St Elmo Colorado

[tamrock]

My daughter and I took a drive in the mountains yesterday to enjoy the fall season. These are from a visit to an old mining town called Saint Elmo. The Mary Murphy mine was the big operator in this region and ran continuously from 1870 to 1925, and produced 220 thousand ounces of gold in it's time. When I lived up in this area there were some mining folks who made an effort to reopen the mine in around 1978 or early 80's and I recall they even employed some folks from Buena Vista I knew. It didn't last as they had so much permitting and environmental impact issues to get through before they could operate and mine. All that red tape made it impossible to ever once again mine the riches of this deposit.

 

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[Old Dude]

I am surprised some rich company hasn't figured out a way to bypass the laws and take what's left there.

 

[tamrock]

I am surprised some rich company hasn't figured out a way to bypass the laws and take what's left there.

I don't know that one ODP. I'm sure the cost to reopen a mine that's been idle for 90 years is most likely the reason no one has expressed much interest in going after anything in it. The old timer's did make a mess of things by dumping the mill tailings in the steam bed.

 

[BosnMate]

Sure is a pretty fall in that country.

 

[kcm]

BEAUTIFUL pics!!

What's sad is, even though most modern miners employ much safer methods than back then, the gov't still want to ensure that there will be adequate funds to bring the mine back to pre-mining quality once they're finished. Is called "Reclamation", and they really go overboard on it! Instead of ensuring that the miners, themselves will do the work, they make the miners have to come up with what it would cost someone else to come in at a later time and do it! All different equipment, all different crew, and bringing it back to standards that the politicians think it should be at. Really stalls/stops a lot of potential careers.