Drying Up Leadville

Out of the ore-seamed mountains around Leadville, Colo, men hacked millions of dollars of quick wealth for almost two generations. Leadville's ramshackle streets were lined with saloons, dance halls, "wine theaters," brothels. Lucky miners became millionaires overnight, tossed silver dollars at stage girlies in red tights, brawled, gambled, built gingerbread palaces on the hill. Leadville had its ups & downs -- gold in the '60s ; silver-rich carbonate ores that made the Carbonate Kings in the '70s; the Little Johnny and other gold-mine workings in the '90s. By 1933, however, most of the zinc, lead and silver mines were shut down--flooded. Big companies spent $3 million fighting the seeping water, finally gave up.

Last week, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes gave the go-ahead for a $1,400,000 drain project over three miles long, which he hopes will eventually free $200 million of water-covered zinc-lead and manganese ores.* The tunnels will tap 80 large workings, some 700 smaller mines and claims, and will drain off most of the ten billion gallons of water at a rate of nearly nine million gallons a day.

The scheme is not new. Denver's hard-driving Robert S. Palmer, 41-year-old mining association secretary, has been urging it for years. But the cost was only one barrier. The tunnel would interlace through 600 miles of underground workings, involving 2,000 patented claims, with heirs spread from Atlanta to China. RFC took one look at the legal snares, refused funds. Then the Bureau of Mines, anxious to increase zinc production, took an interest. (Zinc is used in brass cartridges; every big bomber carries 500 pounds of it.) As a war measure, Congress last spring gave Ickes the $1,400,000 he needed for the tunneling. Owners gave consent for the tunnel's right-of-way. Hard-boiled Harold Ickes, once he had the money, didn't wait "for legal unravelings: he condemned a right-of-way, promised to argue about damage claims later. To avoid a speculator's field holiday, he signed an order suspending further land sales in the area. Then last week Ickes prepared to call for bids for the tunnels.

Leadville is on the up, in any case. Thirteen miles away, at Climax, the world's largest molybdenum mine is booming; Leadville's streets are jampacked. Reopening of the old flooded zinc mines on Leadville's famed four rich ore hills may keep Leadville's up-&-down prosperity curve steadily climbing.

* For other news of Honest Harold, see p. 39

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