Donald Duncan, a Canadian native, attended the Haileybury School of Mines in Ontario, Canada, and then worked on mining operations in Canada and Arizona before coming to Nevada to work in the Cortez Gold Mines, where he witnessed many technological advances in mining. Later in his career Duncan would work for the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Salt Lake City. Duncan was interviewed by Victoria Ford in 1999. There’s been a phenomenal growth in both the size of gold deposits and the scale of operations since the beginning of Nevada’s gold boom starting in the 1960s. Back in those days, I made remarks more often than once, certainly, that gold operations would never attain the size of copper mines. Well, how wrong I was! Some of the current gold operations, particularly the breccia stock work and Carlin types, are at least equal in scope to the large porphyry copper projects. For instance, the Goldstrike Mine owned by Barrick is mining at the rate of 150 million tons per year. Their pit will exceed 1500 feet in depth, and this certainly compares with some of the largest of the copper mines. Another major change has been in the size of the surface mining equipment, some of which has increased as much as tenfold. In addition to the economies derived from larger equipment, great strides have been made in both drilling and blasting techniques, instrumentation, and new processing methods. On the other side of the coin, projects now often have to be content with years of permitting. When politics and environmental groups enter the picture, some projects never get off the ground. This has taken a severe toll on the domestic mining industry. The current Washington administration has done everything possible to destroy the mining industry. This is a dramatic change over the past. |