Idaho Springs hopes to strike gold again with scenic gondola, mountaintop attraction
From a mountainside aerie 1,300 feet above Idaho Springs, on a 19th-century mining claim called the Sun and Moon, Mary Jane Loevlie savored a broad panorama that frames Mount Blue Sky and its sister fourteener, Mount Bierstadt. Loevlie saw the future here years ago, and her vision is finally beginning to take form.
“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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