South Fork & Summitville, CO (7/19/2019)

Gold was first discovered in the San Juans in 1860, but the Ute Tribe owned the land by virtue of treaty with the U.S. and they promptly ran the prospectors off their land.  In 1871, prospectors returned and found gold on South Mountain, about 18 miles from South Fork.  A new treaty with the Utes allowed miners to stay, as the Utes ceded 4 million acres in exchange for $25,000 per year.  (I wonder how long the payment was made.)  The town of Summitville sprang up and some 250 claims were filed by 1885.  However, the gold played out soon after and the place was abandoned.  Over the years, other attempts were made to mine other minerals, but none was particularly successful.

In 1984, a Canadian company acquired more than 1200 acres at the summit of South Mountain and began strip mining, using the cyanide drip system to extract minute quantities of gold from crushed ore.  This system is commonly used today in Nevada and elsewhere, but there were problems at Summitville.  Some of the cyanide, along with heavy metals naturally in the rock there, were carried into the Alamosa River.  Local streams had always been naturally acidic, but the rock exposed by strip mining increased the contaminated runoff significantly.

The owners attempted to remediate the damage, but the settlement pond they created suffered leaks.  Finally, the company declared bankrupcy and abandoned the site, leaving the U.S. government to deal with it.  The site was declared a "superfund" emergency in 1994.  Since then, more than $250 million has been spent cleaning up and building a treatment facility and new settlement pond.  The EPA sued the company and was awarded $20 million, but the company sued the EPA for using invalid procedures in their suit and recovered $12 million.  Easy to calculate how much we taxpayers have contributed to the effort.  Now the remediation is being handed off to the state of Colorado for the on-going process at a cost of about $2 million per year.

I drove to Summitville to see firsthand what we had paid for, to see the old buildings and to enjoy a beautiful drive up the mountain.  At the 11,500 foot summit, there was still snow on the ground.

Here is the facility built to treat runoff from the strip mine seen at the summit.  Next, the pond where treated water is stored until metallic element settle to the bottom.  The sludge is removed daily and trucked to a "safe" landfill.  There is no projected end for this operation.

 Before leaving for home the next day, there was one last sunset I want to share with you.

Creede Area, CO (7/18/2019)

One of the major attractions to Creede is the Bachelor Loop, a 17 mile drive through the mountains above town that has about 15 historic locations marked for visitors.  The marked locations are mostly mines, including those at Bachelor City.  This ghost town had a population of 1200 at its peak, but nothing is left today but a few foundations.  In its heyday, it had twelve saloons, five grocery stores, four hotels, several restaurants, two barber shops, two bakeries and one church.

The loop follows West Willow Creek, a beautiful stream with many waterfalls and cascades as it rushes down the mountain to join the Rio Grande.  Some of the mining sites appear to have been active recently, while others have little to see.  One, the Last Chance Mine, is a mining museum of sorts, mostly a tourist trap.  Coming out of the mountains, some of the meadows overlooking Creede were covered with wildflowers.

About twenty miles north of Creede, I stopped at North Clear Creek Falls, although I had been there before some years ago.  There is also a South Clear Creek Falls, but I skipped it this time and started back toward South Fork.

The Rio Grande begins near here and one can easily step across the start of this major river.  There are several reservoirs made for irrigation of local ranches and farms.  The fields in many places are covered with wildflowers.  Lots of side roads lead off into wilderness and I drove one for about 25 miles where it ended near the mountain top, a hiking trail the only way to continue.

As I came back down the mountain, a young deer on the road was frightened by my approach and ran down into the valley and "hid" in a patch of plants.  A man in a truck stopped me to report he had seen a moose there about a half hour earlier.  I knew it was good habitat for moose, bit I still haven't seen one there.

PS I've just learned that a woman died driving an ATV over Corkscrew Gulch only hours after I was there.  Here is a link to the story, which also includes a video of a portion of the trail.  I don't know why, but I've never videoed that particular trail..  I'll have to do that some day.

Corkscrew Gulch