Company wants to reroute U.S. 95 to mine near Goldfield

The main road connecting Las Vegas and Reno could be rerouted near the central Nevada town of Goldfield to make way for something older than the Silver State itself: a mining boom.

An Arizona-based company wants to dig for gold beneath U.S. Highway 95 just outside the Esmeralda County seat, 190 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The project would require International Minerals to move roughly three miles of the two-lane road, creating a gentle curve out of what is now a straightaway.

The gold deposit under the highway was identified decades ago, but digging it up was considered too costly and complicated.

A sharp rise in gold prices has changed that equation, said Kevin Keating, general manager of Nevada operations for International Minerals.

Gold was selling for $275 an ounce in December 2001. Today the price is hovering around $1,600 an ounce.

Dominic Pappalardo moved to Goldfield in 1997 and now serves on the three-member Esmeralda County Commission. He said he and his neighbors can't wait to see "a nice, big open pit" at the edge of their long-faded town.

"We're tickled to death," Pappalardo said. "In central Nevada, mining and ranching is what we are. We can't wait for this to come on line."

Keating said his company has just begun the permitting process for the new mine. The goal is to start digging by 2015.

It looks like the highway will need to be moved no more than a mile to the west of where it is now, but test drilling is now under way to better define the boundaries of the ore deposit, Keating said.

"Obviously we don't want to move the highway and find out we have to move it again."

Scott Magruder, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation, said he doesn't know of another mining project in Nevada that required the relocation of a road as significant as U.S. 95.

"I think it would be unique. It's definitely unusual," he said.

It's also expensive. To build a new stretch of two-lane highway to state and federal standards would cost at least $1 million a mile, Magruder said.

The mining company will be responsible for the cost.

There has been talk in the past of rerouting state Route 342 to reach a mineral deposit south of Virginia City, but that idea has run into stiff opposition from residents of the area.

There appears to be no such resistance in Esmeralda County, which has seen more busts than booms on its way to becoming Nevada's least populous county.

"It's been talked about here for 15 years," Pappalardo said of mining beneath the highway. "People have said, 'Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.'

"We've been waiting for this for a long time."

International Minerals currently operates a mine in Peru that ranks as the fifth largest producer of silver in the world. The Scottsdale, Ariz., company also owns undeveloped mining property near Battle Mountain.

Keating said International Minerals has plans for a second open-pit gold mine near Goldfield. The two pits would share a common heap-leach processing facility and employ about 100 people, he said.

Both projects are being developed by Metallic Goldfield Inc., a subsidiary of International Minerals, which controls about 80 percent of the Goldfield mining district.

Keating said the two mines are expected to produce a combined 800,000 ounces of gold over a 10-year life span.

He said there is "a lot of potential" for expansion, since the two pits will cover just a small fraction of the 32-square-mile area now controlled by the company.

Central Nevada is in the midst of an economic resurgence, thanks to a spate of mining and renewable energy exploration.

In the past year, the tiny Esmeralda County town of Silver Peak has filled to overflowing with people drawn to jobs at the nation's only lithium mine and at a nearby gold and silver operation that recently started back up, Pappalardo said.

In addition to the two new open-pit mines planned near Goldfield, a third mining operation is being considered in the mountains about 30 miles north of town. That project also might require a stretch of U.S. 95 to be moved.

Joni Eastley is a county commissioner and longtime resident in nearby Nye County, where the recent influx of mining and green-energy projects is bringing a much-needed boost to the county seat of Tonopah.

What the town of about 3,000 people needs now is more houses and apartments, Eastley said.

"We are just in a boom all the way around. We have to find a place to put all these people."

Even a small surge can have a major impact in a place like Esmeralda County, where the 2010 Census counted just 783 residents across an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

With roughly one resident for every four square miles of territory, it might rank as the nation's emptiest county.

The 2010 U.S. Census pegged Goldfield's population at 268.

The past century has not been kind.

"At its height in 1907, it was the largest community in Nevada," said historian and former state archivist Guy Rocha. "Things were going so well that there was talk of moving the state capital to Goldfield."

Then came a bank panic, a flood and a fire that sent the town into a 90-year tailspin.

"Goldfield never had a comeback," Rocha said. "This could be the biggest thing to happen there since the boom times.

"Goldfield has been waiting more than 100 years for something like this."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.