Fremont County Commissioners Ed Norden and Debbie Bell along with County Manager George Sugars are pictured at the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine where 65 pound buttons of gold and silver had been processed through a high temperature furnace
Fremont County officials toured the Cripple Creek and Victor (CC & V) Gold Mine on June 11th to see the role that Fremont County residents play in producing gold from one of Colorado’s largest companies. Fremont County Commissioners Debbie Bell and Ed Norden along with County Manager George Sugars and County Attorney Brenda Jackson toured the gold mine near Victor on a Monday when gold was being poured from the large smelting furnace.
The tour also traveled to the bottom of the Cresson Mine where ore is loaded into trucks and hauled to the crushing operation. From there the crushed ore is trucked to the top of the Valley Leach Facility where cyanide drips through the mounds of crushed rock, picks up the gold as it leaches through the rock, and is collected into a solution tank for further processing.
The Fremont County tour group also heard details about the CC & V’s plans to seek a permit expansion from the state and Teller County to expand their permit boundary by another 127 acres, add another valley leach facility, and build a new high grade mill near the new leach operation. If approved it would extend gold mining and gold recovery operations at the mine through 2025.
CC & V Mine officials noted that for the first time in the history of the gold mine more employees commute to the mine from Cañon City than from Woodland Park. Company officials said personnel records for May of 2012 showed five more employees reside in Cañon City than in Woodland Park. Of the 466 people employed at CC & V Gold Mine, 110 of them live in Fremont County. The mine provides for a $6.6 million annual payroll to Fremont County employees.
County Attorney Brenda Jackson and Commissioner Debbie Bell stand at the overlook of the CC & V Cresson Mine