Newmont Mining is going full steam ahead with construction of the Long Canyon Mine and with over 2,000 applicants for fewer the 200 jobs initially advertised it is a very popular project.
According to sources in the company Newmont has already begun heavy construction at the mine site. The full steam ahead work is perhaps the best indicator that the appeal from the Goshute tribe is being given little consideration.
Last month the Goshute Tribe of Ibapah appealed the BLM decision to permit construction of the Long Canyon Mine.
According to a press release from the Goshutes the appeal asks the courts to reject the BLM finding that there are no significant archaeological finds within the project.
The massive open-pit mine would permanently destroy or remove thousands of Tribal cultural resources.
“The Long Canyon Mine area is a vitally important part of our cultural history and its destruction will erase a critical part of who we are as a people,” said Zelda Johnny, a Tribal Cultural Monitor and Tribal Council Vice-Chair.
The 45-page Tribal appeal is supported by documents showing the BLM refused to share known information about Tribal cultural items in the area and that the BLM insisted the Tribe waive legal claims in order to have access to the BLM’s Tribal information.
However mine supporters have long pointed out that the mine site is far from the pristine land that time forgot.
The Pequop Mountains have been almost continually crossed ever since the first paleo-Indians arrived in Nevada while many passed through no one stayed. There are signs of ancient hearths and hunting camps but there is little else. Unlike other archaeological sites there are no petroglyphs, no there signs of art or even agriculture. A few pottery shards have been discovered but not in great supply and most without archaeological context.
There could be a very good reason for the dearth of artifacts. If there were any they may have already been taken.
The pass in the Pequops was not only a thoroughfare for Indians but also for whites. Tow major highways and a transcontinental railroad cross or crossed through the torture mine site, not to mention five major wagon trails.
In other words the Long Canyon mine site has been blasted, dug into and picked over by legions of builders, railroad workers and just folks passing through for 150 years. If anything of historical significance was to be found it probably already was.
In fact it was the discovery of gold in the Pequops was a surprise because the area had been so thoroughly explored.
Strong hints of gold in the Pequop mountains were found in the late 1990’s. However about the same time serious exploration was suspended when the price of gold crashed from over $1,000 an ounce to under $300.All Exploration projects were put on indefinite hold as the mining industry struggled to stay afloat.
That moratorium on exploration lasted a little over a decade when the market began to rebound and small independent mining operations began to look again for gold, hoping that they would find something that the big boys over looked.
That risk paid off in spades in the Pequop Mountains with the efforts of Fronteer Gold.
Literally a mountain of gold ore lies in the once long over looked Pequop Range now in advanced exploration.
Estimated to need 500 workers during construction and 250 miners once operations are ready, the Long Canyon mine could add at least 1,000 people to the area and that may be just the tip of a gold boom in eastern Elko County.
“We think this could have as much potential as the Carlin Trend,” Geologist Moira Smith said four years previous. “It is truly remarkable.”
In addition to having ‘smoking hot’ ore, the area is a stones throw from Interstate 80, has no endangered species living anywhere near it and does not have any significant archaeological sites located on it.
Like the geologists the recent past, ancient Native Americans also apparently ignored Long Canyon.
Ignored no longer, the mine has the potential to radically alter the economy and the lives of eastern Nevada, residents of Wendover and Wells. The two cities who once looked with jealously at the boom in Elko and Carlin could soon have a mine to call their own.