Eagle Mine, Belden facilities

Abstract

Photograph showing the mill and compressor house of the Eagle Mine Belden Facilities located below Gilman in the Eagle River Canyon. Between 1913 and 1917, the Empire Zinc Company, a subsidiary of the New Jersey Zinc Company, acquired most of the larger mines in the Battle Mountain district and consolidated them into the Eagle Mine. Except for the period between 1931 and 1941 when copper-silver ore was intensively mined, the Eagle Mine was primarily a zinc mining operation. The Mine had an underground flotation mill used to treat zinc-lead ore, and the zinc concentrates it extracted were shipped to the company's roasting plant via the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (shown in the photograph). The Eagle Mine closed in 1981 and the company town of Gilman was abandoned. In 1983 it was designated as a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. The massive cleanup, which took fourteen years and was completed in 2001, cost an estimated 70 million dollars ...