Researchers from Colorado School of Mines and Johns Hopkins University took samples from a stretch of Clear Creek in the city of Golden and compared them to an upstream location with relatively little tubing activity. In addition to the increase in bacteria, they found a higher concentration of metals, such as lead, suspended in the water.

The study, first reported by Denver 7, attributed the increase in metals to human activity stirring up the creek bed, where they had accumulated since Colorado’s mining days. The spike in intestinal bacteria suggests that at least some people tubing on the creek also used it as a bathroom.

The authors said the spikes resolved quickly following a high-use weekend, however. They didn’t assess the impact on plants or animal life.

Rhoades, 69, said the Hardrockers’ Holidays is his favorite weekend of the year, and has competed in each year’s competitions since 1974.

The Hardrockers’ Holidays celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, and festivities were held Aug. 10-11. The weekend-long holiday featured competitions that emulate work deep underground in active mines. Men and women of all ages compete for cash, prizes and bragging rights following a contests that tested the mental and physical limitations of the competitors.

In the Single Jack, men and women must hold a single driving spike in place with one hand, and use the other hand to drive the spike into the rock using a heavy hammer. Whoever reaches the greatest depth at the end of 5 minutes is the winner. In the team event of Double Jacking, one person holds the drill’s steel spike in place while the other uses their full force to swing a 10-pound sledge hammer to drive the dill spike into the rock.

There isn’t much room for error. Missing the steel with the hammer could mean broken bones, muscle contusions or the loss of fingers. In past years, injuries were so severe competitors needed immediate medical attention. Other minor injuries are treated with cold beer, laughs, camaraderie, or by rubbing a little dirt over the wound.

Mining is an identity for many here, and while the business of mineral extraction may be shut down in these mountains for now, the legacy of hard rock mining in the San Juans is as deep as the ore veins that still run through them.

And the techniques to drive steel into hard rock, or mucking loose rock and debris from mines are skills passed down from generation to generation. Like the ore veins themselves, this heritage has solidified into a legacy that the locals here keep close to their hearts. For some of the old timers, just having these competitions going is reward itself. For the younger competitors, having events like Silverton can be used as practice and qualifiers for other larger events that are held around the country.

There is a saying that has even become a popular bumper sticker in Colorado: “If it’s not grown, it’s mined.”

Long before the mountain towns of Colorado became destinations for million-dollar homes, ski hills and film festivals, the first prospectors traversed these towering ridgelines in search of gold, silver, zinc, copper and lead. Years after silver was first discovered here, the town of Silverton was formally founded in 1874 by mining entrepreneurs Thomas Blair, William Kearnes and Dempsey Reese.

Fueled by the silver boom of the 1880s, Colorado at one time was one of the richest places on Earth. And Silverton would become one of the state’s most productive gold and silver communities well into the 20th century.

The Hardrockers’ Holidays, formally known as Sheepmen’s Days, was first held sometime in the 1930s. By 1953, mining was shut down and the festival was all but forgotten. By 1955, the town’s last hospital closed due to a lack of patients, according to Silverton native Tom Zanoni.

“The heart and soul of the town was mining, and to lose that was hard,” Zanoni said.

Sometime in 1973, Tom and his brother Zeke, who passed away last year, began an effort to revive the games. In 1974, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the original platting of the town, this group of citizens revived this cherished local celebration.

“It brought back some healing to the community, it allowed us to show our pride again, to celebrate our history and who we are, so that’s why we brought it back,” Zanoni said.

Rhoades said preserving the Hardrockers’ Holidays is important to maintaining the identity of the greater San Juan region. Following the Hardrockers’ Holidays, Ouray hosts its own Highgraders Holiday in Ouray Miners Park, Aug. 23-25. In Colorado, there are only four of these events still operating, with the other two held in Leadville and Creede.

“Coming up here for a sunset cocktail?” she mused with excitement Wednesday morning, imagining an evening when her long-held dream becomes reality.

Loevlie and her business partners broke ground last week on a $58 million project to build a 1.2-mile gondola that will haul 22 10-person cabins up the mountain from the historic Argo Mill in town.

When the project is finished, the gondola’s upper terminal will stand beside a three-level facility called The Outpost, containing the Sun and Moon Saloon, a whiskey bar called Loevlie’s Salon, food and beverage options in an area called the Gold Bar, an elevator with stops on all three levels and a pedestrian plaza with seating and tables. There will be a 300-seat terraced amphitheater suitable for musical entertainment, weddings and other events. A trestle will be built, allowing visitors to stroll out and above the slope of the mountain to an observation platform on a straight line toward Mount Blue Sky.

The gondola will be called the Mighty Argo Cable Car, named after the Mighty Argo tunnel from Idaho Springs to the mines of Central City that was built at the dawn of the 20th century. The Argo Mill, which dates back to 1913, houses a mining museum and is open daily for tours. The mill and tunnel were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

There’s a recreational component to the project, too. In partnership with the city of Idaho Springs and the Colorado Mountain Bike Association, the 400-acre Virginia Canyon Mountain Park is being built on slopes above the mill. In time there will be more than 20 miles of hiking and mountain biking trails. Hikers and mountain bikers will be able to visit The Outpost free of charge, or they might want to do it the way Loevlie has in mind.

“It’s a wonderful hike,” said Loevlie, an Idaho Springs native. “My thing is, I’m going to hike the trail up, have my mimosa and take the gondola down.”

Loevlie and her business partners are hoping the gondola, which will be built by Doppelmayr of Switzerland, will begin hauling visitors in the fall of 2025. Sixteen towers will be constructed on a mountaintop near the future site of The Outpost and transported by helicopter to be set in concrete foundations.

Forward progress

Idaho Springs officials see the project as an economic driver that diversifies what the town has to offer tourists while paying homage to the town’s rich mining heritage.

And they give Loevlie the credit for imagining the project — initially envisioned in 2019 — and then seeing it through after she and her first group of investors accused a title company of defrauding them out of millions of dollars.

“That lady, I don’t know how she does it,” said mayor Chuck Harmon. “Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she dusted herself off and said, ‘Oh, well, we’ll go with other folks.’ Like water off a duck’s back.”

Her undaunted attitude is in keeping with the miner’s spirit of Idaho Springs that dates back to 1859, though.

“Very much so,” Harmon said. “I probably would have felt very defeated after I had $4.3 million ripped off. Most people would have thrown in the towel. They had done so much work. And it cost them a lot more than $4.3 million, because by the time they were able to get new investors, interest rates about doubled on them. Construction costs probably went up at least 40%.

“But Mary Jane has such tenacity. She made it happen out of sheer will, went and found other people that believed in the project as much as she did. It looked very bleak a few years ago when they got the FBI’s financial fraud department involved,” he continued.

Ever the optimist, Loevlie prefers to focus on the future, not the scam that could have doomed the project, especially now with construction set to begin.

“We won an $8.7 million judgment, we haven’t been able to collect anything yet, and the FBI is prosecuting them,” is all she wants to say on the subject. “The trial is in April.”

Bryan McFarland of Evergreen, whose background is in commercial construction, is her partner in the Mighty Argo Cable Car Company. Major investors include Gondola Ventures, a firm which recently bought and reopened the historic Estes Park Tram after it was shut down last year and left for dead, along with Doppelmayr and a German investment fund.

“We’re all building this project for Mary Jane,” McFarland said. “It’s her vision.”

The past and the future

The Argo mill and tunnel have a fascinating history. Construction of the 4.2-mile tunnel began in 1893, and it was completed in 1910, according to “The Great Argo Project,” a book by Terry Cox. Its purpose was to provide a means for transporting gold ore from mines in the Central City district to Idaho Springs for milling. It also drained groundwater from those mines.

“We’re building a gondola on almost the same line,” Loevlie said. “We had a vision, just like they did. This is going to bring an economic engine to the region.”

After the tunnel was finished, the Argo Mill was built in 1912-13 and operated until 1935. An estimated $100 million in gold ore — $2.6 trillion in 2020 dollars, according to the Argo tours website — was processed there. Today visitors get to see machines that pounded and smashed up to 300 tons of rock per day, preparing ore for a multi-stage extraction process using dangerous chemicals that included cyanide and mercury. The site was abandoned in 1943.

Because contaminated water continued to flow from the tunnel long after the mill closed, the EPA declared it a Superfund fund site in 1983 and built a water treatment plant next to the mill that began operation in 1998. Today mill tours take visitors about 100 feet into the tunnel, where they encounter a five-foot concrete bulkhead built to dam water in the tunnel. Water is diverted through the treatment plant, which can handle 700 gallons per minute.

Loevlie acquired the mill in 2016. The lower terminal of the gondola will be adjacent to the mill. They haven’t set prices for the cable car yet, but they expect them to be in the range of $30-$40. There are plans to expand parking to accommodate cable car visitors, which could be many. Loevlie said a feasibility study found they could see 500,000 annually.

The Virginia Canyon Mountain Park will be free to use. The Mighty Argo Cable Car Company has pledged 50 cents from every cable car ticket sold to build and maintain those trails, and they have advanced the trail project $400,000 toward that end. A downhill mountain bike trail from site of The Outpost to the bottom, called Drop Shaft, has been completed with a wooden corkscrew finish at the bottom. The gondola will include bike carriers for hauling bikes up the hill. An adjacent 4.9-mile hiking trail is already in place.

Near the trailhead, just above the mill, is an abandoned mine tunnel called the Double Eagle. There are plans to open it, possibly next summer, so visitors can explore about 800 feet of it safely on paid tours. “It’s a gorgeous, cool, hardrock tunnel,” Loevlie said.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors already visit downtown Idaho Springs annually for food, drink and shopping, making parking difficult during peak periods. The city has plans to build a transportation hub at that end of town, adding more than 200 parking spaces. The Argo operation is about 0.7 of a mile east of there, where parking is less of a challenge.

“This is an area that can handle additional traffic,” said Harmon, the mayor. “It’s really going to complement the visitor experience. We’re very excited to have such a cool item that is so Idaho Springs, the perfect blend of history and adventure. Everybody can have fun. If you’re bringing grandma or a toddler, you can ride the gondola up and enjoy the view. For those who are more adventurous and bring their mountain bikes, they’ve got that option. I couldn’t ask for a better fit for the city.”

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Don’t panic. The livestock are supposed to be there – and you are, too.

Recreation and agriculture are two of Colorado’s largest economic drivers, and they often coexist in regions where there are abundant public lands. That’s why outdoors people seeking solace in the state’s wilderness have to share the trails with cattle, sheep, and goats that graze there in the summer equally as much as with other recreators and wildlife.

Grazing is one of several historic uses of public lands, alongside logging and mining, though it may come as a surprise to people who haven’t explored less developed natural areas, said Dana Gardunio of the U. S. Forest Service’s Ouray Ranger District. And the practice dates back longer than you might expect.

The Forest Service began regulating grazing in 1897 when it was a nascent agency. Regulators further codified grazing protocols with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.

When ranchers settled in the American West in the 19th and 20th centuries, they embraced a free-for-all approach to grazing that not only depleted natural resources but also caused disputes, known as range wars, among livestock owners. The need for common ground – and the need to maintain fertile grounds – led then-Colorado Rep. Edward Taylor to introduce a bill that designated geographic districts where grazing was permitted.

Today, ranchers lease specific plots for their herds and those allotments exist in public lands overseen by both the U.S Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. In Colorado, approximately 16 million acres are available for grazing on land managed by both agencies.

As those areas have become destinations for outdoor recreation, Gardunio said there’s been an increased need to educate folks about the terrain’s multiple uses.

“It’s become more of a thing where people haven’t had that interaction in other places they’ve recreated before, like national parks or city parks, county parks or state parks — places where they don’t tend to have grazing,” she said.

Having access to public grazing plots is essential for folks like fifth-generation farmer Adam Seymour. His family has 500 acres of farmland in the Coal Creek Valley where they raise cattle to sell to JBS Foods in Greeley and private buyers. Because Seymour also grows crops like corn and alfalfa there in the summer, he needs to relocate his cows to Grand Mesa for grazing.

Seymour owns part of a pooled permit with other ranchers that enables him to run 200 head of cattle on the mesa. The alpine terrain is ideal for grazing because it can’t be otherwise developed or farmed, Seymour said. Leasing public plots is more cost-effective than purchasing land and it’s also more dependable than renting private land that may eventually be sold or otherwise become unavailable.

“That’s why ranching does survive here in the Western United States because you can graze on public lands,” Seymour said. “If we had to go out and buy a $65 million piece of property just to graze cattle, people wouldn’t be raising cattle. They would be planting houses or they’d sell it to Oprah up in Telluride.”

Grazing provides ecological benefits, such as reducing fuel for wildfires, increasing plant diversity and helping maintain balanced ecosystems. Dwayne Rice, range program manager for the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service, described it as “an intentional disturbance, similar to mowing your lawn, that supports and aligns with multiple use management of our national forests and grasslands.”

Both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management evaluate allotments annually to determine the impact of previous grazing seasons and to decide how many animals each one can support. The agencies will close certain plots of land if they have been overgrazed or if environmental conditions like drought are expected to deteriorate the area.

Ranchers pay a monthly rate based on how many animals they have. The Forest Service, for example, charges $1.35 per bull or cow-calf pair per month. It’s the same rate for one horse or five sheep or goats per month.

Livestock owners work with federal officials to monitor and maintain the grazing area, and ranchers are also responsible for the upkeep of infrastructure, such as fences, on their respective allotments.

“Because grazing ground is harder and harder to come, it’s relatively cheap to graze on public land, but there is a lot of work that goes into it,” Seymour said.

Hikers, backpackers and mountain bikers will often see clues that livestock have been grazing on public lands, such as cow pies on trails or trampled foliage. And while both Seymour and Gardunio said encounters between people and animals are common, they rarely hear about conflicts.

Cows are not typically aggressive unless they are protecting their young, Seymour said, though they are naturally curious. Young cattle especially like to investigate things – including humans – that they aren’t familiar with. That said, Seymour advised keeping pets on leash or under voice control when recreating in grazing areas.

“Cattle will chase off a dog if they feel it’s a threat and pretty soon you got a cow chasing a dog that’s running back to you,” he said. Not ideal, clearly.

Gardunio said most of the incidents she hears about involve guardian dogs, which can be aggressive toward passersby who get too close to sheep flocks. She’s also heard of individuals who thought the dogs were abandoned and took them to local shelters, and does not advise people to do that.

The best thing recreators can do is keep their distance from livestock, much like they would wildlife, should they encounter animals in the high country. Another rule of thumb is to leave gates and fences as they are since they divide the various allotments and keep livestock in their respective grazing areas. If you need to open a gate to stay on a trail, make sure you close it, Seymour said. If a gate is open, leave it that way.

“If you have a gate big enough for a four-wheeler or a side-by-side, it’s big enough for a cow also,” he said.

The Forest Service and BLM publish maps, dates and other details of its grazing allotments so the public can be aware of when there might be livestock in recreation areas they plan to visit. Another pro tip: If you plan to camp, you should do so away from lakes, rivers and streams where animals will go to drink.

“Even for people who are dispersed camping, it not uncommon that you might have cows wander into camp at night,” Gardunio said.

UPDATED June 25 at 7:45 a.m.: A previous version of this story erroneously stated herding dogs protect sheep. Those animals are known as guardian dogs.

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The tract encompasses staggering red rock cliffs, broad valleys and rolling hills that burst into green in the spring. Cutting through it all is the beloved river, which sometimes dwindles to a trickle.

Nobody wants to see it overrun with tourists and trash, like so many of the West’s wild places.

But disagreements about whether to designate some of the river and its canyonlands as a national monument have driven a caustic rift between the people who love the area. What those protections look like, and who gets to shape them, are at the center of a fiery debate that, in some instances, has sunk to name-calling and declarations of evil doing.

Recreation and conservation organizations want to designate nearly 400,000 acres, or 625 square miles, of the federal lands along the river as a national monument, allowing for more robust management and protection of the land. If approved, the monument would be the largest in the state and would nearly double the total acreage of monuments in Colorado.

The Dolores River canyonlands are one of the largest, most biodiverse swaths of lands without federal protections, advocates for the monument say. They worry that without further federal regulations, increased recreation, mining and development could threaten the integrity of the landscape.

“It’s a pretty incredible, intact landscape,” said Mike Fiebig with American Rivers, a nonprofit group that supports the monument designation. “We don’t have a lot of that anymore.”

Sean Pond, organizer of the Halt the Dolores Monument campaign, agrees. He can drive and hike for dozens of miles in the area outside of his home in Nucla without seeing anyone.

But Pond and thousands of other campaign opponents worry that a monument designation eventually would impact livestock grazing and limit a decades-dormant mining industry that could be revived with the recent rise in the price of uranium.

Or, worse, that creating a monument would draw the hordes of tourists that the landscape needs protection from.

“They come with a noble cause — they want to protect the Dolores River canyon,” Pond said of monument supporters. “So do we. We live here.”

Two efforts to protect river corridor

The monument proposal is one of two efforts to offer greater protection to the lands around the Dolores River.

The Dolores springs from headwaters in the San Juan Mountains near Telluride and flows southwest until it reaches the town of Dolores. From the small town, it turns north and meanders, eventually nearing Colorado’s western border, before crossing into Utah and joining the Colorado River northeast of Moab.

Colorado’s two U.S. senators last year introduced legislation nearly two decades in the making. It would designate a smaller swath of 68,000 acres along the southern Dolores River as a national conservation area and special management area. The area includes the river and its surrounding lands in Montezuma, San Miguel and Dolores counties.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in December approved the widely supported bill and recommended the full Senate pass it.

Two counties — Mesa and Montrose — dropped out of conversations about the national conservation area years before the bill was introduced, however.

In response, a coalition of recreation and conservation nonprofit organizations crafted the monument proposal for the lands around the northern sections of the river in those two counties. In 2022, the coalition began organizing support for the monument designation in Mesa and Montrose counties, home to about 202,000 people.

Unlike conservation areas, the designation of a new national monument on federal land doesn’t need congressional approval and can be created unilaterally by the president. Presidents have designated 163 monuments across the country, including nine in Colorado.

The Dolores River monument designation is necessary to protect wildlife, ecosystems and tribal connections and resources, monument supporters said.

“This landscape is one Instagram influencer away from being overrun, so let’s get the conservation right before it a problem,” said Scott Braden, director of Colorado Wildlands Project and one of the monument campaign’s organizers.

According to the proposal, the lands would be managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — as they are now — and subject to a management plan created by the entities with an opportunity for public comment. The monument would not charge entrance fees, according to the Protect the Dolores website. Livestock grazing would still be permitted, as would biking and use of motorized vehicle routes.

The government would honor existing and valid mining claims, though it would not allow new mining claims. The draft map of the proposed monument was crafted to exclude the majority of the existing mining claims, Braden said.

“We think there are places that shouldn’t be mined in this landscape … but we’re also leaving (out) a ton of areas that we think are most likely to see future mining,” he said.

So far, the coalition has collected more than 85,000 signatures and letters of support from 150 businesses, as well as some state and local politicians. Both of Colorado’s senators this year have traveled to the Western Slope to hear about the plan and talk with locals.

The Native American tribes with land in Colorado support the monument, too. Both the Ute Mountain Ute and the Southern Ute lived in the area of the proposed monument, said Regina Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute and a former tribal councilmember.

The land needs to be kept as close to its natural state as possible, she said.

“This landscape provided everything for us and we survived that way for hundreds of years,” she said. “And now we’re trying to do right by the land.”

Advocates are hoping President Joe Biden will turn his attention to the idea before the November election. While Biden has designated five new national monuments — including the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument north of Leadville — former President Donald Trump, who’s the likely Republican nominee again this year, created a single monument and reduced the size of another while in office.

The coalition believes the monument would help local communities by boosting outdoor recreation economies, while continuing the mining and ranching industries.

Distrust and name calling

But some in the small towns along the proposed monument’s boundary don’t buy those claims.

Pond is not sure the land needs more protections. The area’s minimal tourists need little management now, he said, but he fears that designating a monument would act as a siren call to the hundreds of thousands of RVers, bikers, motocrossers and hikers that descend on nearby Moab every year.

Visitation to the area increased in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many people to seek wilderness solitude, Pond said. People were camped “every-freakin’-where” that year, Pond said, but the fervor has since calmed. There is no true tourism industry in the area, he said.

Pond and others with Halt the Dolores fear that despite promises from the monument advocates, access and use regulations will change in the future. Nearly 8,000 people have signed Pond’s petition to halt the designation. County commissioners from Mesa County and Montrose County passed resolutions opposing the monument, though the mayor of Grand Junction — the largest population center in the area — supports the monument and traveled to Washington, D.C., in April to lobby for its creation.

Even if grazing is still allowed on the land, changes to motorized access could affect the feasibility of reaching cattle or maintaining ranching equipment, Pond said. Or, if the monument designation grandfathers a mining claim, blocked access could make it useless.

“They’ve said we’re spreading misinformation,” Pond said. “But I’m just spreading the other side of the truth.”

Pond also opposes a ban on new mining activity. With the price of uranium rising, the towns along the uranium belt could see a mining boom. Minimum-wage tourism jobs are not the same as the potential six-figure mining jobs such a boom could bring.

In a post on social media, Pond alleged that a monument designation would lead to entrance fees and closed-off lands, roads and trails.

Colorado’s nine national monuments cover a combined 490,000 acres and vary widely in size and management. The five created before the turn of the century are managed by the National Parks Service and the four created since are managed by the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. Five of the nine charge an entrance fee.

Braden, from the Colorado Wildlands Project, said the monument, as proposed, would not be operated similarly to the Colorado National Monument, which is heavily developed and sits just outside Grand Junction. A better comparison would be to the Camp Hale or Canyons of the Ancients national monuments.

The debate over the monument has resulted in name calling and harassment, both sides said.

On Facebook, Pond has called supporters of the monument “eco-terrorists” and called Braden a “parasite” and “the embodiment of evil.” Others opposing the monument have called local businesses that support the monument a “cancer on the community.”

When asked about the posts, Pond said his emotions have sometimes gotten away from him and that he’s trying to be more politically correct.

He did not apologize and said that if his language brings attention to his cause, “then so be it.”

Pond said he also has faced harassment, including a death threat he said he reported to law enforcement. He also cited a woman who screamed at him from across the room at a community meeting last Sunday in Nucla.

The inaccurate talking points and name-calling from those who oppose the monument have been disheartening, Braden said. But he believes compromise is possible.

“We’re ready to come to the table and meet people where their concerns lie and try to figure something out that’s workable for everybody,” said Braden, who lives in Grand Junction. “But at the end of the day, we’re committed to permanent protection of this landscape.”

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A company in Leadville wants to truck 1.2 million tons of the waste to a mill on the southwestern edge of the high mountain city, use cyanide to extract gold and silver from the rocks, and then return the hills to a more natural state. CJK Milling says its proposed operation would be “one of the largest, most innovative environmental cleanups of abandoned mine waste” in Leadville — and a model for other historic mining areas.

But the company’s proposal has prompted skepticism and alarm in Leadville, with some locals opposing the additional trucks the project would put on roads in the area. Others fear the use of toxic cyanide — up to 600 pounds a day — so close to town and the Arkansas River. They worry about the project’s potential impacts on soil, water and air quality.

The proposal has also raised a broader question: What is the future of mining in a town that once relied on it but has cultivated a new identity as a high-altitude hub for tourism and recreation?

“I had a lot of mixed feelings about the project,” Mayor Dana Greene said. “I had the question, too, that we’re a historic mining town, so why wouldn’t we embrace this? For me, my concerns are the effects to the sense of place and the potential long-term effects on the area.”

Company leaders, however, say their project is not a mining operation — and instead is focused on removing the waste piles and returning the land they sit on to its natural state. The project could be an example of profitable, privately funded cleanup of mining waste, said Nick Michael of CJK Milling.

The milling facility is designed in a way that ensures neither cyanide nor other byproducts of the process can escape its confines, Michael said.

“This isn’t a ruse to do mining. This is remediation,” he said.

Harvesting gold and silver from waste

CJK Milling owns 1.2 million tons of mining waste in California Gulch and is seeking state permits to process its first third of the waste.

The company plans to scrape up piles of waste from more than a century of mining activity in the hills above Leadville, which are part of a federal Superfund site. The California Gulch Superfund Site, designated in 1983, covers 18 square miles of Leadville and surrounding areas, including a section of the Arkansas River.

Much of the site is considered remediated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, though the area where CJK Milling would operate is not.

CJK Milling plans to transport waste on trucks from the piles through a small corner of town, then onto a section of U.S. 24 to reach its mill across the highway from Lake County’s airport. The waste then will be smashed and treated in a vat with a cyanide solution to dissolve the gold and silver from the rock.

The company will make bars of the precious metals. The leftover sediment will be stored in a lined tailings deposit on the mill property after the cyanide has been removed from the waste.

The mill is expected to process 400 tons of ore a day. Michael and CJK Milling owner Gary Knippa wouldn’t say how much gold they expect to produce from that ore.

The system surrounding the facility is designed to capture any material in the event of an equipment failure or disaster, Michael said. The storage pits are double-lined and include a leak detection system. The cyanide will be trucked into town, likely from the south, in the form of dry pellets, he said.

“Even if there was some catastrophic event and every system failed, (the cyanide) doesn’t have anywhere to go,” Michael said.

When the company is done milling, it plans to cap the 8-acre tailings pile and plant trees and vegetation on top.

“Once we’re up and running,” Michael said, “the average person won’t notice us.”

But the idea of increased truck traffic and tons of cyanide being used just on the outskirts of town — and a few hundred yards from a tributary to the Arkansas River — concerns some Leadville residents and leaders.

A group organized to fight the project, Concerned Citizens for Lake County, has submitted hundreds of opposing comments to the state Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, which is overseeing the project’s permitting process.

“We’re not opposed to responsible industrial development, but this is not responsible,” group member Ruth Goltzer said. Goltzer noted the group doesn’t oppose the mammoth Climax molybdenum mine on Fremont Pass or another project by CJK Milling.

The new plan, however, has members concerned about the use of cyanide and the potential impacts if it were to seep into the water supply or soil, despite the company’s assurances that such contamination is not possible.

Company official: Cyanide is “red herring”

Cyanide is commonly used in gold operations around the world, Michael said. The company would consider alternative processes that don’t require the chemical, but cyanide extraction is the only method that works to extract gold and silver from the waste piles.

“I think the issue with cyanide is ignorance,” he said. “It’s a red herring.”

Corby Anderson, a professor of mining engineering and metallurgical and materials engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, said people have many misconceptions about cyanide, which is naturally occurring and can be found in foods like spinach and lima beans. Cyanide breaks down easily and, if exposed to air and sunlight, would decompose in days or weeks, he said.

“If you manage the risk, you don’t create a hazard,” Anderson said.

Just one other company uses cyanide extraction in Colorado, according to the Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. The Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine in Teller County sprays cyanide over piles of crushed ore and collects the liquid that runs off — a process called “heap leaching.”

The division has approved other operations to use cyanide but none ever used it, division spokesman Chris Arend said.

The Teller County mining operation has had a few accidental releases of cyanide solution over time, but all have been reported and no spill has ever left the site, Arend said. CJK Milling’s proposal, which does not use heap leaching, would contain the cyanide solution to vats.

Another heap leaching operation became one of the state’s most toxic Superfund sites. Outside Del Norte, the Summitville Mine started leaking potassium cyanide into nearby streams after it ceased operation in 1992. The cyanide solution, combined with toxic runoff from the site’s open pit mine, wiped out aquatic life on miles of a fork of the Alamosa River, prompting a multidecade cleanup effort that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Residents in Leadville or downstream on the Arkansas River have concerns other than cyanide.

Greene, the Leadville mayor, worries about potential impacts decades after operations stop. After touring the site, she said she no longer was troubled about the use of cyanide, as long as it is used as planned. But she was still concerned about the possibility the linings of the tailings deposit could break down, along with the effects of moving the waste piles from where they’ve sat for decades.

If the mill were farther from town or the river, she said, the plan would be more palatable to her.

“I think they have a reasonable plan to consider, and as a city we need to be sensitive to and enthusiastic about economic development. But we shouldn’t be doing that with a blank check,” Greene said.

“It’s a question of, do we trust them?”

Chris Lamson, president of the Collegiate Peaks Chapter of Trout Unlimited, also has concerns about moving the waste piles, which could become more susceptible to wind and water disturbances during excavation. But talking to the company and touring the facility has calmed many of his fears about the potential impacts to the Arkansas River and its fisheries.

“It’s a question of, do we trust them?” Lamson said. “It’s an honor system, which seems inherent in many mining projects.”

The milling project will create approximately 21 jobs, according to CJK Milling. Neither Knippa nor Michael live in Leadville, but they say they are willing to give tours or answer questions from anyone in the community.

For Goltzer and other members of Concerned Citizens for Lake County, the potential risks outweigh the benefits.

“Who is getting the benefit from this, and who is taking all the risk?” Goltzer said.

CJK Milling still needs a series of permits to begin operation. Its February application for a permit from the state’s Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety is under review, division director Michael Cunningham said. The ultimate decision rests with the Mined Land Reclamation Board after it hears public comment.

Then the company would need air and stormwater permits from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, a conditional use permit from Lake County and eventual sign-off by the county commissioners.

Cunningham said the permitting process for an operation that uses cyanide is the strictest under the state division’s purview, in part because of the Summitville Mine disaster. If CJK Milling wins approval, it will need to regularly test water samples and allow for inspections, he said.

Pending all those approvals, Michael and Knippa plan to start operating in the spring of 2025.

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The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, examined lung tissue from 65 people with unexplained shortness of breath and other respiratory symptoms after deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq. Deployed veterans were more likely to have silica in their lungs than people who weren’t in the armed forces, with combat veterans showing more damage than service members who worked in other jobs.

People with combat roles tended to have a variety of unhealthy respiratory exposures, including burn pits, sandstorms, diesel exhaust, tiny particles generated by explosions, dust from heavy equipment on dry soil, and pollution from local industries or trash burning, said Dr. Cecile Rose, an occupational and environmental pulmonologist at National Jewish Health.

She and the other researchers didn’t think silica would be the primary contaminant they’d find in veterans’ lungs.

“That was unexpected, but not surprising” when considering their exposure to dust and sandstorms, she said.

People who inhale large amounts of silica over a prolonged period can develop silicosis, a disease in which inflammation in the lungs causes scarring and difficulty breathing, Rose said. Silica inhalation is one factor in the increase in cases of black lung disease among coal miners in recent decades, because the miners have to cut through other rock types to reach narrow coal seams, she said.

“Silica dust is a powerful stimulant of lung inflammation,” she said.

Lung samples taken from people who died in accidents and hadn’t deployed overseas during their lifetimes showed small amounts of silica, but not comparable to what the combat veterans had, Rose said. Because the veterans were younger and less likely to have smoked, if anything, their lungs should have looked healthier, she said.

People who inhale significant amounts of silica can reduce their likelihood of disease by limiting further exposures, but that may not be feasible for career soldiers, Rose said. They also would want to avoid civilian jobs that would increase their risks, like mining, stone cutting and certain construction trades, she said.

Not everyone who served in combat experienced the same hazards, and the country needs more research to determine who needs careful lung monitoring, Rose said. Combat veterans shouldn’t ignore lung symptoms, though, and might consider joining the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry to help with research, she said.

“We don’t really know how many people are at risk,” she said.

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This week, the U.S. Forest Service bought three mining claims in the San Juan Mountains, totaling about 27 acres, where a sauropod trackway was excavated in recent years. The agency paid $135,000 for the land, known as the West Gold Hill Dinosaur Tracksite, using money from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

According to Bruce Schumacher, USFS senior paleontologist, the track site is unique because of its size and pattern. Most known dinosaur tracks travel in relatively straight lines. This one, however, shows the long-necked dino making a more than 180-degree turn when it walked the area during the Jurassic period roughly 150 million years ago.

The West Gold Hill Dinosaur Tracksite is only the sixth recorded instance of a turning sauropod trackway in the world, and the only one turning more than 180 degrees that’s still in tact, Schumacher said.

“This trackway preserves 134 successive steps, right and left. In that sense, it is among the longest known continuous dinosaur trackways in the world,” he said. “That’s pretty cool.”

For decades, hikers have been able to see the tracks while traversing the remote Silvershield Trail, which follows an old mining route above Ouray. The trackway lies at an altitude of 9,300 feet and hikers need to climb about 1,600 feet in elevation over the course of two miles to get there.

Hikers can also take the Oak Creek Trail to Twin Peaks Trail, which is longer but slightly less steep, said Dana Gardunio of the agency’s Ouray Ranger District.

While the tracks were accessible previously, the Silvershield Trail crossed private land. That’s why the track site’s location was long kept something of a secret. The Forest Service acquisition not only enables the agency to raise awareness about it, but also ensures the site will remain open to the public for generations of dinosaur lovers to come.

“Over the years we’ve been in situations where landowners don’t really want the public on their property. So we’re always interested in some of these parcels where it gives us more guaranteed public access to use for recreation,” Gardunio said.

The sauropod tracks were first discovered in the 1950s by a Ouray local named Rick Trujillo, but at the time only a few prints were visible. Over the last decade, Trujillo and other researchers, including Schumacher, excavated the site using shovels, whisk brooms and small hand tools. The process was relatively simple, Schumacher said, because glaciers did most of the work several thousand years ago. The remaining sandstone is easily permeable.

The fact that the prints are located at such a high altitude is equally as impressive as how many impressions there are and the pattern they follow, he added.

“The dinosaurs weren’t living in the Rocky Mountains at that elevation because the Rocky Mountains weren’t there,” Schumacher explained.

“It’s amazing to think that with the Rocky Mountain uplift in the later part of Mesozoic Age of dinosaurs, that dinosaur trackway layer was lifted up some 7,000 (or) 8,000 feet in elevation, and then glaciers came in few thousand years ago and scraped off all the overburden above this trackway, that somehow miraculously became preserved in sandstone to begin with,” he said. “It’s this amazing geologic story.”

To that end, Schumacher said the tracks themselves are likely indestructible. For visitors, that means they can walk up to them, touch them and take pictures with them. Just don’t try to make a cast molding, he said, which could damage the prints and litter the remote area.

Now that the acquisition is complete, the Forest Service plans to put pictures and information about the trackway on its website. The agency doesn’t plan to do much development at the site itself, Gardunio said, but it may improve the trailhead, which is located on private land, if traffic to the area picks up.

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Colorado law allows for surface rights of land to be split from sub-surface mineral rights. Most commonly, conflict arises in Colorado’s natural gas-rich Denver-Julesburg Basin, where the Front Range sprawl north of Denver has landed subdivisions above mineral rights owned by major corporations planning or already using hydraulic fracturing to extract the gas.

South T Bar Ranch, located northwest of Cañon City, could become a nightmare situation for homeowners compared to the problems presented with hydraulic fracturing. Even modern uranium mining — known as ablation — causes a significant disruption to surface land, although companies claim it is safer and less problematic than pit mining.

Global Uranium and Enrichment, which owns the mineral rights below the 5,200-acre gated community, has received the necessary permits to begin exploratory drilling for uranium. If the company plans to proceed and extract deposits of uranium, landowners are legally required to provide the surface access necessary for the operation.

The blame for this scenario is twofold: a lack of due diligence by land buyers and a lack of disclosure from sellers, Realtors, and title companies.

The possibility of uranium mining on this land should have significantly reduced the value of these parcels from the outset. In other words, the land should have sold for a reduced price compared to other parcels in Fremont County where homeowners owned their mineral rights.

In this instance, it was homeowners in 2008 who gathered together their mineral rights and sold them to a company that was later purchased by Global Uranium and Enrichment. Subsequent landowners missed out on the windfall from that sale.

A simple disclosure could have avoided all this heartache. We’re not saying homeowners wouldn’t have still purchased the land, but at least they would feel less blindsided or would have had the knowledge needed to negotiate a better price on the land.

Colorado’s Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate does include IN ALL CAPS an oil, gas, water and mineral disclosure. However, the disclosure only informs people about the risk of split estates; it doesn’t include specific information about whether the land being purchased is split from mineral rights. The clause merely encourages the buyer to “seek additional information.” Most buyers get the contract to buy and sell just before closing.

Title companies also do not trace the mineral rights separately, which really is an astounding lapse in the expensive services the title companies perform. Homeowners are on their own to research the ownership of mineral rights using county records or to hire an attorney to research the title and deed for them.

Where should the onus of due diligence fall?

The current system places too much of a burden on potential buyers. Colorado law already has strict rules for the disclosure of water rights and water sources, and the law should be updated so that disclosure of mineral rights is treated the same. Potential land buyers should be able to quickly see in the real estate listing whether land comes with water and minerals. The point of sale is too late to warn a potential buyer that the estate may or may not be split.

The website for the South T Bar Ranch now includes a disclosure about the split estate and the possibility of uranium mining. More homeowner’s associations, metropolitan districts and other entities should take similar steps to help potential buyers make informed decisions.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for the owners of South T Bar Ranch, who bought after the mineral rights deal in 2008 and failed to learn of the split estate through their Realtor, title company, or other investigations.

People who profited off selling the mineral rights feel vastly different about the potential for mining operations than those who purchased their property later and will not see a windfall from the operations. Some may have failed to negotiate for a reduced price, given the potential for mining.

Global Uranium and Enrichment is only seeking permits to drill wells exploring uranium deposits at this time. The possibility of an actual mining operation is still years away and will require a separate permitting process. It’s possible nothing will come of this exploration, and homeowners will be spared from having mining operations in their backyard (or nearby).

Coloradans can learn from this lesson, and those who learn they are already on a split estate, can make an offer to buy the mineral rights back before market conditions lead to exploration and extraction near their home.

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Sisson and her husband purchased the property in June and moved from Louisiana to live in the South T Bar Ranch development. In the neighborhood of more than 100 properties, located a 45-minute drive northwest of Cañon City, they found a peaceful home nestled in a remote community.

Then the couple received a notice they didn’t expect: Uranium drilling would begin in the coming year. Emerging plans for exploratory prospecting included setting up a drill site right across the road from the Sissons’ house, in the view through their kitchen window.

“I was stunned, taken aback. I’m not sure I even have the words,” she said.

Sisson is among many residents of South T Bar Ranch alarmed by an Australian company’s plans to drill in the subdivision as a way to learn more about the uranium deposits beneath it. An appeal by a homeowner to stop the prospecting failed last week, allowing Global Uranium and Enrichment to proceed. It could drill as many as 20 holes in the area this year.

While original homeowners in the community owned some of the mineral rights and knew drilling was a possibility, the plans caught others by surprise, said Skip Blades, who owns three parcels in South T Bar Ranch. He appealed the company’s plans.

“It’ll be right in the front yard of the community,” Blades said. “It’s just going to destroy the area. This is a residential community.”

The drilling by Global Uranium and Enrichment, previously known as Okapi Resources, comes as prices for the radioactive element soar. They reached a 16-year high Monday as global supplies tighten and demand for nuclear power rises — and as alternatives to oil and gas energy become more appealing.

The market shift has spurred the opening of new uranium mines in the United States for the first time in eight years — including three in the Mountain West.

“Governments around the world are increasingly realizing the importance of reliable, carbon-free power generation, and uranium’s key role in this,” Global Uranium and Enrichment states on the company’s website. “We’re answering the increasing call for uranium.”

This isn’t the first time that call has brought mining companies to southern Colorado’s Fremont County.

The area around South T Bar Ranch has been mined and explored since the element was discovered in the vicinity in 1954. Uranium for years served as a major industry in the Cañon City area — and it has left scars.

Radioactive tailings from the Cotter uranium mill, which operated from 1958 to 2006, sit in a designated Superfund site just outside the town of 17,000, despite a 40-year effort to clean it up.

According to Global Uranium and Enrichment, there could be more than 49 million pounds of uranium compound remaining in the area.

A long history of drilling in the area

The company plans to drill over a 60-day period between May and December. The goal is to extract samples of the rock and minerals for further study.

Crews will work 24/7 to drill 5-inch-diameter holes 700 feet into the ground to collect the samples, according to the company’s application for a Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety permit. Each hole will require a drill pad area of 6,400 square feet, cleared of grass and rocks, and will remain open for about six days. After the samples are extracted, the company will fill and cover the holes.

More than 1,400 such holes have been drilled in the vicinity as different companies have come and gone.

Blades and Sisson worry the drilling could disrupt wildlife and contaminate their water supply. The drills will push through underground aquifers. Some of the drilling will occur near Tallahassee Creek, which feeds into the Arkansas River.

Company representatives and staff from the Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety said water contamination was unlikely. Company representatives also said they would comply with wildlife officials’ recommendations to mitigate harm to wildlife and would try to minimize disturbances to the neighborhood.

In a written response to Blades’ formal complaint, a company representative said the drill areas would quickly revegetate. The company also said it would point lights toward the ground at night to minimize light pollution, adding that noise from the drill to be used “is relatively muted when compared to other drills.”

Global Uranium and Enrichment presented its plans in June to the South T Bar Ranch Property Owners Association and residents. Company representatives declined an interview request from The Denver Post.

It’s one of several companies expanding uranium production in the Mountain West to take advantage of the high prices. Another is Lakewood-based Energy Fuels Inc., which is restarting production of uranium at three mines in Arizona and Utah and plans, within the year, to open a mine in Wyoming and a mine in Colorado.

“The company’s decision to ramp-up uranium production at this time was driven by several favorable market and policy factors,” according to a Dec. 21 news release. Among those cited by Energy Fuels Inc. were the potential to address global climate change by harnessing nuclear energy and “the need to reduce U.S. reliance on Russian and Russian-controlled uranium and nuclear fuel.”

One of the company’s mines, called the Pinyon Plain Mine, sits 10 miles south of the Grand Canyon, inside the newly-created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument. That mine long has been opposed by environmental groups and the Havasupai Tribe.

Failed attempt to halt plans near Cañon City

Outside Cañon City, the state’s reclamation and mining division in November issued Global Uranium and Enrichment a permit to prospect for uranium at South T Bar Ranch.

A week later, Blades filed an appeal to the Mined Land Reclamation Board, arguing the company should have sought a permit for development instead.

A prospecting permit allows a company to look for minerals, to attempt to quantify how much there is below the surface and to gather the data necessary to create an extraction plan. A development permit allows a company to extract the mineral and requires more robust notification to the public, along with a lengthier public comment period.

Blades argued the company had moved beyond the prospecting phase of the project because it already knew how much uranium exists in the area — and where to find it.

On its website and in financial statements, the company has included maps of the deposits and estimates of the amount of uranium sitting beneath the soil.

“Okapi has downplayed their knowledge of drilling history … so they don’t have to be accountable to the state of Colorado requirements for a mining permit,” Blades said, referring to the mining company by its prior name.

Global Uranium and Enrichment representatives, however, said they didn’t have enough data. And the data they do have is not the company’s own.

“Yes, drilling for uranium has taken place in this district since the 1970s and the drill data is available,” its Oct. 2 response states. “The purpose of our program is to collect additional hydrological, metallurgical, geochemical, geotechnical and environmental data that will be used to conduct additional laboratory and technical studies. The program is designed to help answer questions about extraction, processing and the associated costs.”

The company said it couldn’t use old data collected by a different company to ask a bank for money or to request a mining permit from the state.

“We’ve actually never drilled a hole at the Tallahassee site,” Andrew Ferrier, managing director of the company, said Wednesday during a four-hour hearing by the Mined Land Reclamation Board.

The board’s seven members rejected Blades’ appeal and allowed the company’s project to proceed.

Despite the failed appeal, Blades said he and his neighbors won’t give up. They are more organized and informed now.

“Our fight has just begun,” he said.

“It’s more of a wait and see,” another resident says

The proposed drilling has caused a rift among some of South T Bar Ranch homeowners.

The first group of people to buy into the community owned the mineral rights in the area. In 2008, the property owners created a company — South T Bar Minerals — to deal with the mineral rights and in 2010 sold some of those rights to a company, which Global Uranium and Enrichment eventually purchased.

But people who bought property later did not get a share of the mineral rights. In Colorado, surface property can be split from mineral rights beneath the surface. About half of current residents are part of South T Bar Minerals, said Becky Renck, the president of the South T Bar Ranch Property Owners Association and a member of South T Bar Minerals.

Renck bought her first property in the community in 1999 and has served on the property owners association board for 14 years.

She first heard of Global Uranium and Enrichment’s plans in the summer of 2022 through the mineral rights company. She said she wasn’t worried about the potential drilling.

“It’s certainly not a panic or an ‘Oh no’ (situation),” she said. “It’s more of a wait and see. They’re a long way away from doing any mining.”

She said she understood that newer owners might feel frustrated or blindsided. But Global Uranium and Enrichment’s leaders have communicated with the community, she said, and have answered all questions she’s sent on behalf of property owners.

“In my perspective, the mining is going to happen sometime in our lives anyway, so why not work with a company that we know and is willing to work with us?” Renck said. “I think it’s the way of the world going forward.

“If we’re sitting on the uranium and the world needs it, so be it.”

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