En- channels that route storm water and mine water vironment. He keeps tabs on Idarado’s RAP com- discharge around waste rock to prevent metals in pliance, and asserts that it is Idarado’s responsibil- the rock from dissolving into the water. ity to come up with a plan to meet its performance The systems were built well and did what they objective – no matter how challenging that might were supposed to do. But they have only gotten Ida- be. “Idarado has done a lot of studies in quantify- rado half-way to its remediation goal. To date, zinc ing how much zinc-loading is coming out of each loading in Red Mountain Creek has been reduced by adit,” he said. “They know what the major con- A birds-eye-view of Idarado’s settling ponds in Pandora, built during the RAP years. As their name suggests, the just 25 percent from pre-remediation levels, rather settling ponds allow sediments and metals in the mine water emanating from the Mill Level Tunnel to gradu- tributors are. We recognize it will take a fair bit of than the 50 percent reduction the RAP calls for. ally settle out of the water. Throughout this process, the water takes on vivid hues of orange, green and blue effort to get there, but it’s attainable.” A quick peak into the geologic history of the re- from the dominant minerals that are still suspended within it. Eventually the water either evaporates or soaks Idarado is up for the challenge. gion helps explain why the source control systems into the ground. The entire process is mechanical; no chemicals or other additives are used to treat the water. “We want to come to a sustainable solution,” that worked so well on the Telluride side failed to Horntvedt said. “I think there are definitely achieve the same results for Red Mountain Creek. region like bad acne. The Silverton Caldera was Glaciers and streams came along, sculpting the opportunities to make strides, and we are looking among them. San Juan Mountains that we see today. forward to making them.” In the Beginning Another surge of volcanism swelled the Silver- These mountains are essentially giant water In the meantime, Idarado’s water quality com- Before the mine, there were the mountains. Be- ton Caldera’s collapsed crater, shattering its west- towers, whose cracks and faults fill up with and pliance officer, Joe Smart, will continue to make fore the mountains, 35 million years ago, a cluster ern rim with radial and concentric fissures that store storm water and melting snow. When mine the trip up Red Mountain Pass in his pickup truck of supervolcanoes blew their lids in cataclysmic ex- shot through the surrounding rock, and injecting workings penetrate the mountains, they hijack the once a month, park at the toe of the giant remediat- plosions, hurling out chunks of rock and spewing them with hot, mineralized juices that formed rich natural underground hydrology, offering new con- ed tailings pile in Ironton Park, scoop some water thick layers of magma and ash across present-day veins of sulfide ore. Inside the caldera, meanwhile, duits that expose groundwater to oxygen, heavily out of Red Mountain Creek with his dipper stick, southwestern Colorado. fierce hydrothermal activity leached the volcanic mineralized rock, and — particularly in mines and pour it into bottles to send off to the lab. Spent at last, the volcanoes collapsed, leaving rock, enriching it with iron pyrite that weathered inside the Silverton Caldera — rich deposits of One of these days, with any luck, the lab results behind a rash of calderas that pockmarked the a rusty-red. pyrite, or iron sulfide. might come back with a nice surprise.

11 Grass on Gray Mountain

On an early morning in June, Idarado’s remediated tailings piles on Red Mountain Pass were sprouting with fresh green growth. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) Adventures in Tailings Remediation

very workday morning substantial degree. Rather, the two biggest issues back in the 1970s, Joe with the tailings piles were low pH and residual Smart would kiss his heavy metals, combining to create an exceedingly wife and little son good- difficult environment for vegetation. bye, step out into the But throw in some cow poop, straw, crushed bracing dawn, and tune limestone and lime — not the citrus fruit, but his ear to the rhythm of powdered limestone with powerful pH-buffering the Pandora Mill, a mile properties — et voilà! “Now we have a material and a half up the valley from his company house that is more favorable to plant growth,” Redente in Telluride. said. “And that creates a stable tailing environment EAs long as he could hear the tick-tick-tick-tick- not subject to wind or water erosion.” tick of the big gray mill’s powerful vacuum pumps, Creating a welcoming, friendly growth medium that meant it would be a good day. was just one of the challenges in Idarado’s tailing “But if the mill wasn’t running, I knew it wasn’t revegetation adventure. Redente and his team of gonna be a good day,” Smart said. “Everybody researchers also developed two distinct blends of would be scurrying to get the mill back running.” grass and wildflower seeds — one for the Telluride Every minute the mill was down, the Idarado Mine tailings, and one for the higher-elevation tailings on lost money. Muck-bound ore. Idle miners. Cranky Red Mountain — that would grow into self-sus- bosses. Empty con trucks. Not a pretty picture. taining plant communities hardy enough to survive On good days, though, the Pandora Mill hun- the weather extremes of the San Juan Mountains. grily gnashed its way through up to 1,800 tons of For a quarter century, Idarado slurried its tailings into a series of piles alongside the San Miguel River between Most of the species Redente selected took root ore — more than a ton each minute — trans- Telluride and Pandora. The upper four piles, 1-4, eventually blended into one long linear scab that snaked its in the tailings and are still growing there today; forming it into rich copper, lead and the zinc way down the valley. others grew quickly for a short period of time, concentrates and gleaming loaves of gold doré (a helping to get the plant community established, mixture of gold and silver that was poured once a senior employee, safety guru and water sampling then faded away. month at the mill). go-to guy. Certain plant species did better than others Only about 5 percent of the ore contained these It wasn’t rocket science. But those early efforts at as they all competed with one another for water, valuable metals. The remaining waste, or gangue, tailings revegetation were just as ingenious in their nutrients, space, light and all the other resources came out the back end as an acidic slurry of own way as the Pandora Mill’s flotation system that plants need to grow. crushed, depleted rock and water known as tail- separated precious and base metals from the gangue Orchardgrass and smooth bromegrass turned ings. Lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of tailings. in the rock coming out of the mine. out to be the rock stars of the mix, contributing the Back in the old days, the historic mills around Smart and his crew were engaged in a different most extensive plant cover to tailings on both sides Telluride dumped their tailings straight into the San sort of alchemy in the 1960s and ’70s — figur- of the mine. Timothy and Kentucky bluegrass also Miguel River. But by the time Idarado came along, ing out how to coax tender green life out of a big thrived. The mix also included varieties of forbs — this practice had long since been outlawed. Instead, dead place. broad-leaved flowering non-woody plants — such Idarado slurried its tailings into a series of piles as cicer milkvetch, Rocky Mountain penstemon, alongside the river between Telluride and Pandora. Dirty, Seedy Science clover, dryland alfalfa and native yarrow. The upper four piles, 1-4, eventually blended into Dr. Ed Redente picked up where Smart left Species diversity is an important part of Ida- one long linear scab that snaked its way down the off. A professor of rangeland ecosystem science rado’s tailings remediation. And over the last few valley, while the lower two piles, 5 and 6, merged at Colorado State University, Redente spearhead- years, it has been on the rise — especially in newly together into a big gray mountain just upstream of ed Idarado’s innovative tailings remediation amended areas where mulch has been imported Town Park. throughout the years of the Remedial Action Plan. to cover up bare patches. These patches have be- The Red Mountain side of the mine, where Ida- He first got involved with the project as an expert come “diversity islands” that now support intrepid rado milled its ore prior to 1956, also had its fair witness for Idarado/Newmont during the legal new species. The hope is that these interlopers will share of tailings, including a large pile in Ironton battle leading up to the cleanup. venture out onto the rest of the tailings over time. Park known as Red Mountain Tailings Pile #4. Today, he’s the guy who led the research prov- But the real magic on the tailings has happened When Joe Smart arrived in Telluride in 1972 ing direct revegetation could be successfully done through a process called nutrient cycling, in which and started working at the Pandora Mill, he found on a large-scale, high-altitude tailing remediation soil-dwelling critters break down the plant material out Idarado had been experimenting with growing project, and his team’s work is emulated around growing on site. Every year plants die back and drop grass on the big tailing piles ever since the 1960s the world. their litter on the soil surface, dead roots decom- — both to make them look a little nicer, and to Idarado’s tailings piles started out as veins of pose, and the nutrients are released back into the prevent wind and water erosion. metal sulfide ore deep inside the mountains between soil so plants can use them the next year. Smart, who had a degree in forest science from Ouray and Telluride. By the time that rock had been “That’s how natural systems sustain themselves Colorado State University, got on board with that mined, crushed, digested, rejected and ejected out over time,” Redente said. “And that is definitely effort, consulting with the Plant Materials Center of the back side of the mill as tailings, it had been finely occurring on the tailings piles. One of the issues the Soil Conservation Service at the United States ground to sand or clay-sized particles. It mostly con- is having that decomposition happen fast enough Department of Agriculture to find more species of sisted of a lot of inert materials with residual levels By 1997, Idarado’s tailings had been transformed so nutrients are released at a quick enough rate. It from barren wastelands to grassy meadows such takes time. We started with something inert and we high-altitude plants that might grow on the barren, of unrecovered lead, zinc and copper, plus some as these, thanks to an innovative direct revegetation sandy tailings. chromium, cadmium and manganese. program incorporating manure, hay, inorganic are trying to build a soil that will be self-sustaining.” “All you had to do was give it water and fertil- An analysis of the tailings showed the chemi- fertilizer and limestone into the surface of the Redente’s been watching the grass grow on Ida- izer, and we had lots of sunshine. That’s all you cal reagents applied in some stages of the mill- tailings with direct seeding of a custom seed mix rado’s tailings for 25 years, and it’s been anything needed,” shrugged Smart, now Idarado’s most ing process were not present in tailings to any on the amended tailings. but boring. He returns to Idarado each year to

12 check the plant growth for coverage and diversity that sucked water out of the San Miguel River and as required under the RAP. delivered it up to the top of the tailings pile has The project has been hailed as a huge success. been taken offline. Winds that once spun dust-devils of tailings through Now the tailings piles are left to their own devices Telluride now riffle through the grassy meadows — and the voles. Cute little mouse-like critters with that grow on top of the tailings piles. Rainfall and rounded ears and stubby tails that burrow into the snowmelt get sucked up by the plants, significantly sand, leaving shallow snakelike tunnels near the sur- reducing the amount of zinc and other metals that face so they can eat their favorite food, grass stems may otherwise seep from the piles into the San Mi- and blades. The voles are especially manic in the guel River and Red Mountain Creek. springtime and early summer. No earthworms have found their way into “One year it got so bad, the voles would bur- the tailings soil yet, but there are plenty of other row on top of the tailings, and pop out the sides,” creepy-crawlies in there — insects, bugs, nema- Parker says. todes, microbes, bacteria and fungi. The former Coyotes like the tailings too. Parker, who big dead place is now buzzing, swarming, squirm- comes from a sheep ranching family, has a nat- ing and writhing with life. ural aversion to coyotes. But he makes an excep- “Really what you are seeing is nature in action,” tion for the coyotes that come up on the tailings Redente said. “Start with a totally inert materi- piles. “They like to come out here and hunt,” he al, turn it into a material that can actually sustain says approvingly. plant growth, and watch it change over time. That’s The Idarado cleanup involved stabilizing and revegetating a number of tailings piles on both sides of the mine, As tough a summer as it’s been, Number 6 still something that has really helped me as an ecologist near Telluride and Red Mountain Pass. (Map and photos courtesy of Idarado Mining Company) looks a lot better now than it did back when locals feel as though I am doing something positive.” called it the Toxic Twinkie or Gray Mountain. Park- the National Mining Association. “It was great — they er remembers how it used to look — “like an ugly Meadow Muffin set us up in a top-of-the-line hotel; and they actually waste dump. There was a pond up here. And a lot Camille Price came to Idarado at about the same let us stay over another day just to tour the mall and of bare yellow tailings. The side slope was pretty time as Redente. stuff,” recalled Idarado’s Red Mountain site manager gnarly and steep.” She, too, spent 25 years of her career moni- Eric Schoenebaum. “It was a lot of fun.” After the remediation, it took a while to fine-tune toring Idarado’s tailings revegetation — as well The framed award and a letter of commendation things to where they are today. That first year, the as other aspects of the RAP — for the Colorado from the Bureau of Land Management hang side by tailings unintentionally made a lake on top that Department of Public Health and Environment. Her side in a backroom at the Idarado office in Ouray, spilled over the edge toward Town Park, “like task: making sure that Idarado complied with all gathering dust, as the work of caring for the aging Hawaii Five-0. Like a tidal wave,” Parker recalls. the terms of the remediation settlement agreed to mine and remediating the environment goes on. He figured out how to fix the design flaw, and that in 1993 after years of CERCLA litigation. doesn’t happen anymore. Price always knew she wanted to help the en- Pile Patrol Truth be told, though, it’s still pretty gnarly up vironment. She went to college at Colorado State Today, the tailings are Mark Parker’s big sandy here. The hot sun spanks the tailings all day long. University where she fell in love with the emerging babies. As Idarado’s Pandora site manager, Parker Idarado hauled 4,500 bales of hay and straw to mix “It’s just so big. It takes a beating,” Parker ac- field of environmental reclamation. is responsible for watching over the tailings on the into the tailings piles during the remediation. knowledges, squinting out across the hot, flat, 64- Cleaning up disturbed lands resonated deeply Telluride side. Before that, during the RAP years, acre expanse. Here and there, little bare patches of within her. “I grew up with ‘Give a hoot, don’t pol- he worked on the tailings remediation crew, so tall and green that the deer play hide and seek in sand expose themselves, but even in this difficult lute,’ and commercials of Native Americans with he knows all about the tailings on both sides of it. “All you can see is their ears,” Parker says. This year, the tailings are mostly covered with tenacious tears in their eyes as they looked at litter,” she said. the mountains. year, though, in late July, the Number 6 tailings pile is grassy green vegetation. “I wanted to do something to improve the world.” “Our most perfect one is Red Mountain Number having kind of a tough time. It’s been a dry summer, The majority of the plants growing here now came When she arrived at Idarado headquarters in One, a little baby one below the Treasury Tunnel,” on top of a dry winter, and the grassy growth on the from the original seed mix developed by Redente. But Pandora back in 1992, the RAP was just getting Parker says. “Number One is a sweetheart, tucked flat expanse up top is pretty stubby, pretty dry. on a closer look, new species are moving into this underway, run by an all in-house Idarado crew. into a corner. It’s always beautiful.” So dry in fact, that Parker decided not to fertil- plant neighborhood from the surrounding wilder- She got to know the guys on a nickname basis — You can’t really say the same about Idara- ize this year. The less messing with the tailings, the ness and human-influenced landscapes, elbowing Squeaky, Squawky, Finn, Tadpole, Parker, Swan- do’s biggest tailings pile, the massive loaf-shaped better, in a year like this. Back in the early years out a place for themselves, and putting down roots. ney, and Swede, among others. Price herself was mound looming over Telluride Town Park. when the vegetation was still getting established, The ultimate goal, when the Idarado reclama- dubbed “Meadow Muffin” — “Muff” for short. Some years, the vegetation here is so lush and they watered regularly, but the powerful old pump tion got started all those years ago, was that Idara- “We were all just a bunch of kids,” she said. do would someday be able to walk away from these The first time Price had to go inside the mine tailings piles altogether. Parker can’t imagine what to observe the progress of the underground reme- they were thinking. “You can’t walk away from diation, she was scared to death. But she relished something like this,” he says. “Mother Nature will the other aspects of her job — tracking the water throw you a curve ball.” quality in the San Miguel River and Red Mountain Who knows what it will be. A flood. A fire. An Creek, heading up into the high country to inspect exultation of voles. Whatever it is, Parker — or his the concrete diversion channels, and trekking out successor down the road — will be here to deal onto the tailings piles to monitor how the plant with it. cover was coming along. Done with his pile patrol, Parker climbs back in Through it all, Price remained vigilant in her his pickup truck, and cruises along the utility road oversight role, and held Idarado’s feet to the fire that skirts the bottom of the tailings, past a stretch when necessary to make sure the mining company of reclaimed land between the tailings and the river stayed on course in its remediation efforts. But she where his granddaughter helped him scatter seed steered away from taking an adversarial or author- when she was a toddler. She’s 20 now, and the area itarian approach. has grown into a lush, grassy wildflower meadow. “We were the first generation of reclamation Then Parker slows to a stop. Stares out the workers,” Price explained. “I had to rely on window at the contoured slope of Number 6. people that knew more than me. I was smart “Is that a raspberry bush?” he asks. enough to know what I didn’t know. I realized Sure enough. A wild raspberry bush is growing from the beginning it was the mine’s responsibil- right out of the tailings — its tight young berry ity to perform the remediation, and I wasn’t here buds balled up like tiny fists; its light-green, serrat- to micromanage it. I would say what the outcome ed, spade-shaped leaves quietly photosynthesizing needed to be, and they’d figure it out.” A view of unreclaimed tailings near Telluride, prior to the remediation. Low pH and residual heavy metals in the summer sunshine. But she wasn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and combined to create an exceedingly difcult environment for vegetation. A yellow butterfly flutters by. lend a hand from time to time. She still has a scar Parker smiles a bemused smile. “I’ll be on her leg from slinging hay on the tailings piles. damned,” he says. As new life grew out of the amended tailings, seeds of goodwill also began to sprout. Once upon Buried Treasure a time, Idarado and the State of Colorado had been Voles aren’t the only critters that like to dig in courtroom adversaries. Now, as the remediation the tailings. Just last summer, Schoenebaum was unfolded on the ground, Redente, Price, Smart, making his rounds of the Red Mountain tailings and the others became a team, working together piles when he spotted two suspicious-looking toward a common goal of healing the environment. characters messing around on Number 4 (the big tailings pile in Ironton Park). The Skeleton Crew Schoenebaum drove up on the tailings to investi- Goes to Washington gate. “And there they are with shovels, digging giant In 2006, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s holes, all gooey and muddy and yellow,” he said. Bureau of Land Management recognized this work Turns out, the intruders were digging for “Fenn’s by presenting the Idarado Mining Company with Treasure”, a million-dollar treasure chest suppos- the Hardrock Mineral Director’s Award for out- edly filled with gold nuggets, gold coins, pre-Co- standing achievement in sustainable development. lumbian gold figures, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, “Through a collaborative effort with local stake- diamonds, and cash, that an elderly, eccentric New holders, Idarado Mining Company’s adoption of Mexico millionaire named Forrest Fenn says he hid a non-disruptive remediation technique has pre- somewhere in the Rocky Mountains in 2009. served the historical aspects of the area’s mining Schoenebaum sent the gold-diggers packing. All legacy and has improved water quality, thereby they got for their troubles was some barren yellow achieving a balance between historic preservation sand. Some men are just born to dig. and environmental protection,” the BLM noted. They missed out on the real treasure though “We salute the efforts of all employees at the Idara- — the wealth of green plants that have taken do Mining Company for their outstanding accom- The large tailings pile formerly known as the Toxic Twinkie or Gray Mountain (top center) looks as green as root amidst those tailings, the wild beauty of the plishments and contributions to the community.” a golf course in this aerial view. In 2006, the Bureau of Land Management presented the Idarado Mining mountains, and the rich history that twines its way Newmont flew the Idarado skeleton crew to Wash- Company with the Hardrock Mineral Director’s Award for outstanding achievement in sustainable develop- throughout the ghost towns and mining ruins of the ington, D.C. to attend an award ceremony hosted by ment, celebrating Idarado’s innovative and successful remediation. high country.

13 Windows in Time

The historic Lewis Mill sits at an elevation of over 12,000 feet in the upper reaches of Bridal Veil Basin. During its brief heyday from 1910-1913, it produced up to 12 tons of ore concentrates per day. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) Historic Preservation at the Idarado Mine

aster carpenter weather-tight lid on the mill, just as the first snows Loren Lew bal- of autumn started to fly. anced on the Other local contractors including Leopard steep, ramshack- Creek Timberframe, Inc. have continued to work le roof of the old on the structure in more recent years. Lewis Mill, chain- “There was a lot of death-defying stuff that got the saw in hand, on a building to where it is now,” said Linda Luther-Brod- summer morning erick, the retired San Miguel County Director of in 2002. His mission: to stabilize this marmot high- Parks & Open Space who administered the Lewis rise at the head of Bridal Veil Basin, even as it was Mill preservation project once the property was Mfalling apart in slow motion all around him. transferred from Idarado to San Miguel County. So little time, so many of these old mining relics Thanks to these efforts, the Lewis Mill still stands worth preserving. upright in Bridal Veil Basin as a wistful, whimsical “Where do we start?” Lew wondered out loud. monument to Telluride’s mining heyday. Because The time-varnished building popped and creaked of its significance as a distinctive example of en- its inscrutable response. There was no instruction gineering and high-country milling technology, it manual for a project like this. No safety net to catch earned a place on the Colorado State Register of Lew if the beam he stood on collapsed from rot. Historic Places and the National Register of Histor- Beneath Lew, ancient dust danced in the lat- ic Places in 2009. ticed sunlight that sifted into the interior of the mill The project turned out to be a learning lab in through broken windows and cracks in the walls. many ways — for the craftsmen and carpenters Lew took a deep breath, surveying the mess of who did work; for the State Historical Fund that splayed timbers and rotten roof joists all around provided the lion’s share of the funding; for San Mi- him. This was going to take major surgery. “Okay, guel County staffers who administered the project; I’m gonna cut a beam,” he said. “I’m gonna see and for the Idarado Mining Company and its parent what happens.” Newmont Mining Corporation, which learned the value of partnering on preservation. The Inheritance The Idarado Mining Company inherited the Lewis Swanney’s Monster Mill and dozens of other historic abandoned mine A modest sign greets visitors who make their structures in the high country around Telluride way up to the Lewis Mill today: when it bought out Telluride Mines in the 1950s. “Idarado Mining Company ensured the pres- In its heyday, the five-story timber-framed mill ervation of the Lewis Mill by conveying owner- was part of a short-lived mining complex that ship of the building to San Miguel County and sprang up in Bridal Veil Basin high above Telluride contributing $50,000 to its stabilization. Please from 1910-1913, reviving an older mine that had help us protect this historic building and our been active there in the 1880s. The 1907 Smuggler-Union hydroelectric power plant perches clifside atop Bridal Veil Falls. Part of a remarkable heritage by taking only photographs The key players in this scheme were none other constellation of historic structures that Idarado inherited when it acquired Telluride Mines in the 1950s, the and leaving only footprints. Entry by unautho- than the notorious Smuggler-Union president and power plant originally provided power to both the Pandora Mill and the Lewis Mill. Learn more about the rized persons is prohibited.” manager, Bulkeley Wells, and his brother-in-law, power plant in Part 9 of this series. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) Idarado employee David Swanson (aka “Swan- Thomas Livermore, Jr. ney”) says, “We’re authorized,” opens the door Historic records show the mill produced up to it on the list of Colorado’s Most Endangered Places. “We go into the main room, and here is this keg of the mill, and ushers our small group into a 12 tons of ore concentrates per day during the Spurred into action, the Colorado State Histori- sitting out in the middle of the floor and all these world that resembles a steampunk version of M.C. brief span of its operation, requiring anywhere cal Fund, San Miguel County, the towns of Mountain dead marmots — they had gotten into some lead Escher’s lithograph “Relativity”. from sixty-five to ninety mules to haul the sacks Village and Telluride, and Idarado came together concentrates and they all died,” Lew recalled. Sunlight streams in through once-broken win- of concentrate from the mill down to the railroad in 2001 and put some significant skin in the game Amidst the marmot carcasses were historic dows, and wooden stairs, beams and chutes zig- at Pandora. The mill ran like clockwork, but the ($367,000 in all) to preserve the picturesque ruin. treasures — conveyor wheels and belts, crushers, zag their way throughout the airy interior space in a mining venture fizzled in 1913, and the proper- Idarado conveyed ownership of the mill building to boilers, jigs and classifiers, Wilfley concentrating complicated maze, connecting the various levels of ty drifted aimlessly through the ensuing decades San Miguel County, and the county hired renowned tables and other pieces of equipment that marked the mill, while giant pieces of machinery that were with just one brief revival, changing hands half- restoration contractors Fritz Klinke and Loren Lew a transition in milling technology between earlier made for movement have long since settled into a-dozen or so times before Idarado eventually of Silverton, Colo. to do the job. stamp mills and later full chemical flotation. sullen stillness. ended up with it. According to Lew, the Lewis Mill stabilization One rotten beam and broken floor board at a Swanson describes how an aerial tram once was one of the most extreme, logistically complex time, Lew and his crew began gently shoring up the dumped thunderous loads of unprocessed ore into Partnering on Preservation projects they ever undertook. structure — tugging here, pulling there, putting the the ore bin above our heads, and how that ore then The aging mill was in pretty poor shape by then, When they made their way up to the remote pieces back together again before it all collapsed got broken down into smaller and smaller pieces but Idarado had no interest in lavishing any re- work site in the summer of 2002, nature was in the like a pile of weathered, splintery pickup sticks. on a gravity-powered journey from the uppermost sources on historic preservation at that time. The process of gnawing away at the old structure, one “There was no logic behind it; it’s like an intu- to the lowermost level of the mill. structure continued to slowly deteriorate until giant mouthful at a time. But the building had its ition,” Lew said. “You just pick a place, and start.” Finally, a four-foot cylinder filled with hard, pol- 1998, when Colorado Preservation Inc. deemed it ways of fighting back, as they discovered the first A roofing crew from Summit Roofing came in ished pebbles in the basement level of the mill would to be at risk of “demolition by neglect” and placed time they went inside. on the tail end of the stabilization project and put a render the ground-up ore into a soupy slurry. This

14 flowed out along a wooden chute to an elevator that The century-old Here, an enormous old arched steel warehouse then brought it back up a level or two, where it was Pandora Mill seemed dating back to the early 1950s collapsed under further processed on the classifier/flotation floor. like it would last snow load in 2010 when Red Mountain Pass shut “Remember that game, Mouse Trap?” Swanson forever, but it now down for a few days during a snowstorm and no asks. “Kind of like that.” faces an uncertain fate. one could get up there to shovel off the roof. An (Photo by The whole place has a “Frankenstein’s labora- Brett Schreckengost) equally enormous shop building still standing tory” vibe — especially on its lowest levels where there is scheduled to be demolished. It’s just too a white-painted wooden flotation machine once expensive to keep it heated through the San Juan churned with agitators, and a de-sliming cone sep- winters, and Idarado’s skeleton maintenance crew arated wet fines from coarse ores before dumping doesn’t need that much space. the stuff onto Wilfley tables. But Idarado is doing what it can to preserve Swanson picks up the tattered remnants of an other historic structures on the site, including the ore sack that says “Lewis” on it, points to a roughly soulful, sturdy old wooden trestle along Highway hand-hewn chair nearby. “That’s called a ‘Miner’s 550 overlooking the Red Mountain Mining District La-Z-Boy,’” he quips, conjuring the image of a tired across the valley to the east. worker flopping down to take a breather while the And across the highway to the west, near an in- Wilfley tables jittered away, mechanically separating terpretive turn-out and rest area Idarado helped heavy mineral particles from lighter gangue, and old motor that once pulled ore cars through the The mill was noisy, too. “One could have a con- construct, four shabby sentinels of the past still sending the heavy particles off the end of the table as Mendota Mine. versation easy enough, but there was a constant cling tenaciously to the present. concentrates of gold, silver and base metals. Left to its own devices, Marshall Basin will even- roar,” Pera said. “And anytime the mill wasn’t op- These are all that’s left of the 10 company Finally, we find our way to the very bottom of tually return to nature like so many other aban- erating, the silence in the building was deafening.” houses that Idarado moved from the abandoned the mill, where ancient lightbulbs dangle above our doned mining sites in the high San Juans, as other The sturdy steel structure was built to last, even mining camp of Eureka in San Juan County to the heads and stray mill pebbles lurk in the mud at our chapters of Idarado’s far-flung preservation story surviving the white fury of the Ajax snow slide on Treasury Tunnel site in the late 1940s to serve as feet. We behold an old coal-fired boiler that once continue to unfold on both sides of the mountains. more than one occasion. employee housing. kept this place humming when it wasn’t powered Jerry Albin was working inside the mill when the An ever-shifting parade of Idarado mining per- by electricity from the Bridal Veil Power House The Elephant in the Room Ajax ran in 1968. “All of a sudden the mill started sonnel resided in those houses from 1948-1978. three miles downstream. Colorado Ski Hall of Famer and former Tellu- shaking, and there was broken glass and flying dust “A monster,” Swanson says, grinning at the be- ride Ski Resort Chief Operating Officer Johnnie everywhere,” he said. hemoth of a boiler. “And that’s where they used to Stevens has a particular soft spot in his heart for The avalanche was so powerful, “It lifted the keep the donkeys,” he adds, nodding to a shed-like the hulking gray leviathan at the end of the Tellu- whole roof off like a sardine can lid, and the area nearby. ride valley known as the Pandora Mill. muck train was draped over the crushing plant,” You can almost hear them braying. The mill was built by the Smuggler-Union Mining Albin said. Company in 1920 and updated by Idarado in the The sound of silence has hung heavy around the Rudy’s View ‘50s. That’s when Stevens’ father became mill su- Pandora Mill now for 40 years, ever since the Ida- Idarado hasn’t always been a poster child for perintendent. Stevens and his brother Larry grew rado Mine shut down in 1978. The mill is largely historic preservation, as Telluride mining historian up in Pandora, and used to walk right through the gutted, its windows boarded over. Much of the ma- Rudy Davison recounts while gazing out over what’s mill on their way to and from school. chinery was sold at auction in 1986, and a hazmat left of the historic mining camp surrounding the team came in several years ago to strip the mill of its Tomboy Mine that Harriet Fish Backus described asbestos insulation. In the winter, snow now piles up so compellingly in her book, Tomboy Bride. thickly on top of the steep, cold, uninsulated roof, At its peak, the camp in Savage Basin — a creating its own dangerous mini-avalanches in the Driving a 1946 Dodge truck with his name embla- zoned on the side, Chester Yates of Montrose, Colo. glacial cirque just downhill from the crest of Imo- Pandora yard. hauled 10 company houses from the ghost town gene Pass — had a population of 900 rugged and The century-old structure that seemed like it of Eureka in San Juan County to the Idarado Mine’s adventurous souls, and boasted a bowling alley, would last forever now faces an uncertain fate. Red Mountain site in the early fall of 1948 to provide tennis courts, a school and the loftiest YMCA in the Idarado is obligated to demolish the building housing for mine employees. Four of those houses world. Now, it looks as if the hand of God came under the current terms of its State reclamation still stand today. (Ouray County Historical Society collection) down and smashed it all to bits, leaving only piles permit. But mine representatives have been work- upon piles of debris behind. ing with various public and private local stakehold- Bob Fhuere got to live in one of them for a few In that debris is a story. ers to try to figure out a way to keep the building years as a young man in the early 1950s, when he “When Idarado first acquired this property in standing — at least as a historical landmark with took a job at the Treasury warehouse for $350/ 1952 or 1953, a lot more of these structures were interpretative signage. month — quite a step up from his former job still standing,” Davison recalls. Then, in 1964, local The scope of this potential preservation project as a grocery clerk at Duckett’s Market in Ouray. tourism boosters completed a Jeep road over the has turned out to be as enormous and complex as “Nothing fancy, but I cleaned it up, and it was really top of Imogene Pass, connecting Telluride to Ouray. the 57,000 square-foot mill building itself — rid- nice,” he said. “I could look out the bedroom win- dow to the highway and the tailings pond.” Enthusiastic Jeepers soon swarmed the area. Inevita- Float cells inside the Pandora Mill once did the dled with unanswered questions about what the bly, they’d stop to poke around the old Tomboy min- work of chemically separating valuable metals from structure’s end use should be if it is preserved, and Fhuere didn’t have a car. “Sometimes I’d run to ing ruins and ghost town — which were on private crushed ore, turning them into concentrates. The who should pay for its preservation. The fact that town — it was just 12 miles — and the mailman property owned by the Idarado Mine. mill has now been gutted of most of its machinery. the mill sits in the middle of an active mine reme- would give me a ride back up,” he said. “It was what attorneys called an attractive nui- (Bill Mahoney collection) diation site makes things even more challenging. As tough as it could be to get through the winters sance,” Davison explains. “And if somebody got “No pun intended, but it is opening Pandora’s at 10,600 feet, there was a rare magic to living up at hurt, they could sue the Idarado Mining Compa- “The mill was like the front room of our house,” Box,” said Janet Kask, director of San Miguel Coun- the Idarado camp. ny.” To protect itself, Idarado bulldozed many of Stevens said. “We were literally raised in it.” ty Parks and Open Space. “There is a lot involved “In the winter, they would put powder boxes the remaining buildings. Over time, Mother Nature The steel-clad structure made an outsized im- — future potential plans for the Pandora Mill will on the back of these long sleds and put us in and lent a helping hand to finish off the job. pression on the boys. It towered 100 feet, and was dictate the level of clean-up and the associated we would go sledding all the way from Idarado to Just over the ridge line in Marshall Basin, how- well lit back in those days, with plenty of natural costs. It is not as clearcut as you would think.” Ironton,” said Mary Unger Fulton, who lived up at ever, it’s a different story. “Thankfully, over there, light from all of the windows. There was a lot of Larry Fiske, Newmont’s directory of legacy the camp from 1950-1956, until she finished sixth they left things alone,” Davison says. machinery inside — 69 float cells, two ball mills, sites, has been working on the issue pretty hard grade. Her father, Richard Wilson Unger, was a a rod mill, and a rake classifier that looked like a since 2013. “So far it’s been a lot of dead ends,” metallurgist at the mill. giant grasshopper. he said. “We have an obligation to the State under “The road was perfect, with all these switch- The mill workers and miners (whose dry room/ the reclamation permit and we need to do some- backs,” she said. “On moonlit nights people would changing area was in the rafters of the mill) were thing soon, but preservation and long-term care get together, build a bonfire and a whole bunch of like their cantankerous uncles — throwing snow- of a facility this size is not something Idarado can us would sled down and roast marshmallows, then balls at the boys when the school bus dropped do on its own. It’s going to take community com- they pulled us back up behind the cars.” them off at the mill after school, listening and mitment as well.” The last time any stabilization work was done clapping when Stevens’ mom sent him outside to The Pandora Mill has such an imposing physical on these Idarado houses was 17 years ago. That ef- practice his accordion. and energetic presence, it’s hard for Idarado — and fort, headed by the Ouray County Historical Society, Telluride old-timer Jack Pera may have been most locals — to contemplate its potential demise. eventually stalled and the houses have deteriorated among them. He worked in the warehouse por- “So much history of the valley is embodied by quite a bit since then. Their peeling white-paint- tion of the mill for a few years, and remembers the that structure,” said Luther-Broderick. “To lose it ed siding and broken-out windows with aqua trim chemical stench of the reagents that were used in would be a great loss.” speak of too many winters and too little care. the milling process. Now, a fresh effort is afoot to preserve them. The The upper terminus of the Tomboy aerial tram in “Xanthates were the worst of the lot by far,” he Little Houses in the Big Woods Trust for Land Restoration (TLR) has been leading Marshall Basin stands like a soulful sentry over the said. “When I got home from work my wife would On the Red Mountain side of the mine, Idarado this charge, and is collaborating with Idarado/New- Telluride valley as nature slowly reclaims it. immediately say ‘Change your clothes — they stink!’” faces a whole other world of preservation challenges. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) mont and a number of other stakeholders to find a way to clean up the asbestos and lead paint inside Marshall Basin was a beehive of activity back when Idarado’s historic the houses and stabilize them before it’s too late. Idarado’s Remedial Action Plan was under way. But company houses on There are a lot of moving pieces to this par- few people find their way up there now. Unlike the Red Mountain Pass ticular preservation puzzle, but recent break- high-country highway cutting through Savage Basin, have been slowly throughs give TLR Executive Director Pat Willits Idarado keeps the road into Marshall Basin gated deteriorating for 40 hope that stabilization could take place in the years. Now, the Trust and locked, with no public access except by foot. for Land Restoration near future. Davison likes it that way. is collaborating with Ultimately, he hopes to see the houses cleaned For him, Marshall Basin is a sacred site — a Idarado/Newmont up and stripped to bare wood inside. The doors temple to Telluride’s mining past — that is best and a number of other won’t have locks on them, so people can wander left untouched. This is the place where it all start- stakeholders to fnd a through and discover for themselves the stories ed, full of its own stations of the cross: the upper way to clean them up these houses have to tell. terminus of the Tomboy aerial tram; the Pioneer and stabilize them And the windows? They’ll have plexiglass Leasing Company stamp mill; a lonesome ore bin before it’s too late. where the broken glass used to be, offer- from the Little Mary Mine; an ore chute sitting (Photo by ing views of the wild, mineral-rich ridges and to one side of the Sheridan Mine dump; the last Brett Schreckengost) mountains that Idarado used to mine. Windows upright remains of the Sheridan Boarding House, in time, framing the next chapter in Idarado’s where part of an end wall with a window and the rich and complex history — in which much of line of the pitched roof are still visible; a rusty that landscape returned to the public.

15 A Legacy of Land

The Red Mountain Project included 800 acres in Ironton Park, whose owners had originally enlisted a broker to market their property for development. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) … And Other Perks of Having a Mining Giant in Your Back Yard

ust past a tight S-curve at Bob Risch, former historical societies, both county governments, the mile post 82 on Red Moun- chair of the Red Ouray Trail Group and Ft. Lewis College that co- tain Pass – up above Idara- Mountain Task Force, alesced in the late 1990s in response to the looming do’s old company houses studies a topograph- threat of development in the historic Red Mountain – there’s a little hill that the ical map portraying Mining District between Silverton and Ouray. Idarado Mine blasted flat 9,000 acres’ worth “We realized that if we wanted to save this for a scenic overlook. of patented mining beautiful landscape we would have to raise mon- claims that returned If you go up there on a to the public domain ey and buy it,” said Task Force founder Bev Rich, quiet autumn day, you can almost imagine Fred as part of the Red a Silverton native who has been dubbed San Juan Searls, Jr., Fred Wise and Johnny Wise standing off Mountain Project. County’s “Queen of Preservation”. toJ one side, hands stuffed in pockets, peering out (Photo by Samantha Time was of the essence. at the remnants of the mine they helped spawn all Tisdel Wright) A Castle Rock man named Frank Baumgartner those years ago. had put 1,600 acres of mining claims and iconic Back in the 1940s and ‘50s, Idarado’s founding mining ruins in the heart of the Red Mountain Min- fathers bought up thousands of acres’ worth of his- ing District on the market – including such treasures toric mining claims in the Red Mountain and Tellu- as the Yankee Girl headframe – and had enlisted ride area and stitched them together into the biggest controversial broker-developer Tom Chapman to mine that ever existed in the San Juan Mountains. market this hallowed ground for development. Back then, the value of this corporate-owned “Baumgartner’s vision was log cabins as far as alpine splendor lay underground, in the polymetal- the eye can see; he envisioned a whole village up lic veins that were waiting to be mined. Words like there,” said Ouray native Bob Risch, who chaired “view-shed” hadn’t been invented yet. the Task Force. “He was going to sell the whole But in the final years of the old millennium, a shebang for $5.5 million.” new land rush was on. Idarado found itself sitting The Task Force targeted Baumgartner’s land for on a treasure trove of untamed land with mil- purchase. But before long, their vision expanded lion-dollar views that beckoned to outdoor enthu- to buy up as many other private mining claims in siasts, tourists and real estate speculators alike. the Red Mountain area as they could – from ridge- With the mine shut down and the bulk of the line to ridgeline on both sides of US 550, and from remediation now complete, Idarado didn’t need Crystal Lake in Ironton Park all the way to the top this sprawling, impossibly scenic real estate of Red Mountain Pass. empire anymore. Rather than holding onto it or Although the project eventually grew well be- selling it off piece by piece to the highest bidder, yond this scope – spilling over the mountains and Idarado teamed up with the nonprofit Trust for deep into San Miguel County – it was always known Public Land, the United States Forest Service and as the Red Mountain Project. a local grassroots group called the Red Mountain The Red Mountain Task Force teamed up with Task Force to ensure most of it was conserved as the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit open space. land conservation organization, and together they The four-way partnership formed the core hatched a plan: of a broader regional conservation effort in the The Task Force would seek out as many local late 1990s and early 2000s known as the Red property owners as possible to participate in the Mountain Project that preserved threatened his- project, and drum up grassroots local support. TPL toric landscapes and structures above Telluride, would provide marketing plus political energy at Silverton and Ouray and returned them to the the Washington, D.C. level to get Congress to ap- public domain. propriate money from the Land and Water Conser- The Red Mountain Project’s story trailed from the vation Fund, and spearhead appraisals, mapping Colorado high country to the halls of Congress, and and title work on the ground. starred a tenacious cast of characters who banded Eric Love, director of projects for TPL’s South- together against the odds to save the wild, historic west Regional Office in Santa Fe, was TPL’s point heart of the San Juan Mountains from development. man for the project, and deftly navigated its murk- The Yankee Girl headframe stands still in time, as trafc on US 550 streams past the Idarado Mine across the iest waters – multiple landowners, confusing title A Force to be Reckoned With valley. The fate of the picturesque structure dominated head-lines in the early 2000s, when owner Frank questions, and potential environmental liability The Red Mountain Task Force was a 15-mem- Baumgartner threatened to raze it in retaliation for prohibitive zoning restrictions. In 2006, a Montrose man issues at old mining sites. ber-strong group of local representatives from the bought the property, announcing his goal is to restore the teetering relic, and keep the land from being When negotiations to purchase Baumgartner’s U.S. Forest Service, Ouray and San Juan County developed. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) property didn’t work out, Love shifted his focus

16 across the valley to woo the biggest property owner the energy up. The project was fantastic.” in the ‘hood – the Idarado Mine. Today, TPL points to the Red Mountain Project as one of its biggest preservation success stories. What’s Mine is Yours “We were lucky, in having a relationship with Over the years, Idarado had consolidated over Idarado, to be able to do something on a grand 10,000 acres of patented and unpatented mining scale like this,” said TPL’s Hillary Merritt, who claims on both the Red Mountain and Telluride came in on the tail end of the Red Mountain Proj- sides of the mine, encompassing some of the ect after Eric Love had moved on. “You look at most spectacular and iconic high country in the those old mining claim maps, and you’ve got all San Juans: Imogene Pass, Black Bear Pass, Sav- of these little 10-acre slivers of mining claims up age Basin, Marshall Basin, Middle Basin, Ingram there. It’s really gratifying to be able to take all of Basin, Bridal Veil Basin, Blue Lake, Lewis Lake, those claims back into public ownership. The for- Ptarmigan Lake, not to mention everything west est pieces itself back together.” of US 550 from Ironton Park to the top of Red Risch’s favorite part of the whole project was Mountain Pass. Ironton Park, which was on the brink of develop- Idarado vice president and general manager ment when its owners agreed to let TPL buy the Rick River had thought a lot about what to do with land instead. all this land, now that the Remedial Action Plan was “Every time I drive up there past Crystal Lake pretty much wrapped up. and see people out there fishing, or taking pictures When Love sauntered into River’s office in Ouray and so forth, I think ‘Thank god we got this,’” he one day in 1999 with a tailor-made solution to take said. “There used to be fences all the way up that almost all of Idarado’s property off its hands at highway on both sides. One of the happiest days of fair market value and transfer it to the USFS, River my life was when we took all that fencing down.” thought, “Why not?” After all, the myriad patented mining claims The Mists of Time Idarado assembled had been carved out of the pub- Dawn. Late August. Red Mountain Townsite. lic domain in the first place, way back when, under All around, the strange, angular shapes of the terms of the 1872 Mining Act. There was a tidy mining ruins emerge from darkness on this raw symmetry to returning that land to the public domain escarpment. A dirt road switchbacks steeply up now, as Idarado’s final contribution to the nation. through yellow tailings and waste rock piles. Their Shadows and sunlight paint the ruins of the Tomboy Mine in Savage Basin below Imogene Pass. When the River’s boss, Dave Baker, enthusiastically em- Idarado Mining Company bought out Telluride Mines in the 1950s, the Tomboy mining claims got stitched sour mineral smell stains the frosty air. braced the project. “When you go back to Idara- into Idarado’s vast holdings. Some of those claims still belong to Idarado, which conducts ongoing remedia- Fall is coming. The Million Dollar Highway do’s original plan as manifested in the RAP, one key tion in the area. Others are now part of the Uncompahgre National Forest. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) across the valley will soon fill up with its annual pa- piece was to preserve the historic integrity of the rade of leaf-peepers, come to drink in this specta- area,” he said. “We thought this would be a lasting not people that would automatically sign on to also played a critical role in the project’s eventual cle of mining ruins set against a backdrop of yellow legacy to the mines and miners of the San Juans.” anything,” McInnis acknowledged. success. Among many other things, he agitated to aspens, red mountains, blue sky. Once the ball got rolling, things came together The Task Force fanned the flames of their enthusi- get the Red Mountain Mining District on the USFS A lone white pickup truck is parked at the pretty fast. Idarado kept back only 600 acres of asm with a grassroots letter-writing campaign. Even “Most Endangered” list, thus boosting the project’s edge of Idarado’s grassy-green, reclaimed Red patented claims that were key to ongoing remedia- Silverton’s schoolchildren rallied to the cause, send- chances of qualifying for federal money. His efforts Mountain Tailings Pile #2, below what’s left of the tion, and sold the rest – about 5,500 acres – to the ing off a flurry of hand-written letters to Washington, paid off; by May 2001, the USFS had named the Red Idarado Mine. It’s Eric Schoenebaum, making his Trust for Public Land. TPL in turn sold the land to D.C. at one critical juncture. “Between Ouray and Mountain Mining District its No. 1 preservation pri- early morning rounds. the U.S. Forest Service, which paid for the acquisi- Silverton and everyone else who was involved, they ority in the country. Sunlight suddenly spills into the mountain ba- tion with a series of appropriations from the Land got swamped,” Risch chuckled. “And the lawmakers Congress ended up appropriated a whopping sins high above him. The shadows slide back to and Water Conservation Fund. said, ‘Okay, we’ve got the message.’” $14 million for the Red Mountain Project from illuminate this portion of the vast treasure-trove of Idarado also released an additional 4,000 acres Campbell, a member of the Senate Appropri- the LWCF in several phases over seven years. land that Idarado helped conserve as open space – of unpatented claims back to the USFS. All of this ations Committee, was well-placed to advance With these funds, 9,000 acres of historic mining an extravagance of crags, gullies and alpine tundra, land was conserved and returned to public use, the cause. As it turns out, the pony-tailed, Harley- lands in the heart of the San Juan Mountains were tumbling across the horizon from Half-Moon Basin spelling out the final chapter in Idarado’s story. riding senator from Ignacio had a special connec- transferred to the Uncompahgre National Forest to Spirit Gulch and beyond. Simply put, River said, it went like this: “We tion to Idarado and Red Mountain Pass. “Years ago, (including 5,500 acres of Idarado land). More There’s no telling, but if Fred Searls, Jr., Fred bought the land, we mined it, we reclaimed it and my wife’s uncle was the superintendent at the Ida- recent acquisitions have bumped that number up Wise and Johnny Wise were really standing over we sold it back to public lands.” rado Mine, when she was a youngster growing up to well over 10,000 acres. there at the scenic overlook beside the Treasury in Montrose,” he explained. “And so sometimes in In spite of some missing pieces in the histor- Tunnel, dwarfed by all that untamed beauty, per- All Aboard the summers, she would stay up there at the mine.” ic Red Mountain Mining District, everyone in- haps they’d be okay with this ending to the story of Colorado’s all-Republican U.S. congressional Rep. Scott McInnis of Grand Junction had a soft volved in the Red Mountain Project was thrilled the mine they made. delegation did the heavy lifting in Congress to ap- spot in his heart for the Red Mountain area too, with the results. Meanwhile, over on the Telluride side of the propriate the funds. In the beginning, the key play- and soon championed the project. “It was the his- “The key to the project was relentless local mountains, a ghostly Bulkeley Wells would prob- ers were Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Rep. tory of it that kind of drove me,” he said. “The land support,” Sutton said. “Without that, the project ably be pleased to see how well his hydroelectric Scott McGinnis. Later on, Sen. Wayne Allard also was beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but we have a would never have happened. It was truly a team power plant at Bridal Veil Falls has weathered the played an essential role. lot of beautiful land in this state. Just seeing those effort with city, county, and state folks playing a mists of time. How the massive, ancient Pelton Risch recalls that it was not an easy sell at first. structures, your imagination goes wild.” critical role along with TPL and the Forest Ser- wheel in the building’s guts can still spin water into Both Campbell and McInnis had reputations as Retired Ouray District Ranger Tim Sutton, the vice. I am so proud of the people that made it power, and transform decades-old animosities into conservatives on public lands issues. “We were Forest Service lead on the Red Mountain Project, happen, and kept with it, were persistent and kept powerful new partnerships.

Some of Idarado’s Lasting Community Impacts Through its participation in the Red Mountain Project, Idarado preserved 5,500 acres as public open space. But Idarado has also enriched the communities of Telluride and Ouray in many other ways. Take a peek:

Ouray Community Center — When the City of Ouray was raising neighborhood features an interpretive “Idarado Legacy Trail” winding all the way from Telluride funds to build an emergency services center adjacent to the Ouray to Pandora that has become a favorite place for locals to get out for a quick walk or run. City Hall in the early ‘80s, Idarado agreed to use the proposed Lawson Hill — The afordable, deed-restricted neighborhood west structure as headquarters for the San Juan Mine Rescue Co-op of Telluride owes its origins to Idarado. As retired Idarado general it had recently founded. That enabled the City to get an Energy/ manager Rick River recounts, Idarado had to evict residents of a Mineral Impact Assistance Fund Grant to fund construction of the trailer park near Pandora to create a staging area for manure, hay building. A second foor of the building rose to house the Ouray Community Center as it and heavy equipment during the remediation. “But we gave San exists today. Miguel County a quarter million dollars to start a revolving loan fund River Restoration — Part of the 1992 Consent Decree between for afordable housing on Lawson Hill, and that’s how Lawson Hill got started,” River said. the State of Colorado and Idarado involved establishing a $1.1 Recreational Access — Idarado’s property around Telluride includes million Natural Resource Damage fund, making money available Bridal Veil Falls – the longest free-falling waterfall in Colorado. In the for projects that attempted to repair or replace resources that may winter, this waterfall turns into a tantalizing 365-foot-long ribbon of have been damaged by mining. The City of Ouray and Town of ice. For years Idarado fought a losing battle to keep climbers of the Telluride tapped this fund to rehabilitate disturbed stretches of the ice. But today, thanks to an ice climbing license negotiated between Uncompahgre River and San Miguel River and enhance aquatic and wildlife habitat. the Trust for Public Land and Idarado, which San Miguel County now Access to Medical Care — Back when Idarado was an active mine, holds, climbing is permitted on the falls. Idarado has also worked with local cross-country ski it took on the responsibility of making sure its employees, and the enthusiasts to allow the development of Nordic ski trails near its tailings piles in Telluride and communities of Telluride and Ouray, had access to adequate med- Ironton Park. ical care. Though the mine has been shut down now for 40 years, Kentucky Placer — Telluridians enjoy access to a 117-acre tract Idarado still owns clinic buildings in both Telluride and Ouray and of land called the Kentucky Placer that was part of the fnal phase leases them to the communities at a reduced rate. of the Idarado Legacy Project. This narrow but critical piece of Idarado Legacy Project — For years after its closure, Idarado previously unprotected property between the Town of Telluride worked with the Town of Telluride to transfer a 410-acre parcel of its and its glorious back country runs from Bear Creek Preserve to the property near Pandora into town limits. The development planned famed Bridal Veil Falls along the south side of the valley. A small for the area included 80-100 afordable housing units as well as portion of this land is best known to thousands as the site of the annual Telluride Bluegrass some higher-end lots. However, in 2001, Telluride residents voted Festival. The Trust for Public Land acquired the property from Idarado in 2004, and sold it to against annexation, and Idarado ended up working with San Miguel the Town of Telluride and San Miguel County in 2008, with the majority being preserved as County to subdivide the property into 35-acre parcels instead. Today, the attractive high-end open space.

17 Like Water for Power

The Bridal Veil Powerhouse stands sentry to the Telluride valley from its perch atop Bridal Veil Falls as workers conduct upgrades and repairs to the complex water conveyance system shared by Idarado and the Town of Telluride. Highly pressurized water fows through a turbine at the powerhouse to generate hydroelectricity. The town picks the water up from the outfow, or “tail race” at the clif face. From here, the water is piped vertically down the clif face along the lower reaches of Black Bear Pass road to the Pandora Water Treatment Plant. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) Building Bridges (and Pipelines) at Bridal Veil Falls

his isn’t the hel- The 1907 Bridal Veil – the same tailings pile that helped trigger the met the marmot Powerhouse fell into CERCLA litigation between Idarado and the State peed in, is it?” disrepair after 50 of Colorado. asks David Swan- years of operation, In the mid-1980s, Telluride was looking for son – Mayor of and was listed on potable water to augment its main municipal the National Register Pandora, Master of Historic Places in water supply at Mill Creek, and drilled a couple of and Commander 1978. Eric Jacobson wells in Town Park. of the Bridal Veil Hydroelectric Plant, Admiral of the later renovated the “It turns out there were metals in the water – ‘‘TBlue Lake Yacht Club. structure and brought hexavalent chromium,” recounted Telluride Public The helmet passes the sniff test. So Swanson stuffs the hydroelectric Works Director Paul Ruud. it on over his floppy sunhat, and fires up the ATV. plant back online. The The Town sued Idarado, alleging that metals “Buckle up,” he says, and we’re off to investigate plant is now operated had leached out of Tailings Pile #6, aka the Toxic the mysteries of an ancient network of pipelines, by Idarado, and still Twinkie, and contaminated the water table. In a diversions and conveyance structures that channel contains its original Comprehensive Settlement Agreement in 1992, high country waters to Idarado’s Bridal Veil Hydro- 2300 volt Westing- Idarado gave the Town significant water rights house Electric AC electric Plant and the Town of Telluride’s Pandora generator, one of the in Bridal Veil Basin as an alternative municipal Water Treatment Plant. oldest AC generators water supply. We leave Idarado’s ramshackle Pandora mill still in operation. After a decade’s worth of legal wrangling in wa- and peacock-blue settling ponds in the dust. Soon, (Bill Mahoney Collection) ter court, the Town won approval to convert these we’re cruising beneath the misty tail feathers of historic and senior industrial water rights to mu- Bridal Veil Falls and zigzagging our way up the nicipal use. The rights included a portion of the hardscrabble mountainside toward the headwaters tremendous water storage capacity of Blue Lake, a of the San Miguel River. remote glacial lake perched high in a cirque near After a couple of bone-jarring miles, we reach Bridal Veil Basin. a flat bench overlooking the Telluride Valley Floor. The Town got busy preparing to develop its new To the left, the road continues climbing up into the water rights, drawing up plans for a new 2-million wilds of Ingram Basin toward Black Bear Pass. To gallon-per-day water treatment plant at the base of the right, the fabled Bridal Veil Powerhouse beck- Black Bear Pass in Pandora, complete with its own ons, standing sentry to the valley from its perch micro-hydro unit generating 400 kilowatt hours of atop the state’s tallest waterfall. electricity. Telluride voters passed a $10 million The second oldest operating AC generator in the bond to pay for it. “It was some incredible water country is a busy place on this late July day. The master planning – a legal and an engineering exer- Town of Telluride and Idarado have recently banded cise,” Ruud said. together to make the powerhouse and its antiquat- But the project was held up by further legal tus- ed water conveyance system more efficient for both sles involving the Town, Idarado and other parties hydroelectric generation and municipal water supply, that continued to unfold for years. and these improvements are now – quite literally – in The last of these disputes had to do with Idara- full swing. do’s concern that if the Town diverted too much Like a scene from Mission Impossible, elite water out of pristine Bridal Veil Creek for its new squadrons of mountaineers from the local com- Pandora Water Treatment Plant during the low- pany Access in Motion dangle from ropes below flow winter months, Idarado wouldn’t be able to the powerhouse, welding together a bewildering meet the zinc performance objective in the San maze of new pipelines and catwalks across the cliff Miguel River, as spelled out in Idarado’s Remedial face, while high-altitude construction crews from Action Plan. EarthTech of Norwood wrangle a new section of A 2012 settlement agreement between the Town penstock into the back end the building. and Idarado resolved this concern. The Town The collaborative upgrade is helping to heal agreed to draw less water from the Bridal Veil sys- decades of wear and tear on the powerhouse fol- tem in the winter, keeping more creek water in the lowing years of court battles between the Town of river. In exchange, Idarado offered the Town a mil- Telluride and Idarado over the water rights and lion dollars’ worth of infrastructure improvements easement agreements associated with this sprawl- to maximize the efficiency of the historic water ing hydroelectric system. The water that powers the Bridal Veil Hydroelectric Plant comes from a remarkably deep, exceptionally system, and gave the town a two-acre shelf of land pure natural reservoir called Blue Lake, perched like a shimmering liquid jewel in a glacial cirque two miles above the Pandora Mill on which to build the new Water’s for Fightin’ above Bridal Veil Falls. The lake holds 6,000 acre feet of water. Of this, 3,900 acre feet of water is considered water treatment facility. The troubles began with the Toxic Twinkie – to be active capacity. A tunnel taps into the lake about halfway down and everything below this inlet hole Hardly anyone was present at the Telluride Town Idarado’s biggest tailings pile beside Town Park is considered dead storage. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) Council meeting on that bleak, snowless Tuesday

18 afternoon in November 2012 when the settlement than just about anyone these days; he’s been help- agreement was first unveiled. But former councilor ing to maintain it since the 1990s, when he worked Chris Myers, channeling Mark Twain, waxed elo- for Jacobson and moonlighted as a snow maker quent on the watershed moment. at the ski area. You could say he has a thing for “When we turn that faucet and clear, clean pressurized water. water comes out of the tap, it comes at a price,” Today, Swanson lives in the old mill manager’s he said. “Whisky’s for drinkin’ and water’s for house in Pandora and operates the hydro plant for fightin’. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, some of Newmont/Idarado. Horntvedt serves as Swanson’s those fights will be put to rest for a while.” wing man, fielding many of the engineering and They were. permitting aspects of the project. Once the settlement agreement was adopted, “It’s one of the most multi-jurisdictional proj- it paved the way for a new era of cooperation ects you can imagine,” Horntvedt says, rattling off between the old adversaries. the various entities that have a stake in what’s going “At times, our relationship with Idarado was on up here. There’s the U.S. Forest Service. San Mi- very strained,” Ruud acknowledged. “But over guel County. The State Historic Preservation Office. about the last seven years, we have had an incred- Town of Telluride. Department of Public Health ibly improved relationship. And we cherish that. and Environment. Division of Mine Reclamation We really try to nurture that relationship because and Safety. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Idarado’s not going anywhere. We’re not going Not to mention Newmont Mining Corporation. anywhere. We are both going to have to coexist in “They are all players – it’s complicated,” Hornt- the valley. And that is going to be easier if we get vedt laughs. Nevertheless, he still shakes his head along with each other.” in wonder every time he comes up here. “This was absolutely a state-of-the-art opera- True Blue tion,” he says, squinting out at Blue Lake. “The fact Back in the ATV, we leave the powerhouse that we have multiple lakes at various elevations behind and make tracks into the wildflower- Juju Julian of Access in Motion guides a 1,300-pound I-beam that dangles from a zip line on the Bridal Veil that are all above 11,000 feet is a really unique festooned high country. Powerhouse rehab project. “It’s always exhilarating,” doing this kind of work, Julian said. “It’s hard to not be and special situation. The way that they were able Our route takes us into the upper reaches of super-excited about it, but it’s also dangerous so you need to keep your cool.” (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) to deal with the elements and use systems such as East Basin, one of many exquisite glacial cirques the underground tunnel and the deep intakes to perched along Bridal Veil Basin’s more massive be able to supply water year-round in such a high- lobe. We pass a couple dilapidated cabins and elevation system is absolutely remarkable. Their rusted old half-buried pipes – reminders of the ingenuity was just off the charts.” workers who once labored in this high country. Then we chug up over a final rise. A Current of Geniuses And there’s Blue Lake, a liquid sapphire set in a Stand on the apron of tundra that fans out below ring of 13,000-ft. peaks, glistening peacefully as if Blue Lake, and you can see the newly replaced Lewis to say “What’s all the fuss?” pipeline winding its way around the ridge from Last summer, Telluride and Idarado workers neighboring Bridal Veil Basin toward Blue Lake. The conducted a bathymetric survey of the lake with larger, 14-inch Blue Lake penstock snakes through a submersible vessel to measure its depth and the willows down toward the powerhouse. volume. The study confirmed that the lake is un- At its upper end, the penstock disappears into a commonly deep, plunging at least 200 feet to its pointy steel snowshed providing year-round access bedrock bottom, and holding up to 6,000 acre to the underground tunnel that pierces the lake bed. feet of pure mountain water, well upstream of any Swanson unlocks the snowshed door and grins historic mine-influence. The Lewis Dam in upper Bridal Veil Basin retains conspiratorially. “Did you sign the waiver?” The setting here may be pristine, but the antique water in Lewis Lake (elev. 12,704) that can be We stoop to go inside. We literally have to hug the debris and modern pipeline infrastructure strewn conveyed to Blue Lake via a 2.5-mile pipeline. The pressurized pipe to scoot under the timbers in some around the shoreline hint at the vital role this lake beautifully crafted, historic stacked-rock dam has As part of the Lewis Line replacement project, places, as we make our way back into the 80-year-old has played over the years as a water source for been rebuilt and regrouted to improve its stability, Access in Motion crews installed this stainless steel tunnel to check on the updated bulkhead and valve human endeavors in the Telluride valley far below. and has been ftted with a steel spillway to better pipe in 2015 that funnels water straight up a clif on system that controls the flow of water from the lake. control the fow of water into the Bridal Veil con- its journey from Lewis Lake to Blue Lake. Swanson has been in here so many times he has veyance system. (Photo courtesy of Newmont) (Photo courtesy of Newmont) his moves down pat, and knows exactly when to lean Shocking this way, swing his legs over the pipe that way, in a It all started when the Ames and Ilium power vertical feet down below. The 2.5-mile Lewis pipe- He put in a permit application for the plant in 1981. slow-motion dance through the awkward space. plants – the first commercial alternating-current line channeled water from Lewis Lake – perched The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rub- The icy-cold lake water slides beneath us through electrical plants in the world – started zinging hy- at 12,704 feet in the upper reaches of neighbor- ber-stamped his application, taking Idarado by sur- the pipeline, on its way to make a clean green stream droelectricity around the San Juan high country ing Bridal Veil Basin – around a ridge and into prise and triggering years of litigation as the mining of hydroelectricity and slake the thirst of Telluride. in the early 1890s, powering mines and mills and Blue Lake, to recharge the natural reservoir as it company tried to prevent Jacobson’s takeover of its Back outside, we head over to a pair of shabby lighting up the Town of Telluride. drained. Two more pipelines diverted additional hydroelectric plant. cabins settling into the nearby willows. This is the Bulkeley Wells rode into Telluride as a Na- water into the system from other nearby lakes. In the end, Jacobson emerged with a 99-year line camp, where the crew and foreman used to tional Guard officer in 1901 during the first When Blue Lake topped out, water could be easily lease from Idarado to restore and operate the pic- stay when they were working on the Blue Lake wave of labor unrest at the Smuggler-Union siphoned into the penstock. But when the lake level turesque ruin. On New Year’s Eve 1990, hours be- diversion system. Mine. He had a hydroelectric engineering dropped, water had to be pumped out of the basin. fore his contract for completing the project would Jacobson used the smaller, snugger of the two degree from Harvard in his back pocket, and In spite of these quirks, the Bridal Veil Hydro- have gone into default, Jacobson threw a switch cabins during the years he ran the hydro plant. He had already worked on several hydroelectric electric Plant outlived the demise of the Smug- that brought the revamped power generator on line and his crew (including Swanson) used to keep projects around the country. gler-Union Mining Company and Bulkeley Wells for the first time in 35 years. track of the flows and the lake level by penning notes When labor activists assassinated the mine’s himself, and it went on to have a rich and useful Albin and fellow Idarado old-timers cheered to on the wall – a growth chart of sorts for a changeling manager Alfred Collins in 1902, Wells was existence independent of its creator. see it come back from the dead. child whose height and volume varied from year to appointed manager by his father-in-law, Colonel A new owner, Veta Mines, updated the power Jacobson ran the Bridal Veil Hydroelectric Plant year with the snowpack and weather conditions. Thomas L. Livermore, who had a controlling plant in the lead-up to WWII, blasting a tunnel from for two decades, even living there full-time with his On Feb. 20, 1999, for example, someone named interest in the Smuggler-Union. lower East Basin into Blue Lake’s depths about 150 family for a while, while generating an average of 350 “B.L.” came up via helicopter for a walk-around Wells set his sights on building a grand new feet below the surface. Veta’s crew installed a con- kilowatt hours of electricity that he sold into the grid. and found there was not much snow. On July 30, hydroelectric plant for the mine atop Bridal Veil crete bulkhead in the tunnel, fitted with a valve to But things were never easy between Jacobson and the 2001, it was cold and raining. The lake was down Falls. But his plans went on hold in 1903 when drain water out of the bottom of the lake like a big mining company. In a sealed settlement agreement 17 feet and contained 1,327.8 acre feet of water. Telluride miners struck for a reduced work day. bathtub, rather than pumping lake water up and in 2010, his 99-year lease terminated early, and op- Squeezed in amongst the notes and colorful The National Guard marched in again under over the rim of the basin. eration of the power plant reverted to Idarado and graffiti are a couple posters of Albert Einstein, his Wells’ command. He put the town under martial A couple of decades later, the power plant its parent company Newmont Mining Corp. hair a whipped white mop, his dark eyes crinkling law, savagely quelling the labor uprising. wound up in the hands of the Idarado Mining Com- The corporate mining giant takes its role as cantankerously. “Takes one to know one,” he By 1906, Telluride’s labor wars had settled down, pany, along with the other assets of the recently liq- operator of the antique hydroelectric plant serious- seems to be saying, to all the ingenious souls who and the powerhouse that we know and love was uidated Telluride Mines, Inc. Idarado was not then ly – and not just to protect its water rights and stave have passed this way. taking shape, with a mechanical plant on the lower interested in running the antiquated power plant, off other potential permit-seekers. level, and a fanciful residence for Wells on top. and shut ‘er down, but continued using the sluice- “As we fine-tune our legacy operations, it’s really Tangled Wells hired the brilliant builder W. T. Glenn to and-pipe system that transported water from Blue a point of pride that we are able to keep the mining On the way back down to Telluride, we stop construct an intricate pipeline and penstock system Lake to the Pandora Mill. history of Telluride going, keep it shining, and re- by the powerhouse again to see how things are to feed pressurized water down to the power plant The powerhouse sat listlessly above Telluride, a mind everyone where the town really came from,” coming along. from Blue Lake and a number of other high-country playground for vandals. Old-school Idarado legends says Devon Horntvedt, Newmont’s senior engineer It’s a happening place, for sure. Not like it used lakes feeding into Bridal Veil Basin. such as Jerry Albin tended to its cliffside waterworks, for legacy sites closure and reclamation. to be, back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, with LSD-dropping Finally, with the water supply in place, Smug- dangling in rudimentary bosun’s chairs 365 feet The plant is currently offline for repairs, but when hippies, and acid-eyeballs painted on the walls. gler-Union electrician Frank Thomas installed a above the valley floor, and did what they could to it’s up and running its annual output is roughly 1,700 There will be no more hot tub parties now. No beer 350-kW generator powered by an Allis-Chalmers keep the whole thing from falling off the cliff. megawatt-hours – enough to power a few hundred cooling in the flume or people shooting clay pi- water wheel in the hydro plant’s guts. The plant The structure landed on the National Register of average houses for a year. The San Miguel Power geons off the deck. spun to life in late October 1907, and began Historic Places in 1978, and was later famously in- Association buys this power as part of its Green Instead, a quiet sense of purpose and profes- churning out a steady stream of AC power to the vaded by a swarm of Dead Heads when the Grateful Blocks program, a renewable energy initiative that sionalism fills the air. Fall is just around the corner, Smuggler-Union Mine. Dead came to town. allows members to purchase renewable energy and there’s still a lot of work to be done up here It ran for the next five decades. credits to offset their energy consumption. before the road gets snowed in. A New Lease on Life The Town of Telluride, in turn, purchases these Tailraces and diversion pipelines traverse the Frankenstein’s Castle At about the time the powerhouse won its histor- credits from SMPA. Thus, the old hydroelectric cliff face beneath the front side of the powerhouse. The water conveyance system worked, but ic designation, federal legislation in the wake of the plant is lighting the path toward a more sustainable Some belong to Idarado, and some to Telluride. it was as high-maintenance and complicated as Arab oil embargo called for reopening abandoned future for Telluride. It’s impossible to disentangle one from the other. Wells himself. hydroelectric plants across the country. Across the valley, the new Pandora Water Treat- Its central artery was the Blue Lake penstock, Eric Jacobson took note. The young Grand Junc- It’s Complicated ment Plant blends into the hillside above Idarado’s a 2-mile-long steel pipeline connecting Blue Lake tion engineer had seen the idle Bridal Veil Power- David Swanson knows the Bridal Veil Hydroelec- Mill Level Tunnel. The tunnel’s old portal is an (elevation 12,202 feet) to the powerhouse 2,000 house as a kid and dreamed of living there someday. tric Plant and its Blue Lake diversion system better open mouth, that seems to ask “What’s next?”

19 Old Mine, New Tricks

Old timers recall places inside the Idarado that were full of magic and wonder, like the 100 level of the old Black Bear Mine, where the air used to be so cold and still that wafer-thin ice crystals the size of dinner plates grew on the back and ribs of the tunnel like giant, delicate butterfies. Due to warming conditions and disappearing permafrost in the high country, these crystals don’t form anymore. (Photo by Rick River) Prospecting for Innovation at the Idarado Mine

he mining camps of the in the water from both natural background and San Juans were the innova- mining sources – that challenge tried-and-true tion boot camps of the late water treatment remedies such as an industrial- 1800s – the Silicon Valley scale lime treatment plant. of their time. The moun- So Horntvedt, a senior engineer with Newmont tains, and the mines, were who works on remediation issues at Idarado and full of challenges looking other legacy mine sites, is on a quest to find new for solutions. solutions to the age-old problem – whose roots are Some of the most distinguished innovators tangled in the mining history of the area. of the era came here to solve them – from Otto TMears, the “Pathfinder of the San Juans”, to Carrot Farming in the Caldera Lucien Nunn, Nicolai Tesla and George Westing- The distinct color of the Red Mountains between house, the founders of the Ames Power Plant and Silverton and Ouray was like a flashing neon sign to commercially produced AC electricity. eager prospectors in the 1870s: DIG HERE! The old-school miners whose names have been They did. For years they plundered a crop of lost in time were brilliant innovators too, solving vertical, carrot-shaped ore bodies, called breccia problems on the fly with their wits, their brawn, pipes, spawning a dense cluster of mines and set- and whatever tools they had on hand. tlements on the slopes of the Red Mountains that Anyone who has hiked up into the San Juan high yielded upwards of $30 million in highgrade ore in country has surely come across a massive riveted 10 short years – close to a quarter of a billion of boiler, or a stamp mill, or a boarding house teetering today’s dollars. on the edge of a cliff and wondered to themselves – The ore was deliciously rich, but tough to get at. “How did they get that thing up here? How did they Vertical shafts followed the breccia pipes for hun- do that?” dreds of feet straight down into the sour belly of the When the Idarado Mining Company came Silverton Caldera. along in 1939, it drove a new era of innovation Water seeped into the mine workings, mixing in the San Juans. with the local pyrites to form sulfuric acid – oth- Idarado’s founders figured out how to knit the erwise known as acid rock drainage or ARD. disparate old mines between Ouray and Telluride This water had such a low pH that it dissolved into one enormous complex that went in one side anything made of metal – mine rails, shovels, of the mountains and came out the other. They Devon Horntvedt takes samples of acid rock drainage from a culvert near the Genessee Mine, the biggest machinery – even the very pumps that were sup- pioneered the use of knock-off rock bits and zinc loader in Red Mountain Creek. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) posed to get the water out. Nails disappeared diesel underground haulage. They developed a in the rungs of ladders. Timbers dropped from state-of-the-art flotation milling process. And they respond to new challenges as they come up,” said Idarado never owned or operated the Red ceilings. Hoist cables turned to powdery rust in devised ingenious ways to transport and safely Newmont’s reclamation boss Larry Fiske. Mountain mines, but agreed to help remediate a matter of weeks. store the vast quantities of tailings that Idarado’s them through its negotiated Consent Decree with By the time the Silver Panic of 1893 rolled mills churned out on both sides of the mountains. Red Mountain Rumble the State of Colorado back in 1992. around, many of the ore bodies in the Red Moun- In the wake of Idarado’s closure in 1978, its On a hazy, hot evening in late June, Devon Today, thanks to these efforts, the historic tain Mining District had already pretty much cleanup sparked a burst of innovation in the Horntvedt collects water samples from the Genes- mining district is threaded with concrete diver- played out. The hot fat hustle fizzled as quickly emerging world of mine reclamation, introducing see Mine on the flank of Red Mountain #3. Smoke sion channels, weep lines and collection boxes as it had begun. And it came at a cost that is still such concepts as source control and direct tailings from the nearby 416 Wildfire obscures the Idarado designed to funnel mine drainage around waste exacted today in the ARD that seeps into Red revegetation that have since gone on to become yard across the valley, and the sun-ball hangs low rock piles and in some cases pipe it back into the Mountain Creek from these historic mines. standard mine remediation practices. in the bloodshot sky. ground, keeping it out of Red Mountain Creek. Mother Nature is a polluter too. Now, well into the 21st century, Idarado and its Horntvedt fills up some jugs with water, labels To date, these extensive source control rem- Dominguez and Escalante, who passed by the parent company, Newmont Mining Corp., are driv- them, and lugs them into the back of his SUV. “It’s edies have gotten Idarado half-way toward its Uncompahgre River in August 1776 – well before ing a new era of high-tech innovation as they tackle a special, weird place,” he says, looking around at State-mandated objective to reduce zinc levels any mining activity along Red Mountain Creek – Idarado’s biggest post-remediation challenges: the mine-riddled landscape. in Red Mountain Creek by 50 percent from pre- offered clues in their journal to how the natural solving the age-old riddle of acid rock drainage in Most of these mines were abandoned by the remediation levels. mineralization of the area impacted water quality, Red Mountain Creek, and adapting to shifting con- turn of the 20th century, but when the miners went The area is rife with extreme challenges – snow, noting their Ute guide’s warning that “near [the riv- ditions in the high country that have changed the away, the mountains kept mining themselves, pour- ice, freezing temperatures, frost heaving, difficult er’s] source there is a spring of red-colored water, way water moves through the mine. ing millions of gallons of metal-saturated acid rock working conditions, difficult access, a dearth of hot and ill tasting.” “Legacy mining sites are dynamic, changing drainage into Red Mountain Creek, and scarring the flat land, avalanches and rock slides, unreliable Recent studies have concluded that highly environments, and it’s necessary to anticipate and landscape with skirts of bright orange ferricrete. grid power, extreme acidity and high metal loads acidic surface water predates mining activity in

20 the Red Mountain district by thousands, perhaps equipped with thermal imaging sensors to map millions, of years. But of course, mining made some of Idarado’s high country features for things worse. source control evaluation – to figure out where the snowmelt and rain might be entering the mine License to Learn from this high altitude zone. One suspected cul- We’ve put a man on the moon, and multiple prit: an open stope below a melting glacial feature rovers on Mars. Why is it so hard to clean up in Middle Basin. Red Mountain Creek? The answer lies beneath the sunburnt skins of the Red Mountains, where a hidden world of chemical chaos reigns in the iron-rich environment. Here, a vicious cycle of ferrous to ferric iron conversion creates ever-more acidic mine pools, dissolving more and more metals out of the sur- rounding rock. The process is exacerbated and ac- celerated by metal-munching colonies of microbes. “It’s basically a mineralized free-for-all underneath our Red Mountains,” Horntvedt laughs. Over the past few years, the brainy millennial with shaggy red hair has field-tested a couple of innovative new water treatment systems to help clean up this carnage. First, he experimented with a passive treatment Idarado’s Mill Level Tunnel has always been a watery place; it serves as a drain for upper levels of the mine. Dragonfy Lead Pilot Analyst Chris Putnam (at right) system that uses Iron Rich Media (IRM) to yank zinc Over the past few years, however, the volume of water coming out of the tunnel has increased dramatically studies data feedback from an unmanned aerial out of the water. More properly described as activat- during peak runof. A warming climate is the suspected culprit. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) drone hovering high above Idarado’s Pandora ed ferromanganese, IRM is a waste product from the yard as his colleague Brian Skyles looks on. The electric arc furnace recycling of scrap metal. Dragonfy team has been conducting extensive site The stuff proved remarkably effective at quickly characterization at the Idarado Mine over the past removing dissolved zinc from the circumneutral, year. (Photo by Samantha Tisdel Wright) non-acidic water draining from Idarado’s Treasury Tunnel. “The zinc just gets sucked into the iron – The high country data visualization will eventu- it’s pretty cool,” Horntvedt said. But when he tested ally merge with Dragonfly’s newly launched under- it at the Liberty Belle – the most acidic of the old ground 3-D mapping project called Tunnel Vision, Red Mountain mines across the valley – the system offering volumetric data and pressure analysis to completely melted down. aid in the design of Idarado’s new bulkhead. Still, Horntvedt says, it has definite potential – “Our goal is to tie all that together so you are especially if paired with another system that could looking at one 3-D model of the mountain,” boost the mine water’s pH and make it less acidic explains Dragonfly Lead Pilot Analyst Chris Putnam. before passing it through the IRM. Horntvedt discovered the Dragonfly team at the Two years ago, Horntvedt vetted another experi- Silverton Innovation Conference in 2017, and saw mental water treatment system from a Texas-based opportunity for site characterization at the Idarado startup called Green Age Technologies. This sys- Mine. He’s thrilled with the results of the collabo- tem’s secret sauce is cavitation, a process that ration so far. implodes and momentarily vaporizes water mol- “It’s a huge leap forward in what we knew the ecules with a burst of heat approaching the sun’s year before,” he says. “It’s really been a helpful tool surface temperature, precipitating dissolved metals and it’s only going to get better. That’s the really out of solution and capturing them in a membrane Idarado has recently installed a remote solar-powered weather station in Marshall Basin to better monitor exciting part.” The technology is not foolproof yet, in the nanosecond before the water condenses snow and weather conditions in the high country that impact the quantity of water in the Mill Level Tunnel. Horntvedt adds, “But, it’s getting there. That’s the again to liquid form. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost) theme of innovation.” Early field tests for this new technology were so “Fail early and fail often,” agrees Brian Skyles, encouraging that Newmont offered its expertise grotto. Water flowing from far away. Water, getting mining company does what it’s always done when Project Lead/Business Development Associate at and energy to help the startup develop a larger closer. Water gushing out the portal of the Mill faced with a new challenge: innovate. Dragonfly’s Grand Junction-based parent company prototype in an attempt to prove the concept. But Level Tunnel. For example, Idarado has recently installed a HRL Compliance. further testing in 2017 failed to produce the de- Idarado is a wet mine on the Telluride side. remote solar- powered weather station in Marshall “And then, when you win, it’s so sweet,” sired results. Groundwater seeps into its subterranean maze Basin that sends photos and data through the inter- Horntvedt says. through myriad cracks and faults in the moun- net so that Parker can keep a constant eye on snow Back to Nature tains up above. During the Remedial Action Plan, and weather conditions in the high country that im- Idarado: The Next Generation These days, Horntvedt is taking a step back and Idarado built a network of hydrologic systems, pact the quantity of water in the Mill Level Tunnel. At an age when a lot of guys are still figuring out asking himself, “How would nature solve this issue collection points and pipelines to herd this ground- Likewise, newly installed flow meters at the tun- who they are and what they want to do in the world, if we just walked away?” water-turned-mine-water around mineralized zones nel portal provide real-time data that Parker can Braxton Franz and Wyatt Collins are self-possessed, He sees the answer all around him – in the iron and down and out through the Mill Level Tunnel. access from wherever he happens to be. focused and competent. terraces and voluminous mats of iron-loving algae that Here, it becomes Parker’s problem to manage. In this “new normal” of more intense runoff “They are responsible for everything,” Parker form at the mouth of the Joker Tunnel beneath Red From the tunnel portal, mine water flows into events, the data has proven invaluable for Parker says of his two full-time summer assistants, con- Mountain #2, the lush teal-colored grass that thrives a collection box, then is diverted into two sepa- and his crew. tracted to Idarado through the Ft. Collins-based in nearby iron fens, the ochre glomming onto rocks rate collection pipes. One directs drainage into Idarado also plans to build an engineered con- firm Engineering Analytics. in the ferricrete bed of Red Mountain Creek, and even a stair-stepping series of infiltration lagoons. crete bulkhead 1,030 feet back inside the tunnel to The three of them are kicking back in the con- the barren, scary-looking scablands that spill down the The other sends it into an infiltration ditch that better manage the mine water during peak runoff. ference room at the Pandora office at the end of a hillside below the Genessee Adit where he’s just been skirts the valley on the far side of the lagoons. Planning for the project, and discussions with reg- long work day, as generations of Idarado workers collecting water samples. Both the lagoons and the ditch serve the same ulators, have been ongoing since 2015. If all goes have surely done over the past 60 years. “The fact that it looks like this, tells me the water purpose – to contain the mine water and allow it to according to plan, the bulkhead should be opera- Franz and Collins tackle all the hard physical was somehow becoming less acidic and dropping gradually evaporate or seep into the ground. tional by the end of 2019. work they can handle at the aging decommissioned iron. And if it was dropping iron, it was dropping Most of the time, the passive treatment system The installation will be designed in such a way as mine – property maintenance, water sampling, other metals. And it’s not entirely out of the ques- works quietly in the background without much hassle. to allow continued access into the inner workings property visual inspections, ditch maintenance, tion that it was actually better this way,” than piping But water management at Pandora becomes a of the mine, and it will be equipped with a valve and erosion fencing on the tailings ponds, heavy equip- it underground, he hypothesizes, “because it was much more intense endeavor during peak runoff a 30-inch pipe to modulate the mine water flows ment maintenance, snow plowing, helping to take letting nature do some of the work. The planet is (which generally happens right around the time when there are surges that overtax the Pandora in- care of the Bridal Veil hydroelectric plant, plus actually trying to heal itself all the time.” of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in mid-to-late filtration system. whatever else comes up – like dealing with peak This summer, Horntvedt has been testing this June), when water discharging from the Mill “Running the Idarado water system has always runoff and assisting Horntvedt and Joe Smart with theory, running field tests for a new kind of passive Level Tunnel increases dramatically in volume – been a challenge,” says Fiske, emphasizing that Idarado’s ongoing water sampling regimen. They water treatment system that takes its inspiration typically escalating from 800 to 5,000 or more the new bulkhead should remain open with wa- also go underground from time to time to train from nature. The idea is to allow acidic mine water gallons per minute. ter flowing straight through it most of the time. “It with the mine rescue team. to spill over beds of crushed-up concrete loaded Needless to say, during peak runoff, it’s all won’t change our overall approach; it just gives us Franz, 26, started working at Idarado four years with acid-buffering lime to boost its pH just enough hands on deck. Parker and his crew conduct visu- more tools to accomplish the task safely during ago, the first year peak runoff was off the charts. It so that the iron will drop out of solution and start al inspections of the lagoons and infiltration ditch, those high surge flow events – basically we are im- wasn’t enough to scare him away. In fact, he loved forming iron terraces on its own, like the ones he’s watch water elevations, adjust valves, and shuffle proving our ability to manage uncertainty.” it. The sense of mission, the autonomy, the chal- been studying down at the Joker Tunnel. water from here to there through sleepless nights “We don’t want to choke it down and start build- lenge and variety of the work he was tasked with “The goal is to facilitate what nature is already making sure nothing overflows. ing a mine pool,” Parker adds. “We just want to from the get-go, convinced him to stick around. doing, and make it better,” Horntvedt says. “My job is to worry about things, and I’m very assure ourselves that on our end of it, when the Collins, 21, came along a year later and loves it Results from the field tests are still pending, but good at my job,” Parker says, with a rueful chuckle. water does come out, we’ve got room for it.” just as much. The two have developed a deep sense Horntvedt hopes this simple, passive pH-boosting of reverence for the mining history of Ouray and system, when paired with IRM, might get Idarado When in Doubt, Innovate Prometheus Telluride since they started working at Idarado. closer to its Holy Grail: a sustainable way to remove Over the past few years, peak runoff season has Site characterization is the name of the game when “I appreciate what they did with what they had,” zinc sulphates from Red Mountain Creek. given Parker even more cause for worry. it comes to understanding the nature of a place. Collins reflects. “It’s crazy. 21st century mining is “Truly, this is right up there on the edge of what Something has changed about the conditions Consider a scene from the 2012 film Pro- not even close to what it used to be. It’s really im- we are capable of doing scientifically,” Horntvedt in the high country, causing the volume of water metheus, where an interstellar crew flings floating pressive. I’ve gained a whole new respect for those says. “So we are continuing to look for new ideas, gushing out of the Mill Level Tunnel to inexplica- balls into the air that zoom into a cave and relay old timers.” new solutions, new ways to apply them, new puzzle bly increase to up to 8,000 gallons per minute for data back to the spaceship’s bridge, allowing the As if on cue, Idarado’s Bridal Veil Hydroelectric pieces, to see if we can assemble them together to a few hair-raising days and nights. This unprece- crew to see a precise, 3-D holographic map of the Plant operator David Swanson wanders into the form what’s going to be a sustainable solution.” dented deluge has tested the limits of both Parker’s alien world they’re about to explore. room. “I’m gonna start sending some stuff up to crew and the Pandora infiltration system. Something similar has been happening lately Blue Lake tomorrow,” he says. “It should be fun. The Water Whisperer Idarado is working hard to get a better under- at the Idarado Mine (except without any headless I’ll need one of you guys, or both of you guys.” In his dreams, Pandora site manager Mark standing of the root cause of this change – climate aliens or evil squid babies). “Yeah!” Franz and Collins say. Parker hears the sound of water. change is one suspect – and whether anything can Last fall, a Durango company called Dragon- Swanney grins at the pair. Water dripping, trickling, like an underground be done to stanch the flow. In the meantime, the flyAI deployed a fleet of unmanned aerial drones Engage.

21 The Idarado Mine lies beneath a high ridge between Red Mountain Pass and Telluride in southwestern Colorado. It contains more than 80 miles of interconnected drifts or crosscuts and dozens of surface features that pincushion the high country around Telluride and Ouray.

This surface map shows the full extent of properties included in Idarado’s Remedial Action Plan. The Town of Telluride is at far left. The City of Ouray lies beyond the top right corner of the map.

An isometric map of the underground workings at the Idarado Mine. Access to the mine is through either the Treasury tunnel (top right), whose portal is below Red Mountain Pass on U.S. Highway 550 at an altitude of 10,600 feet, or the Mill Level tunnel entrance (bottom center), two miles east of Telluride at an altitude of 9,060 feet. The two tunnel entrances are connected via almost six miles of interconnecting drifts and raises.

22 Historic miners in Telluride. (Bill Mahoney collection) Idarado management team at Pandora, circa 1950s. Pictured, from left: John Ferguson, Clyde Nettleton, M. Candless, Bud Parker, Harold Worcester, Chris Telk. (Bill Mahoney collection)

Pandora shift boss Roy Davis, Pandora mine Andrew Bassett (at left) and an unidentifed foreman Billy Mahoney, and Idarado mine co-worker inside the Idarado Mine’s machine parts superintendent Dick Swerdfeger underground shop or repair shop, circa 1940s. on the Telluride side near a raise station, about (Ouray County HIstorical Society collection) two miles in from the Mill Level Tunnel portal. The picture was taken when the International Harvester truck company came to do a feature on the Idarado mine in 1969. (Photo courtesy of Dick Swerdfeger)

Idarado miner and mucker, circa 1940s . (Ouray County Historical Society collection) Idarado miners in a stope. (Ouray County Historical Society collection)

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