The fight to save California public land from a Canadian mining company
I live in a ghost town — once the most lucrative silver mine in California.
For the past five years, I've spent nearly every day rebuilding Cerro Gordo, a long-abandoned boomtown perched high in the Inyo Mountains above Owens Valley. The buildings are collapsing. The roads wash out with every storm. Owens Lake, once full of water, is now a dry, desolate dust bowl.
If anyone understands what's left behind after a gold rush ends, it's me.
But the ghosts here aren't just long-gone miners, they're the consequences of short-term thinking. And now, we're about to summon more of them. This time, it will be on public land that should belong to all of us.
The Bureau of Land Management recently released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement endorsing what amounts to the most permissive plan legally possible for a controversial mining project — just eight miles from Death Valley National Park and three miles from my front door.
The plan would allow K2 Gold, a Canadian mining company, to cut new roads and drill up to 30 sites across one of the last intact stretches of California's high desert — public land. Yours, mine and ours. And under an outdated federal law, it can be torn open, stripped bare and left behind, without a dime paid to the people who actually own it, all in preparation for what they hope will become an open-pit cyanide leach mine.
The BLM claims that this project supports Department of the Interior Secretarial Order 3418 – Unleashing American Energy, and helps 'meet the needs of American citizens.' But that order is about unlocking domestic energy and critical minerals. Gold isn't one.
The U.S. Geological Survey was tasked with identifying critical minerals, and of the 50 they listed in 2022, gold didn't make the cut. It's not needed for national security. It's not about American energy. And with profits flowing to foreign investors, it's hard to see how it meets any real need of American citizens.
The land in question — Conglomerate Mesa — isn't some empty tract of remote desert.
Overlanders see it from Death Valley National Park. Millions of travelers driving Highway 395 through Lone Pine toward Mammoth Lakes or Yosemite see it from the road. Each year, 20,000 hikers on Mt. Whitney look out over this landscape which is currently filled with Joshua trees, ancient bristlecone pines and sacred Indigenous sites. But if this project succeeds, they'll look out on a growing open pit mine, slowly dismantling an entire mountain.
In 2021, an earlier version of this project was halted after overwhelming public opposition. More than 20,000 people submitted comments, and the BLM issued its most restrictive ruling. What changed? Not the land.
Now, the project is being fast-tracked under a new federal directive — Secretarial Order 3418 — to promote domestic resource development. But there's nothing 'domestic' about this.
Thanks to the General Mining Act of 1872, written in the days of pickaxes and prospectors, long before national parks, environmental laws or even statehood in much of the West, mining companies can stake claims and extract hardrock minerals from public lands royalty-free. The law originally applied to 'citizens,' but under modern interpretation, that includes any company incorporated in the U.S. — even if its ownership and profits lie abroad.
That's how foreign firms like K2 Gold, operating through U.S. subsidiaries, can mine our public lands without paying a cent in royalties. According to the Center for American Progress, nine of the 14 gold-producing companies operating in the U.S. are foreign-owned. The Government Accountability Office estimates that closing this royalty loophole could generate up to $800 million annually for the U.S. Treasury.
Every other extractive industry — oil, gas and coal — pays for the resources it takes from public land. Mining doesn't. It's the only nonrenewable industry in the country that still gets a completely free ride.
Meanwhile, communities like mine bear the cost.
The gold K2 is chasing won't benefit Inyo County. It won't fund schools, pave roads or create long-term jobs. It will flow to investors in Vancouver. And what's left behind — scarred land, abandoned roads and a hurting economy — will stay right here.
Tourism — not mining — is the economic backbone of this region. Inyo County is home to Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48, and serves as a gateway to Death Valley National Park. Conglomerate Mesa sits between them, visible to hikers, travelers and overlanders who sustain local businesses.
If this mine moves forward, that future disappears. Hikers and photographers won't return to roads lined with fences and machinery, and the businesses they once supported will vanish, too.
Proponents say it's 'just exploration,' but that's like calling the first swings of an axe 'just pruning.' Once roads are carved and drills begin, the damage is real and permanent.
I've seen what mining leaves behind because I live among its ruins. Mining may be part of California's past, but it doesn't have to define its future, and the good news is that we can do something about it.
Right now, the BLM is accepting public comments on its draft environmental review. In 2021, more than 20,000 people spoke out — and it worked. The BLM issued the most restrictive ruling possible. That can happen once again, but it takes action.
Brent Underwood is the owner and caretaker of Cerro Gordo, a historic 19th-century mining town in the Inyo Mountains. He has lived there full-time since 2020, working to preserve its history and shared his story in his book Ghost Town Living .
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