It Takes More Than Gold to Strike It Rich : Regulations Can Bar Modern Miners From the Mother Lode

The prospector with the handlebar mustache pulls on a floppy hat and flannel shirt, tucks jeans into worn boots and rides up a cratered road to a mine shaft high in the pine-studded California mountains.

Disappearing into a claustrophobic world of total darkness, he lights a lamp and scans the gashed granite walls. Suddenly, the beam catches a cluster of yellow pinpoints blinking like stardust. Wielding a pick ax, the man chips off a sample and raises it to his practiced eye.

Gold.

Assay reports from samples reveal the richness of the vein: more than a half-ounce of gold per ton in a million-ton ore field, making the find potentially worth tens of millions of dollars.

Another 49er strikes it rich?

Had this discovery occurred anywhere in California in the last century, the prospector undoubtedly would have hit the jackpot. But Tony Intiso found his golden mountain in the waning years of the 20th Century: in a West that is no longer empty, no longer waiting to be gouged and exploded and plundered of its riches. And in an age when prospectors--once considered romantic adventurers--can be as much a threat to our fragile environment as they are plucky entrepreneurs.

Still, Intiso, a 57-year-old grandfather living in Lockwood Valley, stakes his claim. As a result, he finds himself trapped between the dreams of a Gold Rush prospector and the realities of a developed world.

If the fabled 49ers faced hardship and danger during the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, modern-day prospectors such as Intiso must also successfully maneuver governmental regulation and have enough working capital to carry out a relatively high-tech mining operation.

To go for the gold, Intiso acquired a permit from the U.S. Forest Service allowing him to pick around in the abandoned mine shaft on Frazier Mountain, which is in northern Ventura County inside the Los Padres National Forest. He also filed a claim with the county enabling him to keep whatever riches he unearths.

But his efforts to go into full production have hit a wall. Aside from needing $750,000 for start-up costs in mining machinery, Intiso would have to obtain scores of county, state and federal permits. All along the way, he would need the blessings of environmental watchdogs--and that, considering the scale of mining in such a pristine part of the county, could be virtually impossible to get.

To extract large quantities of gold, Intiso would have to blow up the granite and truck the crushed debris through the national forest to an out-of-state refinery, where pure gold would emerge after a process probably involving cyanide, a deadly chemical.

“Generally speaking, I’m pretty negative about mining an area so highly valued for its recreational opportunities,” says Sally Reid, a Sierra Club activist who monitors Los Padres National Forest around Lockwood Valley.

While lode miners like Intiso slash and dynamite the landscape, panners tromp through streams and dredging prospectors come in with big machines that suck up tons of sand and then dump it back into the water. All types have left treacherous legacies, whether in mountainside scars, diverted and depopulated streams, or polluted aquifers. As a result of their damage to the environment, miners are under siege all over the country.

Against All Odds

In northern Ventura County--which has a colorful gold-mining history going back to the early 1800s--U.S. Forest Service officials have banned dredging and recently restricted panning in the Piru Creek area to protect the arroyo southwestern toad, a candidate for federal status as an endangered species.

In Montana, environmentalists are fighting a Canadian company’s attempt to rip $800 million in gold and silver from a mountain near Yellowstone National Park. They fear potential degradation of local air and water quality, disturbance of grizzly bear habitat and increased noise and traffic in Yellowstone Park.

And in Washington, D.C., Congress is reforming the 1872 mining law. Among other changes, the new law would, for the first time, distribute the wealth a bit--after all, mineral riches that remain are now in our collective back yard, whether nearby or in a publicly held national forest. The law would require miners who cash in on public lands to pay a royalty--as much as 8%--to the U.S. Treasury.

Whatever the level of royalty, it represents another “cost” to Intiso, a cost that would erode whatever profit he might realize if he were to pull off what appears to be The Impossible. And it’s a cost that tops off an already daunting list of challenges.

“It’s not unusual to spend 10 years and several million dollars to get all the permits,” says Kathleen Creason of the California Mining Assn. in Sacramento. “One Northern California company invested $3 million over six years but couldn’t get the permits and recently closed its doors.”

Large corporations with deep pockets can counterattack with armies of lawyers, but small gold-mining companies are finding it increasingly difficult to stay in business, says Robert C. Horton, director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines during the Reagan Administration.

And “mom-and-pop operations,” he says, “are almost impossible today.”

Don’t tell that to Intiso, however. He holds onto his dream despite the odds.

Almost every weekend, the burly man with the well-behaved handlebar stash climbs into his 49ers outfit and does grunt work in the mine on Frazier Mountain, an 8,000-foot granite monolith.

Collecting a half-ton ore sample, he will drive all night to an assayer in Arizona. His hope is to discover a “hot spot,” an area so dense in high-quality gold that his mine would become irresistible to investors or a conglomerate intent on buying him out.

If Intiso ever did go into full production, he believes his small operation could remove the ore without eviscerating the mountain. He wouldn’t be strip mining; instead, he would bore directly into the mountain for hundreds of yards, following the vein. Moreover, Intiso would face compliance with the California Surface Mining and Reclamation Act of 1975, which forces miners to reasonably restore the land to its natural state--this, ensured by the posting of bond before mining operations even begin.

Some environmentalists aren’t buying.

“Even a mom-and-pop operation would cause a lot of potential damage,” says Steve Cohn, who works on public land issues at the Sierra Club’s Washington office. “It would be taking hundreds and hundreds of tons of material out of the mine, creating an open wound in the mountain that would be there long after the miner’s gone.”

But this view is by no means uniformly shared.

Mary Ann Showers, environmental specialist with the California Department of Conservation’s Office of Mine Reclamation, bristles at the suggestion that all miners plunder the landscape. “That’s a popular misconception,” she says. “A lot of miners are responsible . . . and act in accordance with the Mine Reclamation Act.”

Progress Is Painfully Slow

Intiso, for now a humble prospector, progresses slowly. As the years pass, he realizes he is running out of time and steam, the back-breaking work taking its toll.

“I’m an adventuresome person and like risks, but I’m slowing down considerably,” says Intiso, who works a day job as chief of the county transportation department’s roads maintenance division in northern Ventura County.

Even if he never strikes pay dirt, Intiso will have a treasure-trove of memories. His discovery of the mine, for instance, has grown into a family legend. “Tony literally fell into it,” says his wife, Sibbie Intiso.

About 25 years ago, shortly after the Intisos and their three children moved to Lockwood Valley, Intiso was hiking a wooded hillside on Frazier Mountain when he accidentally stepped into a large hole. Something about the hole struck him as unnatural. Examining the area, he found narrow-gauge railroad tracks protruding from under a mound of rocky rubble.

Intiso had stumbled upon an abandoned gold mine. Researching its history, he learned that the mine was opened about 100 years ago, remaining in operation until World War II. With the price of gold only $35 an ounce in the Forties (compared with $350-plus today), mining was not very profitable, and most of the gold was lost during the refining process, a problem today’s technology has solved, Intiso says.

Years before Intiso rediscovered the mine, the Forest Service deterred squatters by burning a dozen old miners’ cabins in the area. It also dynamited the entrance to the mine shaft, burying it under tons of rock cobbled 100 feet high. During weekend visits in the early 1970s, Intiso used a shovel and his bare hands to clear out the debris and expose the mouth of the tunnel.

His family usually spent the day with him on the mountain. Even today, Sibbie said: “The grandkids try to con grandpa into taking them to the mine to play on the rocks.”

A short, cheerful woman married to Tony for 34 years, Sibbie is the mom in the operation, frying chicken for weekend picnics at the mine, taking care of the books, making business calls. She also washes her husband’s grimy 49ers clothing, but she had to teach him laundry etiquette.

“No rocks in the pockets,” he says.

Sibbie tolerates her husband’s obsession and even encourages it. She says she doesn’t mind their savings going toward the mine instead of vacations or new furniture for their home, a small ranch house inside a county roads-maintenance yard.

“Sometimes you wonder if (the mine) is worth it,” she says, “but then you say, ‘Yeah, it is. Let’s do it.’ ”

The mine is 6,000 feet above Lockwood Valley, a sprawling mesa dotted with yellow sage. “You get up there in the mountains,” Sibbie says, “and you don’t want to come down.”

For a dozen years after finding the mine, Intiso was so enthralled with the mountain that mining was strictly a hobby, a chance to experience the outdoors. But he even liked burrowing through the cramped mine shaft, sometimes switching off his lamps, sitting in the dark and enjoying the silence.

“It’s almost like going to outer space,” he says. Ruminating during these quiet moments, he often thinks about old-time prospectors coaxing mules and wagons up the treacherous mountain--a long, bone-jarring trip compared to his 30-minute bone-jarring journey in a trusty four-wheel-drive pickup.

Intiso has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, the mine representing only one of his quests for the pot of gold. In the 1970s, he owned a series of businesses, including movie theaters, a restaurant and a wheat farm, each of which went under.

Intiso didn’t really catch gold fever until inflation pushed the price of the metal as high as $850 an ounce in the early 1980s. “Getting serious about mining,” he took college courses in geology and mineralogy and paid for engineering reports, which state that the mine shows “definite signs of being a large producer.” He also tried forming limited partnerships to raise money, without success.

Now he’s fallen into a really big hole, estimating his expenses over the years at $125,000, with his ore samples earning him only about $15,000.

“Mining for gold is not like the movies,” Intiso says ruefully, managing a gallows laugh. “You don’t just strike it rich. Not anymore.”