Entrepreneur Envisions a Tourism Gold Mine
With his salesman’s zeal and postgraduate degree, Mike Sweeney hardly fits the part of old-time prospector. But like the crusty sourdoughs who prowled the Mother Lode 150 years ago, Sweeney sees gold in the Sierra foothills.
It’s not just ore he’s after. Although his Sutter Gold Mining Co. hopes to eventually unearth as much as 60 tons of the precious metal from these historic hills, the firm also wants to mine another vintage California commodity--tourism.
In Sweeney’s vision, paying visitors would mingle with working miners in underground tunnels, tour a bustling grinding mill, buy trinkets at a museum shop and, for the right price, even pour their own gold bars. All the buildings would be turn-of-the-century rustic. Sweeney hopes to reap $3 million a year just from visitors to this mix of mine and tourist trap, which won Amador County approval in September.
“I’d ultimately love to have people pay to work underground for a day,” Sweeney said, tugging on a baseball cap as he headed into the firm’s half-mile exploratory tunnel. “It would be just like people paying to go work on a dude ranch.”
Is this the mine of the future? Industry leaders hope so. If Sutter Gold succeeds, it could put a fresh face on an industry hurting for a make-over. The venture also might breathe new life into the string of moribund mines littering the Sierra gold country.
“This mine is a trendsetter statewide, if not nationwide,” said Denise M. Jones, California Mining Assn. executive director. “They melded the historic Gold Rush tourist attraction with a modern gold mine. It’s unique.”
Once a solitary endeavor practiced by Gold Rush prospectors, mining today is big business mostly pursued on a big, messy scale. From the Mother Lode to Montana, abandoned mines have scarred the landscape and left a trail of toxic byproducts, earning the ore gathering industry innumerable foes.
Aware of that legacy, Sutter Gold’s principals have packaged their project as an environmentally friendly neighbor that will generate jobs and give the region a new tourist draw.
But hard digging remains to win public opinion.
The project has divided residents of Amador County, pitting economic growth against concerns about the health and tranquillity of a community dominated these days by bed and breakfast inns, gift shops and several award-winning wineries.
Some naysayers, who derisively dub the venture “Sweeney World theme park,” have filed a lawsuit in a bid to block the company, which has sunk more than $20 million into the project so far.
Foes shudder at the prospect of miners eventually blasting a labyrinth of tunnels to the edge of quaint Amador City and literally underneath the main street of adjacent Sutter Creek, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento. Worried about rattled nerves and trampled hillsides, opponents don’t buy Sweeney’s sales pitch.
“These guys in the mining industry have gotten real smart,” said Lee Goodin, a retired Air Force major who is Amador City’s mayor. “They know how to put the proper spin on this stuff, put a happy face on it to make the mine seem benign. But the history of mining around here demonstrates it’s not.”
Environmental Disasters
To illustrate his point, Goodin need only point to nearby Jackson, where slag heaps of debris from abandoned gold mines sit behind cyclone fences with signs warning of toxic contamination. In Sutter Creek, a subdivision plopped atop a pile of arsenic-tainted tailings from the old Central Eureka Mine prompted both a federal cleanup and a lawsuit by homeowners, who won a $2-million settlement earlier this year.
But many other residents welcome Sutter Gold as an economic boost to an area still smarting from the shutdown of a lumber mill in Jackson. The company promises to fill 120 jobs.
“It almost seems to be a dead heat between those who have registered objections and others who think it will be an economic boon,” said Jerry Budrick, a Sutter Creek cafe owner who lives in Amador City. “Personally, I’m divided. I’m in the restaurant business and think it could help tourism. But living in Amador City, I’m worried we’ll be right in the path of the blasting.”
The fight over Sutter Gold comes during what is perhaps the third gold rush in California history.
In the heyday of the 1850s Gold Rush, more than 1,300 tons of gold were unearthed before the easy pickings petered out. A second revival came with the Great Depression and ended with World War II.
Economic turmoil in the early 1980s fanned the latest boom. Gold prices skyrocketed above $800 an ounce, and California production soared from an anemic 250 pounds in 1980 to a peak of more than 35 tons, or 70,000 pounds, in 1993.
But the Mother Lode, which stretches in a 150-mile spine along the western Sierra, was hardly a factor in the latest rush. This time, the bulk of that bullion came from huge open-pit mines in the Southern California desert.
Burgeoning communities in the Sierra foothills were content to keep gold a colorful relic of the past. The most telling episode came in 1984, when residents in booming El Dorado County--many of them urban refugees from the Bay Area and Los Angeles--voted to ban major mining operations.
Some companies managed to open mines in more remote parts of the Sierra gold country, but only after fierce environmental battles. And few lasted long.
But new federal restrictions on desert mining could give the venerable veins of the Sierra gold country a fresh allure. Although the Mother Lode has been mined heavily for a century, modern techniques can yield precious metals from rock seemingly picked clean.
Sutter Gold hopes to reap profits by revisiting a county that was historically among the most productive in the gold country. And if the mine fails to produce big, promoters still might hit a tourist bonanza among the 2.5 million visitors who wind up California 49 annually in search of Mother Lode lore.
Sweeney envisions a park-like “campus” terraced into the hills with a picnic area, nature walk and gold panning. And, unlike tours in shut-down mines scattered through the Mother Lode, visitors would rub elbows with the modern-day argonauts pulling ore from the ground.
So far, the only tangible sign of the tourist spot is the mine’s new entrance road. Unlike most working mines, which typically bask in an uneasy anonymity, Sutter Gold has built a landscaped portal featuring turn lanes for tour buses, a row of old mine carts, a faux tunnel entrance and gold-flecked rock entry signs.
The company, which is partly owned by U.S. Energy Corp. of Wyoming, originally got a permit in 1993 for the gold mine, but without the tourism element. While searching for more investors and waiting for the gold market to stabilize, Sweeney hatched the new scheme. He also made key alterations he says make the mine a better neighbor.
But foes say that the changes are nothing more than a fig leaf to mask expanded blasting hours and an increased number of big-rig trucks.
Uneasy Neighbors
Some of the harshest sentiments are voiced by residents near an oak-studded valley targeted as a dump for mine debris. A housing subdivision and local high school sit just over a rise.
Clifford “Pete” Linn, who lives a few hundred feet from the disposal site, knows about mining problems. He spent his teens in the mines of Nevada, and saw his father die of miner’s consumption.
Now he worries that winds will send powder-fine silica and other potential carcinogens toward students and residents.
“This is not a mining town,” said Linn, 76. “It hasn’t been since 19-and-41, when they shut it down for the war. And it shouldn’t be now.”
Sweeney insists no one should worry.
The eight to 10 blasts each day will occur up to 6,000 feet underground, he said, and mostly won’t be felt. Leftover tailings will be spread at the disposal site in a state resembling children’s Play-Doh, then covered with topsoil a section at a time over the half-century life of the mine. Said Sweeney: “The cows grazing there now make more dust than we will.”
He also rejected rumor mill claims that Sutter Gold is ready to sell out.
With $20 million already tied up in the project, Sweeney is working with several investment banking firms to secure additional financing and begin construction before summer. Sutter Gold has $2.5 million in the bank, Sweeney said, but must raise up to $15 million more to put the mine into production.
Jones, of the state mining group, said the project looks like a good bet to get support from financial markets. She also doubts Sutter Gold will pull out now that it has county approval.
Sweeney isn’t coy about his motives for attracting tourists. “We’re doing this for a reason--because it’s going to make us money.”
But he also lays claim to broader intentions. “I feel like it’s time for the mining industry to come out of the closet,” Sweeney said. “Let’s address the issues and show the average citizen that mining can be compatible with the environment.”
