High price of gold keeps isolated Eureka, NV in business (Barrick)

[NVMojo]

May 15, 2006

EUREKA - The gold at the Ruby Hill Mine is microscopic, specks of specks that amount to a few ounces in every 100 tons of rock carved from the earth. It is embedded hundreds of feet beneath the rocky floor of the high desert, tawny and stubbled with sagebrush, toothy ridges dusted with snow.

In staggered, 10-hour shifts, P.J. Whelchel removes buckets of blasted rock 40 tons at a time, making 100 passes an hour with his diesel-powered loader. He and the other miners will have to dig around the clock for about a year just to remove the 600-foot-deep layer of clay covering the gold.

"I've never seen a nugget myself," said Whelchel. "Maybe one of these days."

But it is unlikely that this 21st-century gold miner ever will.

The visible gold in North America, for the most part, has already been found. What remains are almost literally molecules of gold, buried deep in the Earth.

Whelchel would not be employed here, nor the mine still open, had the price of gold not recently climbed to a 20-year high. Now priced at about $550 per troy ounce, even microns of gold are worth the high cost of extraction.


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http://www.nevadaappeal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060515/NEWS/105150035&template=printart

[LeftyMom]

1. Thanks for posting that

I did notice that the last time I was in Eureka County (last year to bury my grandmother's ashes at the cemetary in Crescent Valley) that things were looking a bit more prosperous. There's a school in Crescent Valley now, and a little county office. Now still, prosperous is a relative thing is a place where there probably arent a dozen houses without wheels in a fifty mile radius, but I really love the people up there for taking such good care of my grandparents the last few years of thier lives, so I'm glad to hear that things are well.

I would hope that care is being taken though because it's just beautiful up there and I'd hate to see that change.