There are times when I’ll be looking out the window while driving and see a scene and it gets stuck in my head. Stuck enough that when I get home I think about the light, colors, composition, how the scene looked. My mind then focuses on how it might look when I see it again, is it a good image on its own, was it the weather, was it the composition, would I get a ticket for pulling over? My mind spirals endlessly and makes me a little crazy, but I’ve learned the only way to get it out of my head is to go back and make an image. Chances are if this sound familiar then you probably own a camera, possibly have a photography website and tell your friend you’re a photographer…
Anyways I’d like to welcome you to one of these moments I had on my drive back from St. Louis. More specifically, on a ride back from Leadville, Colorado while I was sitting squeezed between my aunt and uncle in the back of my fathers Lexus. From inside the comfortable car I saw this geometric building whose window’s warm light juxtaposed the dark low hanging clouds that shrouded Mt. Democrat. The light was just starting to fade and the moody weather started to blow snow in the air and all I could think was this utilitarian, metal covered structure looked so alien in the ruggled mountains at 11,000ft. Fremont Pass is a harsh place where winter stays for a while and the cold can inhibit even the hardiest of plants and animals. Something so anthropocene, extracting raw materials in a place so incompatible with human homeostasis.
Being so consumed by this weird structure left by the past, I went out the next evening with my tripod and kit. Spring in the Colorado mountains can be quite unpredictable with sun one hour and a snowy blizzard the other, but this evening it was still. Not a gust of wind and quiet enough to hear every little creature and crunch of footsteps. That evening I made some images that I’m really happy with (below), met a curious fox investigating my tripod, and… got even more consumed by what I saw. Not only the physical juxtaposition of nature and anthropocene but of not knowing how or why this structure was here. So that why I’m writing this, to share the context of this image and to try and explain why taking the image wasn’t enough this time.
Storke Shaft Headframe near Leadville CO, 2021. Canon 7D MarkII with Canon 70-200mm F2.8 USM
The Storke Shafter in 1991. Credit: Mike and Pat Kaas
It had been about 5 years since I made the trip from Copper Mountain to Leadville and at the time I don’t recall being as disturbed by the infrastructure on Fremont Pass as I was this May. Now it’s ugly, but when the mine was in full operation between 1924 to 1980 it was the largest producer of molybdenum in the world. It was said that for a while it supplied three fourths of the worlds molybdenum which is an ore used primarily for metallurgy. But what was the building I photographed?
It took some time to track down what it was actually called, but the map below is the Climax Mine area and Fremont Pass. The “U” shaped turn in the road is where the intriguing structure is located and It turns out that the building is the headframe of the Storke Shaft. This deep hole was the entrance to the underground mining operation. There was actually many more buildings on this side of the pass before 2003 when everything but the headframe was take out, as you can see from the picture on the right.
From the map one can immediately see the impact of this mining operation. When coming up from Copper the first thing you see is a dam that holds back the toxic tailing pond which was designated a Superfund Site by the EPA in the 1980s. The white spot in the middle is the open pit operation that was conducted after the underground operation was deemed too expensive. In that area is the mill where much of the ore is processed. It is all an interesting sight one that can be interpreted as either an amazing human feat or a travesty but either way this is what we have currently. For more information about the history of the Climax Mine and pictures of what this place used to look like visit this Link. It is a great short summary put together by the Leadville Mining District and National Mining Hall of Fame.
So how do I feel now? Well it’s mostly out of my head, at least for the moment. The one thing I know is that I am going to go back with a couple rolls of Portra 400 with my Pentax and take images of all the infrastructure and buildings here at dusk like the image of the Storke Shaft. I think I may try and shoot both digital and film but the idea I want to come across is the intrusion of this human built infrastructure in such an inhospitable place. The utilitarian buildings, all matching, may make for a really interesting series of images ones that could be used to communicate what went on near Leadville, Colorado.