Ski the Superfund
Posted: November 26th, 2008 | Filed under: Mount of the Holy Cross |
Gilman, the nearest town to the Mount of the Holy Cross, was established in 1886 as a base for work in the Eagle Mine. The mining operation produced gold, silver, copper, zinc, and lead for almost 100 years, until the EPA closed the site and the town in 1984, designating the whole area a Superfund site for water poisoning, fish kills, and surface contaminants. The Eagle River in particular was a mess, and continues to offer problems (all downstream from Vail ski resort though).
Thomas Moran’s famous painting of the Mount of the Holy Cross features a view up a stream to see the Cross in the background. This image reflects no actual site, it’s a fiction. But if this were an actual stream it would certainly not be fit to fish in today.
In 1988, while on a family camping trip through Colorado, I first learned of Gilman as the town that had a big “Town for Sale” sign out front. We stopped to marvel and take pictures before moving along on our way to Aspen or something. Back in South Carolina, the picture of Gilman on the cliff would become a favorite part of the vacation slideshow. Something resonated there about the West, a place so big you could buy a whole town.
Looking back now, I wonder how one could even sell a site that was closed by the EPA. The seller and owner at the time was entertainment giant Viacom - the company we have to thank for Total Request Live, Spongebob Squarepants, and South Park. (Viacom had aquired this toxic gem through its buyout of Paramount. Paramount had once been Gulf and Western. Gulf and Western’s subsidiary New Jersey Zinc ran the Eagle Mine for decades.)
There has been a good deal of cleanup since then, but the town is still closed to access. Only now it’s looking like Gilman and the rest of the Superfund site will be turned into Colorado’s largest new mountain resort development in decades.
Neighboring Vail resorts had purchased the land in 1992 - I presume from Viacom, though I haven’t confirmed this. Plans to develop a new collection of ski runs at the time met with fierce opposition from environmentalists - Vail abandonded the plans after a 1998 series of chairlift fires set by members of the Earth Liberation Front. The land was eventually sold in 2005 to the Ginn Company, who planned again to develop a new golf and ski resort called Battle Mountain, named after the mountain that faces Notch Mountain across the Eagle River.
The Ginn Company, based in the odd Disney town of Celebration, Florida, has developed resorts across the United States and Caribbean Islands. Ginn is currently the subject of a class-action lawsuit by hundreds of real estate investors alleging a Ponzi scheme on Ginn’s part. But that hasn’t stopped the citizens of Minturn, Colorado, Gilman’s northern neighbor, from passing a referendum in favor of annexing Gilman and Battle Mountain, a move Ginn needed them to make in order to ease development plans.
It seems less and less likely that Ginn will follow through with the new development, given that the company has also filed for bankruptcy on behalf of two or three other resorts. Ginn will have to complete the toxic cleanup, and will have to help ensure that increased traffic doesn’t repollute the river. If the resort does come through, the Eagle Valley and the Holy Cross trailhead will see more traffic than it has in a long time. Moran’s imagined treacherous trek will be replaced with a manicured stroll down the back nine.
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