Haunted at Timberline Home

The Summitville gold mine, at 11,500 feet, saw three booms: in 1879, in the 1890's, and again in the 1930's. As late as 1976 someone found a 114-pound boulder by the side of the road containing $350,000 worth of gold. The Anaconda Copper Company owns the site now, and continues to strip mine and destroy the area environmentally. Visiting Summitville is a contrast between the old and the new: a well-preserved pioneer mining camp that supported gold mining until World War II now gives way to a modern, far more destructive mining operation capable of tearing apart an entire mountain in only a matter of years. The area is on the EPA's list of Superfund sites, scheduled for clean-up in the near future. When the photos below were taken, the photographer intentionally obscured the destructive horror of the modern mining operation in the background to the south.