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- <text id=89TT2794>
- <title>
- Oct. 23, 1989: American Scene
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Oct. 23, 1989 Is Government Dead?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- AMERICAN SCENE, Page 21
- The Carlin Trend, Nevada
- There's Holes in Them Thar Hills
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A rush for invisible gold leaves visible scars in the mountains
- </p>
- <p>By J. Madeleine Nash
- </p>
- <p> Range after rocky range, the mountains of northern Nevada soar
- above the arid flats. From the air their sagebrush cloaks seem as
- soft as crumpled velvet. Suddenly a series of gigantic holes looms
- below, so huge that if they were the size of anthills, the ore
- trucks and bulldozers scurrying over them would be the smallest of
- ants. "Some people see these holes and think they're hideous,"
- muses John Livermore, a tall, lanky exploration geologist from
- Reno. "Others think how wonderful it is that man can do something
- so big."
- </p>
- <p> The motive for these mountainous excavations: gold. In 1961
- Livermore, then working for the Newmont Mining Corp., made a
- seminal discovery. He looked for gold in the "windows" of a
- geological feature known as the Carlin Trend. Windows occur where
-
- by an uplift, have eroded to expose the rock below. When
- Livermore cut into a window on the Carlin Trend, he hit what
- nongeologists took t
- continue to roam the state, creating new networks of rutted
- roads. Exploration rigs continue to punch holes into the earth
- a thousand feet deep
- ou took care of the land, it would take care of you," he
- sermonizes. "In this world, there is only one crop of land."
-
- Three miles do
- ing hills planted with sagebrush, bitterbrush and crested wheat.
- Freeport-McMoRan, for its part, has hired a wildlife biologist to take
- charge of i ere dug
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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