Mining towns not entirely happy with latest boom

CRIPPLE CREEK, COLO. — THIS tiny community nestled on the backside of Pike's Peak revels in its mining heritage.

Tourists are invited to tour underground tunnels, gamble in the Gold Rush and Gold Diggers casinos or view a video at a museum entitled, "The Timeless Art of Gold Extraction." They can shop for trinkets in the stores set up in Victorian houses built during Cripple Creek's mining heyday.

The town is proud of the miners who, starting in the 1890s, dug 10,000 miles of tunnels through the hillsides and extracted $19 million worth of gold.

But when a mining company proposed strip mining the most prominent ridge in the area, Cripple Creek's loyalty was tested.

"It's a very strange position to be in," Mayor Dan Baader said. "Our whole history for 150 years is mining. But look at it," he said, waving his hand at the aspen-covered ridge visible from his kitchen window.

Cripple Creek's dilemma is an increasingly common one in the West, which finds itself in the midst of its biggest mining boom in three decades. Driven by skyrocketing prices in metals, firms are reopening mines or digging in new terrain.

Since 2004, the number of claims filed on federal land has more than doubled. During that time, gold prices have risen from $400 to nearly $900 an ounce. Other minerals have climbed even faster -- copper and molybdenum, an alloy often mined in the Rocky Mountain region, have soared 600% in the last four years. Although no agency tracks mine activity nationwide, experts say the uptick has been remarkable.

"It's China plus India. What you have is one-third of the world's population that all of a sudden decided we want what the Western world has. . . . They've got this vociferous appetite for metals," said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Assn. in Spokane.

Some communities welcome the jobs and cash the boom brings. The mountain city of Leadville, Colo., for example, has cheered the reopening of the long-shuttered Climax mine.

In other areas that have turned to tourism to fuel their economies, the boom has sparked conflict. Environmental groups and towns in northern Arizona stopped one company from digging for uranium near the Grand Canyon. In the mining town turned tourist mecca of Crested Butte, Colo., residents fly Tibetan prayer flags to protest a company's plan to mine a mountain basin that looms over downtown.