In Nevada, Even the Past Gets a Mining Grant
From the Comstock to modern mining districts, generations of Nevadans have gone into the earth looking for wealth, adventure, and occasionally enough money to explain why they went in the first place. Now the noble enterprise has produced another discovery: a $10,000 donation.
The Friends of Sutro Tunnel Charity has announced that Hudbay Minerals has contributed $10,000 toward the restoration and preservation of the historic Sutro Tunnel and Site in Dayton. This is particularly appropriate, for the Sutro Tunnel was conceived in an age when men believed that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing underground, at considerable expense, and with absolutely no guarantee that the resulting enterprise would make anybody rich.
Hudbay’s Mason Project lies in the historic Yerington Mining District, where mining has been conducted since the 19th century.
For the Friends of Sutro Tunnel, the donation carries a certain poetry. The Sutro Tunnel represents the ingenuity, determination and vision of Nevada’s mining pioneers, men who looked at a mountain and did not see a mountain. They saw an engineering problem with a bill attached.
“Preserving Nevada’s mining heritage is a shared responsibility,” said Chantae Lessard, Head of the Mason Project for Hudbay Minerals, adding that the company is proud to contribute the $10,000.
This is a commendable sentiment, particularly in Nevada, where history has a curious habit of becoming useful again whenever somebody discovers that there may still be something valuable underneath it.
Helaine Jesse, Major Gifts Officer with Friends of Sutro Tunnel Charity, said the tunnel is more than an historic structure. It is a tangible connection to Nevada’s mining past and an opportunity to educate future generations about the people, technology and ingenuity that built the state’s mining communities.
And so the past and future now meet at the mouth of an old tunnel, each holding a shovel and smiling politely at the other.
The $10,000 donation will help preserve the Sutro Tunnel while Hudbay proceeds with pre-feasibility study activities for its Mason Project, part of the company’s Nevada growth pipeline. Thus the old mining story continues in a new chapter, proving once again that Nevada’s relationship with mining is rather like its relationship with the desert: nobody has ever quite finished exploring it.
The pioneers dug tunnels because they believed the future was underground. Their descendants, having preserved the tunnel, appear to have reached much the same conclusion.
The only difference is that today we call it a legacy.
