Dear HCN,
I remember Leadville during the moly days and it was not a pleasant place — if one had longer hair, drove a Volkswagen and committed the sin of being an ecologist.

I remember AMAX coming to my town, Crested Butte, offering to remove a mountain there, and having to fight them for five very hard years. AMAX tried every trick in the book to destabilize our community. I remember the happy miners, the company regulators, spies and Republicans attempting to destroy a beautiful place. I still get joy out of having helped drive a spike though the heart of that monster.

We who did this were in turn sacrificed for the cocaine culture of skiing and the dark side of the recreational industry — real estate. Boomer culture could not compete with the yuppification of the West.

Sorry, guys, but drunken miners cannot fight the neo-cons any better than the earth muffins can right now. America’s policies are made in Singapore, London and Tokyo by flinty-eyed accountants. When rape-and-run mining became unsalable inside the U.S.A., the money cut and ran for other countries to ruin, leaving labor screwed yet again. Don’t Whine: Organize!
Cordley Coit
Simla, Colorado