Rio Tinto holdenminecleanup.com
Rio Tinto holdenminecleanup.com
Historic photos take from the Holden Mine and Railroad Creek Valley between 1938 - 1957.
Rio Tinto holdenminecleanup.com
Rio Tinto holdenminecleanup.com
Village History: At the height of operations, Holden was a mining village housing over 600 people, including the mine workers’ families. After 19 years of production the mine became financially unprofitable, the price of copper dropped lower than the cost of extraction and the mine closed. The mine and village were abandoned. After the closing in 1957 over 100 mining homes were demolished and burned by the U.S. Forest Service as a prevention method against wildfires. In 1960 Howe Sound Co. sold the mine and village to the Lutheran Bible Institute. With start-up funding from several national Lutheran youth groups and hard working volunteers, the non-profit Holden Village, Inc. was formed and the village was renovated into a retreat center. Although the village center and dormitory buildings were restored and maintained, the mine and mine tailing piles were left to decay in the fashion in which they had been dumped in the 1940's and 1950's. Contamination and environmental impact from the mine and mine tailing piles prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to declare the Holden mine as a Superfund site in the late 1980’s. The EPA identified Rio Tinto, one of the worlds largest mining companies, who through acquisition has acquired mining rights to the Holden mine, as the responsible party for the cleanup of the Holden mine. 23