There’s Still Plenty of Gold--in County’s Hills : But the precious metal is wrapped in today’s red tape--the kind effectively cut through by big money, big business.

Images of the Gold Rush of the 1840s are full of hearty, fearless prospectors--men with auburn beards who dropped everything, grabbed a pickax, hooked the cart to the mule and headed for the California hills looking to strike it rich.

If a guy could muster the courage to survive the wilds and his competition, he had a shot at staking some valuable claims. While dangerous, it was also quite simple. Find the ore, blow up the mountain.

Those days are certainly gone. The West is no longer empty. We live in a developed world.

But, as staff writer Jeff Meyers discovers, the hills around us still have plenty of gold in them. It’s just that now, the gold rock is wrapped in red tape--red tape most effectively cut through by big money, persistence and, quite sensibly, a bonded capacity to meet stringent environmental codes. Today, it takes a whole lot more than crude implements and pocket change to mine the valuable mineral. It usually takes a large corporation.

Still, the rare individualist--willing to pick his way through a maze of government regulation en route to fulfilling a dream--lurks.

Meyers found one: Lockwood Valley resident Tony Intiso, who is still waiting to reap the full benefits of a gold mine shaft he discovered about 25 years ago in Frazier Mountain. Intiso has conducted some very promising assay reports on his ore samples.

Intiso and other modern-day 49ers face what seem insurmountable odds. Meyers was struck by Intiso’s pluck, however, and the commitment he has shown in betting his family’s resources on this golden dream.

“Anyone who cares enough to become a gold miner could be sitting on millions of dollars of ore,” Meyers said. “But the reality is that they probably can’t get to it.”

Intiso, pick in hand, knows very well how he spent his time in 1993.

But do you remember how you spent yours?

As the year winds down, freelance writers Josef Woodard and Frances Halpern take a look back at musical and literary happenings in Ventura County. It was, indeed, a busy year.

From classical offerings on both sides of the Conejo Grade to new Ventura jazz venues to what Woodard describes as the “gonzo opera” of local musician Jeff Kaiser, the county hit its musical stride in 1993.

Halpern fondly recalls the many distinguished writers who came to visit and read over the past year, and all the classes and conferences in which the wanna-bes among us participated.

Both Woodard and Halpern look forward to an equally bright 1994 in their respective areas.

We’d like to extend that same wish to you.