Red Lady: The Town That Said No to the Mine
Near Crested Butte, Colorado
Look west of town to Mount Emmons, the peak locals call the Red Lady for the reddish glow it takes on at sunset. Hidden beneath it is one of the largest molybdenum deposits in the world, molybdenum being a metal used to harden steel. In the nineteen seventies, geologists working for the American Metal Climax company, known as AMAX, found that deposit, and the company proposed a mine that would have run for decades right above town.
To a community that had just clawed its way out of its own mining past and rebuilt itself around recreation, clean water, and beauty, it felt like an existential threat. The residents fought back with a stubbornness that became legendary. They protested by skiing down and up the mountain dressed in red lace, sequins, and parasols, and they became known as the town that said, hell no.
AMAX abandoned its plans in nineteen eighty one, but the fight dragged on with other companies for decades more. Finally, in twenty twenty four, after nearly fifty years of struggle, a federal mineral withdrawal blocked new mining claims for twenty years on Mount Emmons and the surrounding watersheds, and a separate land deal aims to extinguish the old claims. The Red Lady is now far better protected.
