Tungsten mine closure marks end of era for California town

BISHOP, Calif. - Tom Crosby kicks at the gravel at the entrance to the last tungsten mine in America, mining memories of the men who came before him.

There was his grandfather, who hauled ore that would be used to make weapons for war, and then his father, who helped chart the location of the rock.

Crosby followed their footsteps to the "mine in the sky" that sits at 8,000 feet in the eastern Sierra Nevada, set in a glacial valley of rising rock and falling stones. But Crosby came not to mine it. Rather, he came to close it, marking the end of an era for this town of 3,900.

"It's more than just a mine. People just didn't work here. They lived around here. They had families around here," said Crosby, 49, an environmental engineer and geologist. "Now, it's all but gone. People moved away. The families have grown up. The only thing left really is the memories."

Once the largest tungsten producer in the United States, the mine, which opened in 1916, produced millions of tons of the metal that revolutionized the high-speed-tool industry because of its resistance to corrosion. It was also used in light-bulb filaments.

During World War II, it became critical to the war effort when it was used to make armor plating on tanks and tips of armor-piercing bullets because of its durability and resistance to high temperatures.

Today, the mine has fallen victim to cheap labor in China, the world's leading producer of tungsten, which mines and sells it at less than half the cost of the California mine.

"We just can't compete with that," said Jonathan Henry, general manager of the mine owned by Avocet Tungsten of Canada.

The mine had two temporary closures. In 1982, Union Carbide closed it after tungsten prices fell. The mine was reopened in 1983 when it was bought by Umetco. It closed in 1990 and was reopened partially when Avocet bought 50 percent of the mine in 1993.

The mine, which stopped production in April, is expected to close forever by the end of the year. The environmental cleanup is scheduled to be completed by November 2001.

"I think we saw it coming. No mine lasts forever," said Ray Gray, 72, who worked at the mine from 1954 to 1982. "It had a good run."

For the residents of Bishop, the closure of the mine brings to an end a unique story of a mine known both for its natural beauty and brutality.

Unlike open-pit mining, the work at the Bishop mine took place inside the mountain, leaving the outside surroundings virtually intact except for a few buildings and switchback roads.

Tungsten does not exist naturally in metal form. The ore had to be hauled out first by hand and later on rail cars and then milled into metal.

But because of the elevation of the mine, supplies and workers were brought in first on mule carts and later in cars and buses that traversed miles of narrow, winding roads. Small mining camps were opened at the mine's base camp at 8,000 feet and at 12,000 feet. But heavy snow and rain caused avalanches and rockslides that trapped the workers for months or buried the camps in debris.

With mine workers bringing their families with them, the mining camp was moved to Round Valley, sandwiched between two mountain ranges.

A miner's wife named the settlement Rovana for Round Valley and Vanadium Mining Co., the company that owned the mine - a village that exists today as a microscopic suburb of Bishop.

Sitting inside the mining office recently, a few men representing three mining generations recalled the mine's history.

"Do you remember riding up those roads in the snow?" asks Ray Kurtak, 80, who worked at the mine's mill from 1954 to 1982.

The men laughed. Buses, they explained, were the preferred transportation to and from the mine, and the trips were harrowing in the snow. "One guy sat at the back of the bus with his hand on the emergency exit handle, so everybody could jump out if the bus started to slide on the ice," Gray said.

The emergency escape was actually used in the 1950s when a bus began to slide off the road. Everyone escaped uninjured.

Many of their stories are chronicled in the book "Mine in the Sky," written by Kurtak's son, Joe Kurtak, who grew up in the mining village.

Standing in front of the mine, Crosby enjoyed a cold wind generated by the miles of tunnels.

"The quiet is kind of eerie," Crosby said. "I can still remember all the noise. Now, it's kind of like a ghost town."