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Thursday, January 29, 2004 Cowtown Chronicles
Silver Peak Pop.: about 120 Industry: gold mining, lithium plant, cattle Nearest city: Tonopah (pop. about 2,500), 56 miles northeast Distance to Las Vegas: 210 miles Talk of the town: Caution to the birds who fly over the valley that harbors tiny Silver Peak in the crook of one mountain-shadowed edge. Broad, shining ponds float down there. Don't land: Your feathers and wings will soak up the lithium brine, whose drying crystallization will render you immobile. Fly on, this place won't make you birds happy. When I call the number for Chemetall Foote Corp.'s lithium plant, Peggy Welch answers the phone. She can't think of any news in town. I ask about the lithium. She rattles off: "It's used for ceramics, in aluminum, in batteries--the armed forces use a lot of our batteries. It's used in lubricants and synthetic rubber, in air conditioning, in the synthesis of vitamin A and in the treatment of depressive disorders. It's used in industrial drying and as a carbon dioxide absorbent." That last one means it takes the CO2 out of everything from submarines to spacecraft and, we assume, stuffy offices. "It's the lightest form of metal." Pumps bring the lithium brine up to the surface of the ground, where it evaporates for 12 months in a series of ponds. Welch says workers paddle around in boats to shoo off unwitting birds that try to land in them. But back to the news quest. So, nothing's going on in this little strip of a town with one bar (The Alternative), one church (Silver Peak Baptist Mission), a K-8 school with 11 kids, no gas, a little store, a library, a community pool, a tennis court and one Tae Kwon Do school? Well, actually... "To me, the big thing is we're getting new people in town [looking for work] at Vista Gold," Welch says. An old gold mine is being revived up on the hillside behind town--and miners can smell a working mine from states away. "Oh, and our sheriff pulled somebody over the other day, and he had his lights flashing." Welch laughs, adds, "He never has his lights flashing." So what happened? "They went walking, down toward the bar I guess. But they towed the car away." And there's one more thing: water meters. Someone put in water meters. "Now we have to pay for our water," says Welch, not pleased.--Heidi Walters |
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