The real dirt


“There’s only two industries worth a goddamn in this state,” the cattleman slurred through his deep Western Slope drawl. “Agriculture and mining.”

The fourth generation Colorado native promptly ordered a pull of Coors and a shot of J.D. to punctuate the point. The bourbon flew past the salt and pepper stubble on his chin and straight down the hatch. The frosty mug of “Banquet Beer” (this being a most sincere usage of quotes) followed in three mean gulps, only a few drops hitting the soiled work shirt. The old hand came up for air and the tirade resumed.

“Without ag, we’ve got no food,” he shouted to everyone in earshot. “Without mines, there’d be no tools, no cars, no buildings. Hell, you can’t even keg beer without help from hardrock mining.”

Another round of drinks would appear – a sure sign that headaches and dry heaves would dominate the next morning’s tractor ride – and then my boss would wax poetic about how ranching and mining had built the West. As his closing argument (seconds before he’d lapse into humming Patsy Cline numbers), the old rancher would bellow about how agriculture and mining will continue to carry the West into the great beyond.

I heard that speech – always in varying stages of inebriation – off and on during the four years I worked as a hand on that man’s sprawling Montrose County cattle ranch. And after nearly 1,000 hot days of fencing, haying, irrigating and branding, I did develop a passion for ag and actually took half of the boss’ drunken equation to heart. True to his word, the experience had rewarded me with those esteemed values, a steady work ethic and more than a passing appreciation for the local landscape.

The second piece of the puzzle was always a little more difficult, however. First, I had never spent any significant time underground. My only first-hand experience with actual mining had been a late-night pass through a small placer mining operation in high school. That desperate effort to exchange beer for gas came within a whiff of failure.

More importantly, I have always been intimately familiar with mining’s most enduring product – and I’m not talking about bicycle tubing. Beyond the quaint Victorian hamlets or mythic tales of Tommyknockers, the search for all that glitters has left a pretty dirty legacy on that landscape I learned to love on the tractor.

Those with any doubts are more than welcome to join me on an abridged version of the scenic Western Slope mining tour.

On the first stop we find the massive pile of steel-gray tailings that still stands watch over the town where I grew up. Prior to the late 1970s, when it was deemed fit to run sprinklers on top of the “pond,” winds blew heavy metals and toxins from the pile into our streets, homes and lungs. The tailings pond remains permanent fixture in that valley, still seeping into streams and finding its way into lunchboxes.

Not far from our Coors and bourbon lover’s ranch, the tour makes it second stop. More than 800 people once lived in the grassy town of Uravan. Over nearly 50 years, the Joe Jr. Mill processed uranium and vanadium and made many a Western Coloradoan small fortunes. However, sometime in the early 1980s someone with a Geiger counter passed through town. The concentrations of radiation were so high that the once-booming town had to be dozed, and schools, clinics and tennis courts all went beneath the blade. All that’s left are chain-link fences and “Danger – Radiation” signs.

A little closer to home, we make our final stop on the afternoon tour. Thanks to an EPA superfund in the early 1990s, Durango went from one of the most radioactive large towns in the nation to the tourist stop “Where Old West Meets New West.” Prior to the uranium mill tailings, good old-fashioned hardrock mining waste leached items like selenium and zinc into local lives.

Upstream, the recent discovery of a single living trout in the upper Animas River (hmmm, don’t we drink that water in Durango) marked a major milestone and was cause for celebration. That lone brookie never would have had a chance had it not been for the hard work of the stakeholders group to turn back leach from a century of mining in and around Silverton.

The next stops on the tour are already being scheduled.

Last winter, I spent a few trips backcountry skiing on my metal edges and with my aluminum poles past an old claim in La Plata Canyon. There, a San Diego company is currently looking to resurrect the Idaho gold mine.

Early this spring, I rode my aluminum mountain bike, dressed with all sort of cro-moly bits, on a favorite desert singletrack not far from here. That once “secret” trail is now hidden behind a locked gate, where a uranium prospector has staked his claim and is currently working to pull yellowcake from the earth. A couple dozen miles away (and not far from Uravan), efforts are under way to build another uranium mill.

And during the months of April and May, I rode my titanium road bike past a variety of locations around Silverton, where the lure of shiny metals is attracting dozens of prospectors and several large companies on the hunt for gold and silver.

Throughout these trips, that old codger’s voice – may he be happily drowning in a barrel of bourbon in Purgatory – has always sounded. Considering that old message and titanium’s happy place in my current life, I have started to come to grips with mining.

But the past also has lessons to share. Four generations of dead rivers, lung cancer and birth defects are not good arguments for revisiting our “historic legacy.” The dirty circle has to end somewhere.

True, I’m not about to give up my metals addiction. But I won’t ever watch my daughter look out on a pile of tailings just as the wind begins to blow.

– Will Sands