Battle over the Red Lady

By Frederic Golden

A Colorado Shangri-la in a classic struggle against development

A town is saved not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it.

--Henry David Thoreau

It has no nearby swamps, and especially since the ski runs and condos began going up, the forests can hardly be called primeval. But Crested Butte, Colo. (pop. 1,200), has no shortage of righteous men, or women. Largely young and well educated, many of them exiles from the crowded East, they are determined to preserve their town's picture-book alpine charm. Tucked away in a sparsely settled 8,885-ft.-high valley, 25 miles south of Aspen as the eagle flies (but 217 miles by paved mountain roads), Crested Butte is an exurbanite's spiritual El Dorado: a 19th century mining town lovingly restored down to the last curlicues on its old gingerbread houses. It sits amid meadows, streams and mountains that seem to have been made for everything from hiking to hang gliding, from hooking a robust trout to shooting the rapids on a raft or glimpsing a rare bighorn sheep.

But this Rockies retreat has another resource, and its presence has touched off a classic preservation-vs.-progress scrap. The issue: should the interests of a small group, righteous as its cause may be, prevail over other interests that may affect the well-being of far more people, even that of the whole country? The resource is molybdenum (moly, as friend and foe both call it), a strategic metal used not only to strengthen steel but to make fertilizer, rubber, lubricants, plastics and paints. Just three miles from Crested Butte's Main Street, deep inside 12,414-ft. Mount Emmons, lies buried what may be one of the richest molybdenum deposits in the world, worth some $4 billion.

Mount Emmons, known locally as the Red Lady because of its blushing rouge color, is partly within a public preserve managed by the Forest Service. In 1977, under U.S. mining laws dating back to the gold and silver booms of the late 19th century, AMAX (formerly American Metal Climax Inc.), the world's largest molybdenum producer, began staking claims to the deposits, as well as buying some of the privately held land outright. Things have not been the same in Crested Butte since. AMAX went to unusual lengths to calm local fears, even hiring psychologists to study the social effects of the influx of an estimated 1,500 workers and their families into the area. Even so, Crested Butte decided it had to stop the earthmovers.

The leader of the opposition is Crested Butte's paraplegic mayor, an emigre from Aspen who likes to style himself as simply W (no period) Mitchell. (He was born William John Schiff III in Philadelphia, but adopted his stepfather's name.) For the past four years, the wheelchair-bound Mitchell, 38, who was badly burned in a motorcycle accident ten years ago and paralyzed in a plane crash four years later, has tirelessly attacked AMAX and questioned its assurances that the mine will do no harm. Noting that up to 20,000 tons of ore will be removed every day for 20 or 30 years, Mitchell forecasts an onslaught of people, noise, grit and crime. Says he: "There are messes all over the West in the name of growth. Big mining companies have no divine right to mine and tear up a community. They'd rape us and leave us bleeding."

Last week Mitchell lost a key skirmish when a state judge prohibited the town from enforcing a local ordinance that could have stopped AMAX from doing exploratory drilling on the ground that it would endanger the water supply. Mitchell vows to fight on. Others acknowledge that Crested Butte has already changed. One factor: the development near by of a controversial ski resort by former Secretary of the Army Howard ("Bo") Callaway. Land values have spiraled; lots start at $40,000. Ramshackle old houses go for $90,000 or more. Says Mike Taylor, owner of a steel-fabricating shop: "We've built a Shangri-la for the rich."

Some residents, including ex-New Yorker Gil Hersch, editor of the weekly Crested Butte Chronicle, are coming around to the belief that the mine is inevitable, and that perhaps the best strategy would be to negotiate as many concessions from AMAX as possible. Says he: "It could be a state-of-the-art operation." With AMAX determined to press ahead, that may be the best that Mayor Mitchell can hope for. --By Frederic Golden. Reported by Richard Woodbury/Crested Butte

With reporting by Richard Woodbury

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