Normally, during times of trouble, gold and U.S. Treasuries have acted as safe havens for investors. But that wasn’t the case on Tuesday. Both gold and U.S. Treasury prices fell.

“Gold stocks and gold prices can make very counterintuitive moves. I think that it was just one of those counterintuitive moves,” said Kevin Smith, founder and CEO of Denver-based Crescat Capital, which manages a precious metals fund.

The spot price of gold fell by 4.5% a troy ounce on a day when it normally would have been expected go up. The drop appears to be an effort by investors to get “liquid” or hold cash. Treasuries were down on concerns that higher oil prices could accelerate inflation.

Denver remains a global hub for the gold mining industry. Precious metal companies were the worst-performing Colorado stocks on Tuesday, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the $18.3 billion that the state’s 55 largest public companies shed in value, according to a Denver Post analysis.

Shares of Denver-based SSR Mining, the third-largest gold producer in the U.S., fell 9.42%. Englewood-based Vista Gold Corp., which operates a gold mine in Australia, suffered a 9.25% drop in its share price.

But the biggest hit in dollars, $11 billion erased, came from the 7.9% drop in the share price of Newmont Corp., the world’s largest gold mining company.

Some of the downward pressure was company-specific. Newmont, which became Colorado’s largest public company following the departure of Palantir Technologies from Denver last month, was downgraded by TD Securities, which now rates the company a “hold.” Tuesday was also the company’s ex-dividend date, or the cutoff that determines what investors can collect a declared dividend. Shares usually fall by around the per-share amount of the dividend that is being paid.

The drop in gold prices, however, was the biggest driver, as it was for other gold-related companies.

Denver-based Royal Gold, a royalty and streaming company, saw its shares fall 7.66%. Royal Gold provides capital to mining companies. It is repaid in royalties on gold production or through rights to purchase a mine’s future metal production at a steep discount.

Solitario Resources, a Wheat Ridge company that has been pivoting away from zinc mining to focus more on gold exploration, saw its shares drop 3.4% in value.

Sandwiched in between those four mining companies was Gloo Holdings, a Boulder-based technology platform that provided investors with a fourth-quarter they apparently didn’t like on Monday afternoon. Its shares were down 8.1%.

Smith, who was attending a gold mining conference in Toronto, said the mood among industry players was upbeat. He urged investors not to give up on gold because of one day’s action.

“I believe we are still in the early phases of a major bull market for the mining industry. Last year was the first big year we had after a 15-year bear market,” he said.

Gold remains in short supply, and it can take 15 years for a new mine to get all the approvals needed to start production. He said pullbacks are normal and that he expects investors without exposure to gold to buy into any dips.

Now, leaders behind the last remaining block of the city’s historic Japantown are seeking funding they say will determine whether Sakura Square is preserved and revitalized or slowly lost to history.

In October 2025, Sakura Square leaders applied for funding from the , which oversees a $570 million voter-approved fund, to aid the block’s redevelopment goals.

The DDA application, obtained through a public records request, highlighted a proposal designed to strengthen the block’s role as a cultural anchor while reversing decades of physical deterioration.

So far, the city has designed to reshape downtown Denver. Now, with roughly $404 million still available, Sakura Square is among more than 80 applicants hoping to secure a share of the next round of funding.

In December, Laura Swartz, the city’s Communications Director for the Department of Finance, told The Post that about 25 applications were under review and approximately 48 applications were denied for DDA funding

Approved projects range from $30 million to activate Civic Center Park, to $17 million for an office-to-residential conversion of the historic Symes Building and $640,000 to expand and relocate Milk Tea People.

For Sakura Square, these investments represent an opportunity to reinforce its presence and significance in the city.

“It’s about the legacy, but it’s also about the present and the future,” said Nozomu Tim Higashide, Sakura Square’s CEO, who leads operations and strategic planning for the square.

“We already exist. We’re not trying to build something new. We’re trying to enhance and preserve and then evolve what we already have.”

Sakura Square is home to the Tri-State/Denver Buddhist Temple, Pacific Mercantile, a structured parking garage, a variety of shops and services and Tamai Tower, a 199-unit apartment building originally developed as deed-restricted affordable housing.

The block hosts major cultural events such as the Denver Cherry Blossom Festival and Spirit of Japan, drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually. Yet behind the celebrations, the decades-old structures are showing signs of aging.

Outside, scaffolding holds up a crumbling concrete barrier near the plaza, while inside, the temple struggles with a broken boiler and minimal insulation. These signs of wear are more than maintenance issues; they are a warning that a cherished piece of the city’s history could be lost.

“We have 50-plus-year-old buildings. The temple is from 1947, so the aging infrastructure and the cost of upkeep is really becoming unsustainable for us in the community,” Higashide said.

With DDA funding, Higashide said Sakura Square could continue as a vital “third place” in downtown, honoring Denver’s Japantown legacy while welcoming new generations. Sakura Square can mirror the success of other cultural destinations, like Seattle’s Chinatown, where 76% of spending comes from non-residents, driving regional visitation and sustaining Downtown vibrancy.

Without investment, he said, the city risks letting an irreplaceable cultural district slip into permanent decline, a .

Outlined in their DDA application, Sakura Square leaders are seeking $30 million in funding to support a redevelopment effort that will preserve the site’s historic and cultural significance through a new temple and cultural community center, expanded cultural retail, and an outdoor public plaza at 19th and Lawrence streets.

The proposed project calls for rebuilding the over 77-year-old Tri-State/Denver Buddhist Temple and Pacific Mercantile. Altogether, the plan includes about 46,500 square feet of improvements, consisting of two multi-story buildings that will house a Buddhist temple, upper-level flexible educational and community spaces and ground-floor cultural retail, including a new home for Pacific Mercantile that flanks an outdoor public plaza.

The buildings and plaza will also feature designs, art and signage to tell the story of the Japanese American community in Denver while also providing a place for people to gather, learn, celebrate, shop, and dine.

DDA funding specifically will be used to build the temple, the plaza and the cultural retail elements of the project. DDA funding will also subsidize tenant improvements and rents in the TCC to support legacy businesses and small, culturally appropriate retailers to create a unique retail environment downtown.

Across the country, cultural districts have proven consistent foot traffic, supporting resiliency through market ups and downs. In 2023, approximately 8.5 million people visited L.A’s Little Tokyo, and over half of them were repeat visitors. On average, individuals come to Little Tokyo 2.33 times per year, and about one-fourth, or 2.1 million people, travel over 50 miles to get there, according to Sakura Square’s DDA application.

“We want to be here, but we could be displaced, and that’s not what the community wants. That’s not what we want,” Higashide said.

A safe haven for those displaced

Japanese people have lived in Colorado since the late 1800s, according to 76-year-old Charles Ozaki, a Denver native who serves as board chair of Sakura Square LLC. He said many worked as railroad laborers, coal miners and on major projects such as the Moffat Tunnel, while others worked on farms or established their own. By the early 20th century, Japanese immigrants opened restaurants, beauty salons, grocery stores, hotels, and other businesses in lower downtown Denver.

In 1916, the Tri-State/Denver Buddhist Temple, also known as the at the time, was founded at 1950 Lawrence St. The church moved several times within lower downtown, including a period in Mattie Silks’ former “House of Mirrors” bordello, before building its current temple at 1947 Lawrence St. in 1947.

However, , anti-Japanese hysteria spread across the United States. Japanese Americans were targeted and stripped of their civil rights.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowing the military to remove anyone considered a threat to national security from the West Coast and place them in inland relocation centers. By the end of World War II, more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were incarcerated.

People living in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona were and property and were sent to 10 internment camps in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

Despite widespread hysteria, Colorado Gov. Ralph L. Carr welcomed Japanese and Japanese Americans to the state and was the only elected official to publicly denounce the imprisonment, even though he faced backlash. However, the U.S. government still built the Granada Relocation Center, also known as Camp Amache, in Colorado.

Over 10,000 people, most American citizens, were incarcerated at Amache until 1945.

The site is now known as Amache National Historic Site and was officially established as a National Park Service unit on Feb. 15, 2024.

After the war, Ozaki said many Japanese who had been incarcerated in the camps moved to Colorado, because of the welcoming attitude of Gov. Carr, including his own family.

He said his family lived in the Curtis Park/Five Points neighborhood alongside Black and Mexican families, as redlined areas were the only places they were allowed to live.

He said Japanese businesses once lined several blocks of Larimer, stretching into these neighborhoods, with about 30 Japanese-owned grocery stores in the area. At one point, Ozaki’s family ran a grocery store named T.Y. Market at 27th and Larimer.

“My family they weren’t from this community. They came from out of this community into this community, and it was a safe haven for them, and it’s been that way ever since for all my brothers and sisters and my wife and my kids,” he said.

Ozaki said Japantown was concentrated around the Buddhist temple. It was where Joni Sakaguchi, board president of the Sakura Foundation, and Randy Matsushima, board president of the Tri-State/Denver Buddhist Temple, spent their Sundays with their families. As they grew up, they walked the block, shopped at local stores, visited friends, and attended temple services.

“This is where we’d go for special occasions, to attend services at the temple, if you could find a seat in there,” Matsushima said as he laughed, remembering just how crowded the temple could get.

However, in the 1960s, the community faced new pressures. The Denver Urban Renewal Authority’s voter-approved aimed to redevelop 30 blocks of lower downtown Denver between 20th Street, Speer Boulevard, Larimer and Curtis Streets.

The project was planned to , to attract new businesses and promote economic revitalization. The Buddhist temple was directly in the path of the project, threatening its displacement.

Rather than leave, community leaders rallied to defend the site, leading to the creation of Sakura Square and Tamai Tower on the block bounded by Larimer, 20th, Lawrence and 19th Streets. When Sakura Square opened in 1973, it became the heart of Denver’s Japanese community.

A childhood measured in temple steps and grocery aisles

Sakura Square has weathered decades of change, yet Pacific Mercantile, a woman-owned Japanese grocery, has long formed the heart of Sakura Square alongside the temple. For over 80 years, it has supplied Denver with Japanese and Asian specialty foods, fresh fish, produce, and carefully chosen gifts.

A giant mural of a woman holding sugar beets stretches across the side of the building, a vivid tribute to the Japanese farming community’s history woven into the square.

Inside, customers and visitors are often welcomed by owner Jolie Noguchi. With her short bob haircut, square-framed glasses, and warm, wholesome demeanor, she greets regulars and longtime friends with hugs, embodying the family-run spirit of the grocer itself.

“We have so many great memories of growing up, my mom would take me to work, you know, and I would be in my bassinet in her office,” Noguchi said.

Pacific Mercantile was , George Inai. The store was originally located on Larimer and 20th streets before relocating in 1973 to its current home at 1925 Lawrence St.

Noguchi said her grandfather initially wanted to call the grocery Nippon Market, but Gov. Carr advised against the name, believing it might discourage American customers from shopping there.

She said remembers the early days of the store with fondness, where she would run through the aisles with her brothers, back when the floors were wooden, and the air carried the scent of sushi and oden (type of fish cake dish) her grandmother prepared in the back.

She said some of her favorite memories are from the stockroom, where burlap sacks of rice became a child’s Mount Everest, stacked high and ready to be climbed, a playground hidden behind shelves of groceries.

Now entering its fourth generation of ownership, the legacy is set to continue. Noguchi said her daughter, Alyssa, will carry the grocer forward, ensuring it remains not just a store, but a living piece of Sakura Square’s history and true labor of love.

“I think of my grandfather literally every day,” Noguchi said.

“When she came to me with that (decision), I literally cried. She is our next generation. She’s gonna carry on her great grandfather’s legacy.”

Higashide said Pacific Mercantile, the temple and the statues in front of the square all show why Sakura Square must be preserved. It represents the tight-knit community, the enduring spirit of Japanese culture and the generations who return to honor and share the block’s history.

He said they are in discussions with the DDA team and hope conversations progress, but they have not yet heard whether their application will be approved.

The next DDA board meeting will be on Tuesday, Jan. 27. At this time, applications for projects in the business incentives category and arts, culture and activation category are temporarily on hold, according to the DDA website. They will not be accepting applications until the next phase of the program launches, which is expected in March.

But Higashide and the community members committed to protecting Sakura Square remain determined to preserve its legacy for the future.

“This is our home, and we don’t want to be anywhere else. This is where we want to be,” he said.

But learning to maneuver the shiny red drill they use to tap into underground heat feels different. It����ap a critical part of the Colorado family’s new business, High Altitude Geothermal, which installs that use the Earth’s constant temperature to heat and cool buildings. At stake is not just their livelihood but a century-long family legacy of producing energy in Moffat County.

Like many families in Craig, the Coopers have worked in coal for generations — and in oil before that. That����ap ending for Matt Cooper and his son Matthew as one of three coal mines in the area closes in a statewide shift to cleaner energy.

“People have to start looking beyond coal,” said Matt Cooper. “And that can be a multitude of things. Our economy has been so focused on coal and coal-fired power plants. And we need the diversity.”

Many countries and about half of U.S. states are moving away from coal, citing environmental impacts and high costs. Burning coal emits carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.

President Donald Trump has boosted coal as part of his agenda to promote fossil fuels. He’s trying to save a declining industry with , , and offers of to restore coal plants.

That����ap created uncertainty in places like Craig. As some families like the Coopers plan for the next stage of their careers, others hold out hope that Trump will save their plants, mines and high-paying jobs.

Matt and Matthew Cooper work at the Colowyo Mine near Meeker, though active mining has ended and site cleanup begins in January.

The mine employs about 130 workers and supplies Craig Generating Station, a 1,400-megawatt coal-fired plant. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is planning to close Craig’s Unit 1 by year’s end for economic reasons and to meet legal requirements for reducing emissions. The other two units will close in 2028.

Xcel Energy owns coal-fired Hayden Station, about 30 minutes away. It said it doesn’t plan to change retirement dates for Hayden, though it����ap extending another coal unit in Pueblo in part due to increased demand for electricity.

The Craig and Hayden plants together employ about 200 people.

Craig residents have always been entrepreneurial and that spirit will get them through this transition, said Kirstie McPherson, board president for the Craig Chamber of Commerce. Still, she said, just about everybody here is connected to coal.

“You have a whole community who has always been told you are an energy town, you’re a coal town,” she said. “When that starts going away, beyond just the individuals that are having the identity crisis, you have an entire culture, an entire community that is also having that same crisis.”

Phasing out coal

Coal has been central to Colorado’s economy since before statehood, but it����ap generally the most expensive energy on today’s grid, said Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

“We are not going to let this administration drag us backwards into an overreliance on expensive fossil fuels,” Polis said in a statement.

Nationwide, coal power was 28% more expensive in 2024 than it was in 2021, costing consumers $6.2 billion more, according to a June analysis from Energy Innovation. The nonpartisan think tank cited significant increases to run aging plants as well as inflation.

Colorado’s six remaining coal-fired power plants are scheduled to close or convert to natural gas, which emits about half the carbon dioxide as coal, by 2031. The state is rapidly adding solar and wind that����ap cheaper and cleaner than legacy coal plants. Renewable energy provides more than 40% of Colorado’s power now and will pass 70% by the end of the decade, according to statewide utility plans.

Nationwide, wind and solar growth has remained strong, producing more electricity than coal in 2025, as of the latest data in October, according to energy think tank Ember.

But some states want to increase or at least maintain coal production. That includes top coal state Wyoming, where the Wyoming Energy Authority said Trump is breathing welcome new life into its coal and mining industry.

Planning for the future

The Coopers have gone all-in on geothermal.

“Maybe we’ll never go back to coal,” Matt Cooper said. “We haven’t (gone) back to oil and gas, so we might just be geothermal people for quite some time, maybe generations, and then eventually something else will come along.”

While the Coopers were learning to use their drill in October, Wade Gerber was in downtown Craig distilling grain neutral spirits — used to make gin and vodka — on a day off from the Craig Station power plant. Gerber stepped over his corgis, Ali and Boss, and onto a stepladder to peer into a massive stainless steel pot where he was heating wheat and barley.

Gerber’s spent three decades in coal. When closure plans were announced four years ago, he, his wife Tenniel and their friend McPherson brainstormed business ideas.

“With my background in plumbing and electrical from the plant, it����ap like, oh yeah, I can handle that part of it,” Gerber said about distilling. “This is the easy part.”

He used Tri-State’s education subsidies for classes in distilling, while other co-workers learned to fix vehicles or repair guns to find new careers. While some plan to leave town, Gerber is opening Bad Alibi Distillery. McPherson and Tenniel Gerber are opening a cocktail bar next door.

Everyone in town hopes Trump will step in to extend the plant����ap life, Gerber said. Meanwhile, they’re trying to define a new future for Craig in a nerve-wracking time.

“For me, my products can go elsewhere. I don’t necessarily have to sell it in Craig, there’s that avenue. For someone relying on Craig, it����ap even scarier,” he said.

Questioning the coal rollback

Tammy Villard owns a gift shop, Moffat Mercantile, with her husband. After the coal closures were announced, they opened a commercial print shop too, seeing it as a practical choice for when so many high-paying jobs go away.

Villard, who spent a decade at Colowyo as administrative staff, said she doesn’t understand how the state can throw the switch to turn off coal and still have reliable electricity. She wants the state to slow down.

Villard describes herself as a moderate Republican. She said political swings at the federal level — from the green energy push in the last administration to doubling down on fossil fuels in this one — aren’t helpful.

“The pendulum has to come back to the middle,” she said, “and we are so far out to either side that I don’t know how we get back to that middle.”

___

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The U.S. Department of the Interior plans to , which directs the Bureau of Land Management to consider the conservation of public lands to be equally important as commercial uses like oil and gas extraction, mining, grazing and timber harvesting. When they announced the rollback, administration officials said the rule placed outsized priority on conservation and threatened to curtail grazing, energy development and other traditional land uses.

“The most effective caretakers of our federal lands are those whose livelihoods rely on its well-being,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the proposal was unveiled. “Overturning this rule protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on.”

Colorado conservation advocates said the rollback of the rule is shortsighted. The 2024 rule gives the BLM the tools to make sure the it manages — or nearly 13,000 square miles — remain healthy and productive for future generations, they said.

The rule provided balance so that the agency could “really embrace the most significant growing part of Western economies — the recreation economy,” said Michael Carroll, BLM campaign director for . “By not having balanced management on those landscapes, the pressure climate change is going to put on those landscapes is going to ultimately restrict the use of those lands, no matter what that use is.”

The proposed rollback is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to open more public land to development and relax regulations around commercial uses on them.

Months after a proposal to sell some of the West’s public lands failed due to an incredible onslaught of public opposition, federal lawmakers and the Trump administration are trying other methods to weaken protections for public lands, say conservation and recreation advocates.

“In the West, public lands power our outdoor economies, provide critical water and grazing resources for agriculture, and give our residents unmatched opportunities to recreate and enjoy the peace and solitude that comes along with time spent in nature,” said Anna Peterson, the executive director of , an organization that works with over 100 communities across the western U.S. on environmental and economic sustainability.

“But threats from the Trump administration and radical anti-public lands politicians are putting our shared outdoor heritage in danger of being exploited for short-term gain.”

Public lands policy change

The BLM implemented what’s known as the Public Lands Rule — formally called — in . Local offices had just received guidance on how to use the new rule when President Donald Trump took office in January.

Implementation has ground to a halt.

“We never got the opportunity to see the Public Lands Rule fully implemented,” Carroll said.

Along with conservation, the rule designated several other uses of BLM land as equally important as commercial uses — access to nature, plus protection of cultural resources and wildlife habitat, along with using the land to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The rule gave the agency several new tools to implement that goal:

• It allowed communities or other entities to lease BLM land for restoration.
• It created a program in which companies using BLM land can lease land for mitigation efforts to offset negative environmental impacts from energy development, mining, grazing or timber harvesting.
• It streamlined the process for designating areas of critical environmental concern and expanded the definition for what qualified for the more stringent protections available for those areas.

In Colorado, state leaders and conservation groups had hoped to use the new rules governing areas of critical environmental concern to better protect wildlife corridors, big game populations and wilderness areas in the southwest corner of the state, said Juli Slivka, the policy director for the Carbondale-based . The BLM’s , based in Montrose, is .

“Under the (public lands) rule, there is a lot more space for them to do that,” Slivka said, lamenting the proposed rollback.

Communities along the Colorado River could’ve used the new conservation leases to restore riparian environments, Carroll said.

“Giving communities and local governments the ability to take out conservation and restoration leases would’ve been instrumental in a lot of the restoration moving forward,” he said.

The Public Lands Rule enjoyed broad support among Colorado’s Democratic congressional delegation. More than 150,000 people commented in 2023 on the rule after it was proposed, and found that 92% of comments supported it.

“In moving to rescind this rule, the Trump administration is undermining efforts to protect our lands for the next generation,” U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, whose district includes the state’s central and northern mountains, said in a statement. “Already this year, we’ve seen their radical agenda call for the auctioning off of millions of acres of our public lands, including here in Colorado, and continued attacks on the public servants in our land management agencies.

“We’ll continue to push back against these efforts — which are deeply unpopular with the public — and are building a bipartisan coalition to make clear that public lands must stay in public hands.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican whose western and southern Colorado district contains the majority of the BLM land in Colorado, did not respond to a request for comment on the rollback.

Rep. Jeff Crank, the Republican representing the Colorado Springs-based 5th Congressional District, applauded the BLM’s move and said the Biden administration “stepped away from its statutory core mission — to manage lands for multiple use.”

“I applaud BLM’s decision to rescind the rule, it will make sure that our public lands are accessible and fruitful for the benefit of all Americans,” Crank said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing working with the administration and House Republicans on further ways we can promote productive management of Western lands.”

Public comment on the administration’s proposed rule rescission is .

Other efforts underway

The proposed change to the Public Lands Rule is one of several major ongoing overhauls of federal public lands policy.

Taken together, the changes threaten to overrule public input on how federal lands should be managed and amount to “one of the biggest assaults on balanced management in a generation,” Carroll said.

“It all amounts to putting the thumb on the scale for industry, over and over again,” he said.

Republican lawmakers in several Western states — Alaska, Montana and North Dakota — are looking to use to overturn management plans for BLM land in their states that they believe are too restrictive on mining and energy development. The first-of-its-kind use of the Congressional Review Act to challenge BLM management plans could set a precedent that lawmakers have the final say on those plans, which are drafted over years and require broad community and industry input.

There are no known efforts to undo management plans in Colorado through the Congressional Review Act, Carroll said. But if the other states’ lawmakers are successful, he said, they could create a roadmap for doing so in the future.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, is pursuing the . The rule bans the construction of roads, and the commercial uses those roads enable, in 45 million acres of Forest Service land.

Colorado’s 4.2 million acres of roadless areas will not be impacted if the rule is rescinded, however, because the Forest Service has a .

Saying Colorado’s rivers, forests and open spaces are threatened by development, the list compiled by the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop includes the Upper Colorado River, the Homestake Valley near Red Cliff, the Crystal River south of Carbondale and the Thompson Divide, also near Carbondale. The detailed 28-page report is called “Wild for Good,” meaning forever, and is available .

“It’s looking at these landscapes that form the backbone of our way of life in Colorado — clean water, clean air, wildlife and our outdoor rec economy,” said Michael Gorman, the Wilderness Workshop’s campaign director. “It����ap both a roadmap and a warning. It����ap really looking at how we can be proactive to protect these areas — and what could happen if we don’t.

“With everything going on right now (in politics),” he added, “we’re hearing loud and clear from our communities across the Western Slope that people really want to be proactive about protecting the places they love the most, and doing that before they are lost to drilling or more development.”

At stake, the report says, are migration corridors for elk, mule deer and Canada lynx, forests that remove carbon from the atmosphere, clean water, clean air and outdoor spaces that attract visitors to the benefit of the state’s economy.

The biggest threats are oil and gas drilling, mining, new road construction and efforts in Washington to sell off federal lands, Gorman said.

“Every year the pressure keeps growing. There’s always more (oil and gas) leasing, more proposals for new roads or water developments,” Gorman said. “Rather than chipping away at these wild places, if we don’t get ahead of this, we’ll just be constantly fighting to hold onto the scraps of what����ap left.”

The aim of the report is to galvanize support for protecting those wild lands, focusing on those that seem like “winnable fights” because of existing community support, Gorman said.

“We’re looking for permanent protection,” Gorman said. “That����ap the best way to really protect these landscapes against the growing threats we keep seeing. They’re not just beautiful backdrops. They really are what form the basis for our way of life and our economy.”

Filling out the top 10 at-risk places as identified in the report are the Continental Divide, the Dolores River Canyon in the southwest corner of the state, the Dinosaur National Monument area in the northwest corner of the state, the North Fork Valley of the Gunnison River, Red Table Mountain between the Roaring Fork and Eagle river valleys, and the Roan Plateau near Rifle.

“There are many, many more lands in our region that must also be protected and conserved so that we have a vibrant wildlands network to sustain our human and natural communities — ranging from roadless areas to working lands,” the report states.

“These 10 priority landscapes are anchors in that network, places we’ve identified as deserving of and needing durable protections to support the ecological vitality of the whole region,” the report goes on. “By creating and sustaining thriving ecosystems in our neck of the woods, we in turn sustain and contribute to healthier natural systems across the state of Colorado and the West.”

Its summit will remain off limits to fourteener hikers, however, for the foreseeable future.

The Conservation Fund acquired 58 parcels of land owned by John Reiber last week, totaling more than 480 acres. Included is a small trail segment on Bross that is part of the DeCaLiBron Loop connecting that peak to Mount Lincoln, Mount Cameron and Mount Democrat. Most of the parcels purchased last week are south of the summit and are not part of the loop. Terms of the sale were not announced.

The DeCaLiBron Loop links four 14,000-foot peaks, making it one of the most popular fourteener destinations in Colorado. Two years ago, Reiber sold 289 acres on Democrat and the Kite Lake Trailhead to The Conservation Fund. They were later conveyed to the U.S. Forest Service, as last week’s acquisition will be.

“Sometimes, to save a mountain, you have to buy it,” said Kelly Ingebritson, senior field representative at The Conservation Fund. “It secures hiking access between Mount Lincoln and Mount Bross. It protects its southern face and viewshed. It����ap near the critical headwaters of the South Platte River.”

Ingebritson said parcels south of the summit also are important wildlife habitat for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, Canada lynx, elk and moose.

“And,” she said, “the Mosquito Range is a botanical hotspot with rare plants that are endemic to the area.”

Land on Bross and neighboring peaks is a bewildering array of 10-acre mining claims dating back to the late 1800s.

“Our role is like (connecting) a puzzle,” Ingebritson said in an interview. “This is a national forest with thousands of acres of private land and we are helping to put the pieces back together. The land ownership is fragmented. We’re providing a solution. On Mount Bross we purchased 58 separate parcels of private land, all within the national forest boundary.”

The DeCaLiBron Loop currently skirts the summit of Bross due to landholder concerns that have kept it closed for years. Adding the summit to the loop will require more than negotiations with them. There also are safety concerns due to fears that 19th-century mining tunnels near the summit could collapse.

“I’ve heard the land up there described as Swiss cheese,” Ingebritson said. “It is important to avoid the summit. It����ap currently closed, and it����ap still privately owned by multiple unrelated parties, so it����ap difficult to get an agreement up there.

“But,” she added, “the U.S. Forest Service and The Conservation Fund are interested in acquiring the summit, and we stand ready to work on acquiring it if there can be a consensus.”

The Conservation Fund made the acquisition in partnership with the forest service, Park County, the Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative and the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative.

“Colorado’s 14ers drew 265,000 hikers last year, including almost 20,000 to the Decalibron Loop, one of the most popular mountain hiking routes in the state,” said Lloyd Athearn, executive director of Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, in a news release. “This acquisition preserves a key parcel along the loop trail, which will help with ongoing trail access and sustainability. The acquisition also protects other important lands on the flanks of Mount Bross that will preserve alpine tundra ecosystems.”

Caused by federal contractors working to treat pollution from the Gold King Mine, the accidental release of water laden with heavy metals prompted the creation of a Superfund site and a reckoning with lingering environmental harms from the area’s mining legacy, including hundreds of abandoned mines high in the San Juan mountains.

A decade later, community members and staff are still grappling with the long-term cleanup of the area’s mines and tailings piles. Forty-eight of them outside Silverton. They continue to leak heavy metals into local waterways and soils.

“We’re pleased that the EPA is at the point where in the next 18 months, we’re going to see some decisions made about how those sites are cleaned up,” said Chara Ragland, the chair of .

Studies have since shown that the Aug. 5, 2015, Gold King spill had little long-term environmental impact because the water already contained so many heavy metals from runoff and other mines. Locals hope the federal Superfund cleanup process will improve water quality in the Animas River basin so that it will be cleaner than before the Gold King incident.

“Doing things right takes time, but we’re committed to long-term results,” EPA Regional Administrator Cyrus Western said in a statement last week.

The Superfund process has been slow, but it is the only legal tool available to clean up abandoned mines, said Ty Churchwell, the community advisory group’s secretary and the mining coordinator for Trout Unlimited.

“For me, there’s no use in complaining,” Churchwell said. “I’d rather do a thorough job than rush a job and screw it up.”

Progress so far

In the months after the spill, the EPA constructed a water treatment plant to clean the discharge from the Gold King mine. That plant continues to function today, treating between 300 and 500 gallons of water a minute before it flows into Cement Creek — a tributary to the Animas River.

After intense community debate, the EPA in September 2016 created the to tackle pollution from the Gold King Mine and 47 other historic mining sites in San Juan County . The site covers about and includes abandoned mines and tunnels as well as piles of mining waste rock that leak heavy metals.

There are between the creation of a Superfund site and when the government delists it because it considers the work complete. Overall, the Bonita Peak Mining District remains on step one: collecting data on the extent of contamination and assessing risks from that contamination.

The EPA has spent years evaluating the baseline level of aquatic and terrestrial health, surveyed water quality and studied the labyrinth of mine tunnels and shafts in the area.

In the meantime, the EPA has also completed the cleanup of more than 20 smaller projects on the Superfund site, like covering lead-contaminated soils at campgrounds and pulling mining waste rock out of creeks and rivers.

The EPA is also building a waste repository facility — expected to be finished this year — that will store the sludge created by the water treatment plant outside the Gold King Mine, along with waste from future cleanups on the broader Superfund site.

“A lot of these areas have needed to be addressed for a long time, and I’m not sure they would have been had the Superfund process not begun,” Ragland said.

What’s next?

Now the EPA, its contractors and the community advisory group are getting ready to decide how to address the Superfund site’s three major pollution sources.

But “getting ready” to make a decision might mean a two-year process, Churchwell warned.

“That’s just the way Superfund works,” he said.

Progress accelerated in the last three years, thanks to money allocated under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and a stable project management team, Ragland said.

But federal staffing chaos this year under the new Trump administration has caused setbacks, she said.

For example, work to finish the waste repository was slated to begin in June, but the EPA still does not have a contract to complete the work because of firings, early retirements and reassignments in the agency’s contracting office, she said.

While the Gold King Mine spill was scary, the cleanup work that has followed likely wouldn’t have happened without the Superfund designation it prompted, Ragland said.

To gauge progress, Churchwell will look for the return of trout in streams where the fish have been absent for decades.

Already, there have been signs of improvement in Mineral Creek.

A federal fish survey in 2019 found trout in a stretch of the stream that had been devoid of the species for decades, Churchwell said. A few years prior to that, a community coalition called the Animas River Stakeholders Group had cleaned up waste rock piles near the stream.

The hope for a better future is what has kept Churchwell, Ragland and other members of the community advisory group working to improve water quality in the basin — some of them for decades.

“We’re very focused on the fact that we live here and we want this area to be somewhere we can live and recreate well into the future,” Ragland said.

The company notified state and local officials Wednesday that the reductions, many of them management jobs, will begin around Oct. 28 and will be permanent. There won’t be a shutdown or closure of all operations at either facility, according to the notice filed with the state.

The layoffs are part of a plan announced in February that includes both labor and non-labor reductions. The employees employees will be offered severance and receive at least 60 days’ advance notice.

“Moves to reshape our structure reflect one of several steps we are taking in 2025 to reduce our cost base and improve productivity — positioning Newmont to deliver on our commitments to shareholders and partners across a range of gold price environments, and for the long-term success of the business,” the company said Thursday in an email.

Investors have been interested in Newmont’s rising general and administrative costs.

“We have a laser-focus on ensuring that these costs are reduced as we transition from 17 to 11 managed operations over the course of this year,” Newmont CEO Tom Palmer said in

Bloomberg reported that following its $15 billion acquisition of Australian-based Newcrest Mining Ltd. in 2023. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg said the mining company could lower costs by as much as 20%.

However, Newmont said in an email that it hasn’t set “a blanket percentage target for headcount reductions” or, as reported, set a cost-reduction target per ounce of gold.

In July, Newmont said its included net income of $2.1 billion and a record quarterly free cash flow of $1.7 billion.

Newmont completed its sale of the in March. SSR Mining Inc. paid Newmont $100 million in cash and agreed to up to $175 million in additional payments for the Colorado mine.

I was about 20 feet off the ground when I began to wonder if I had made a grave mistake.

I was starting the ascent up the in Ouray, a high-adrenaline excursion that had been on my bucket list for many years. But with each step up the iron ladder, reality was setting in. I realized the only things that would carry me through the impending 1,200 feet of elevation gain were my own strength and coordination.

Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so confident.

But as I completed the first of 12 pitches, a sense of exhilaration took over. Standing shakily on the edge of a cliff, I felt as though I had already accomplished an incredible feat. Guide Cat Shirley of assured me and my crew of first-timers as much. That inaugural pitch was the toughest, she said. Now it was time to have some fun.

After a couple of deep breaths to shake off the nerves, we continued on one of the most unforgettable adventures I’ve ever experienced – an intense, boundary-testing workout with incredible scenic payoff. I’d recommend it to anyone willing to put their upper body strength and mental determination to the test.

Translated from Italian, via ferrata means “iron way” or “iron path,” and it refers to a protected climbing route built into the side of a mountain. Climbers use iron rungs much like a ladder to scale rock faces while also staying attached to a steel cable for safety.

As far back as World War I, soldiers used via ferratas to traverse Europe’s Alpine terrain. Today, they offer a recreational opportunity for thrill seekers in Colorado, which is home to at least eight via ferratas from the Front Range to the Western Slope.

Gold Mountain is among the newer ones, having opened in 2022. The experience is a lot like rock climbing in that participants wear a harness to connect them to anchor points. In this case, the anchor is a steel cable that follows the route up the mountain.

It����ap a great entry point to the sport since it requires less gear and just a 20-minute introduction before jumping on the course. Still, each individual is responsible for ensuring that they actually stay connected to the cable by continuously detaching and reattaching two stretchy lanyards on their harness. That����ap trickier than it sounds, which is why hiring a guide is a must if you’re a novice.

In fact, those who want to conquer Gold Mountain will require a guide since the course is located on private land. (It was perhaps an added bonus that ours, Shirley, happened to be a world champion ice climber, though she offered plenty of emotional guidance as well.)

Ouray native Logan Tyler helped design and build the Gold Mountain Via Ferrata with fellow local Xander Bianchi. They drilled holes for more than 3,600 rungs and strung 2,000 feet of cable, most while belaying down the side of the cliffs.

Tyler and Bianchi, both avid rock and ice climbers, sought to develop a course that offers beginners the thrill of working their way up the mountain and problem-solving on the fly.

“What makes a good rock climb is that every move is intuitive, you flow into the next one, you’re dancing with the rock. There’s this intrinsic exchange through action,” said Tyler, also owner of Basecamp Ouray, which offers guiding services for Ouray’s two via ferratas and the one in Telluride. “We wanted to take the best parts of climbing – that dance on a stone – and give that to people through a via ferrata.”

That certainly comes through at Gold Mountain. As the course ascends, there are many points at which climbers need to grab or step on the rock face to adequately traverse it, and I used the steel cable as a tool to hoist myself up to the next rung.

There are even a few opportunities to test your grit. At pitch six, deemed the Don Wall, climbers can choose from three routes – from easy to extreme. There’s also a section of monkey bars for those who want to forgo support from their feet completely.

I opted for the medium route and found myself dangling from a rocky overhang on the border of a panic attack. If not for the calming presence of Shirley, I may have let go and relied on the cable to catch me. Instead, she talked me through connecting securely and leaning back into my harness so I could let my fatigued arms rest. Don’t forget to enjoy the view, she reminded me.

Oh, right, the views – I almost forgot. The course winds through old mining ruins, offering a chance to walk in the footsteps of those who lived here in the 1800s, and offers a bird’s-eye view of Ouray. The higher you go, the more you can see of the San Juan mountain peaks and the valley below.

That was especially true at pitch 11, otherwise known as The Bridge of Heaven. After being so tightly connected to the mountainside, walking across this 273-foot suspension bridge felt like freedom. It����ap probably the closest I’ve come to flying since skydiving more than 15 years ago.

The bridge’s placement close to the end of the course is no accident, Tyler said. It����ap physically the easiest pitch on Gold Mountain but mentally one of the most challenging – and the most gratifying once you reach the other side. In a way, it’s symbolic of all that you’ve overcome since stepping on that first rung at the base of the mountain. Perhaps even what you’ve overcome in life.

“It����ap all action, no thought, simply moving through. The bridge is such a beautiful and amazing parallel in our lives. Sometimes we can see the other side and yet we’re so hesitant, but all we need to do is walk forward,” Tyler said, thinking back to his own highs and lows as an entrepreneur. “I was the first person to walk across that bridge and, you know, I almost cried.”

Cresting the mountaintop at the final pitch, my friends and I completed our journey by ceremoniously banging a gong and soaking in the 360-degree scenery.

After snapping a few photos, Basecamp Ouray shuttled our group, tired and sweaty, back down the mountain. Each person got to keep the fingerless climbing gloves provided as a souvenir, though I also took home some sizable bruises on my knees. (Pro tip: Wear pants to minimize the scrapes on your legs.) The excursion took roughly three hours, which Tyler said is about average.

The Gold Mountain Via Ferrata is by no means a cake walk – you have to earn every step you take to the top. But it was that roller coaster of emotions that made it feel so memorable.

“The course is just rungs and cable on a cliffside. It����ap this inanimate thing,” Tyler said. “What brings the life to it is the internal and external experience you, as the climber, get to have.”

Burnham Yard, a former train depot linked to the Broncos as a potential site for a new football stadium, is not part of the 46-year-old , but it sits across railroad tracks from at least one property with existing contamination.

And at least one nearby parcel purchased earlier this year by business entities connected to the Broncos was once part of the Superfund site, according to a 2014 report from the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

Santa Fe Yard, which will be the future home of the Denver Summit professional women’s soccer team, is in a similar situation. That site sits across Interstate 25 from land that has ongoing mitigation for radium contamination and is part of the Superfund site. But the former railyard does not have any known radium underground.

Environmental experts, however, say the proximity to a radium Superfund site would not be a danger to the teams or their fans. is a radioactive element that is found in nature, including underground in Denver, and, if mishandled, it can cause human health problems, including cancer.

“I can say definitively people would be safe at Broncos games,” said Thomas Albrecht, a chemistry professor at the Colorado School of Mines.”No Spider-Mans or Hulks.

“If they plopped a stadium on the ground right now, even a permanent employee would be fine. I would not fear it at all.”

Radium is easy to detect and there are proven ways to remove it, Albrecht said. And multiple federal, state and local environmental agencies would be involved if any radium was detected where the Broncos might want to build.

“The beauty of radioactive elements is radiation can’t hide,” he said. “It����ap extremely easy to detect and it����ap easy to detect in high precision.”

Radium remediation is expensive because waste material must be hauled long distances to approved landfills. But figuring out who would be responsible for any contamination lingering around Burnham Yard is to be determined, especially since the Broncos have never confirmed they are eyeing the railyard as the team’s future home.

“They may decide they don’t want the expense,” Albrecht said. “That����ap a completely different issue. They’re completely capable of putting the stadium there and cleaning it up.”

The Denver Radium Superfund Site was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979 after spoils from the National Radium Institute and other radium mining, processing and disposal sites that operated in Denver around the turn of the 20th century were found scattered around the city.

Once the EPA declares a site as a , the agency has the authority to clean up contamination and pursue reimbursement for that work.

“In the early part of the 1900s, they didn’t have environmental standards and just threw out the waste,” said Benjamin Rule, the EPA Region 8 remedial project manager for Denver Radium Superfund Site.

While those radium businesses were shuttered by the mid-1920s, their radioactive waste has lingered in the city for more than a century.

The main health risk associated with the former radium businesses is residue from radium-226, a radioactive element that breaks down to form , which causes lung cancer with long-term exposure, according to a about the Superfund site.

The Denver Radium Superfund Site is unusual in that it is not confined to one location within the city limits. Instead, it stretches from Cheesman Park near the city’s center to the Overland Golf Course in southwest Denver.

The site covers 65 individual properties that the EPA subdivided into 11 areas, known as operable units. That’s because the EPA broke the site into geographic areas that followed the South Platte River and the rail lines through Denver, Rule said.

Only one of those 11 operable units remains under direct EPA oversight — groundwater beneath the Overland Golf Course at 1801 S. Huron St., which is about a mile from Burnham Yard. It would not impact any development at the former train depot, said Branden Ingersoll, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division.

But two parcels near the potential stadium sites have designations that could limit development and land use. The EPA, as well as the city and state health departments, would be involved in any remediation and development decisions surrounding those properties with lingering contamination.

, a scrap metal and recycling company at 1100 Umatilla St., sits directly west of Burnham Yard, separated by a set of railroad tracks. Between 1991 and 1993, 89,000 tons of contaminated material were removed from the property, but contaminated soil remains, Ingersoll said.

The radium in the soil is not dangerous to people as long as Atlas maintains its parking lot and its buildings’ floors, which serve as a cap to hold back the contamination, Rule said.

Atlas has a covenant with the EPA and the state health department to maintain the cap, and the site undergoes a review every five years.

In the most recent five-year report, published in 2023, the EPA noted that Atlas recorded increased radon levels in 2018 and 2020 after installing a new heating and cooling system, but those levels returned to normal after the company modified its system and repaired a radon-mitigation system.

Under the covenant, Atlas Metals must receive approval before seeking building permits or a change in land use. It also must notify the state if the property is sold to someone else, according to the covenant.

No ties have been established between the Broncos and Atlas Metals, but the scrapyard would be next door to any future stadium or entertainment district if the Broncos choose to relocate to Burnham Yard.

While Atlas Metals chief executive officer Mike Rosen declined to comment for this story, the EPA report noted that Rosen “is impressed by how his company has been able to succeed with a solid reuse of a Superfund site. He believes that there has been great collaboration with the CDPHE and the EPA throughout the cleanup process.”

The remarks illustrate how private businesses are able to work with government agencies to make land safe for people.

Patrick Smythe, a Broncos spokesman, said the team’s owners continue to study all stadium options, which include staying where Empower Field at Mile High is located and reviewing additional sites in Lone Tree and Aurora.

Another parcel acquired this year by a business entity linked to the Broncos — 1241 to 1245 Quivas St. — was part of the radium Superfund site but has been cleaned. There are no radium concerns on the property, Ingersoll said.

Burnham Yards also borders another area that was part of the Superfund cleanup — an alley between Mariposa and Lipan streets that runs from Fifth Avenue to Sixth Avenue. That site was remediated after 2,800 tons of soil were removed, according to online reports. There are no development restrictions, Ingersoll said.

There is no apparent connection between the Broncos and any addresses around that alley.

The property closest to the future National Women’s Soccer League stadium is the Home Depot at 500 S. Santa Fe Drive, which is across I-25 from where the stadium and associated entertainment venues will be built.

The Home Depot’s radium situation is almost identical to the one at Atlas Metals — as long as the parking lot remains paved and no one digs into the ground, the radium is contained, Rule said. The Home Depot also has a covenant with the EPA to contain the radium and undergoes an inspection every five years.

Still, Rule said he reached out to the new soccer team’s ownership once the stadium location was announced to explain the nearby Superfund sites and the EPA’s role.

“Santa Fe Yards are not technically on Superfund property and it����ap not a direct concern,” he said. “But Home Depot is just north on I-25.”

Before a stadium can be built at either location, extensive environmental surveys will be conducted to make sure there is no radium or other contamination left behind from former industrial uses. Federal and state laws require it.

“The EPA carries a big stick,” said Andrew Ross, the Denver health department’s senior environmental administrator with environmental land use and planning.

Banks involved in financial loans tied to the properties also would want any contamination removed to avoid liability, Ross said.

“We’re here to help developers through these processes,” Ross said. “It����ap on the developers to figure it out.”

The residents in the next to Burnham Yard are excited about potential redevelopment that would make good use of an old railyard, but they also are aware of all the potential environmental hazards surrounding the site, said Nolan Hahn, president of the neighborhood association.

“There’s always a concern that when you disturb the soil in the area that you can release toxic materials,” Hahn said. “We just want to make sure it is done in a way that doesn’t put us in more danger and respects the people of the neighborhood.”

Denver Post staff writer Jessica Alvarado Gamez contributed to this report.