A ‘golden’ opportunity? Historic mine hits the market near Idaho City

Looking for a Boise County retreat? A 145-acre property that just hit the market near Idaho City could fit the bill — and pay it, too.

After 120 years of ownership, the family behind the one-time Mammoth Mine, mill and surrounding land listed their lots in the Boise National Forest this week for $4.5 million. The property, patented as a mining claim in the middle of the 19th century, predates the creation of the national forest, a spit of private land ringed by public woods northeast of Idaho City.

The centerpiece of the property is the Mammoth Mine, a dormant gold operation that hauled up close to a literal ton of bullion in its day — 31,500 ounces, according to National Land Realty, which is listing the site. In today’s prices, that’s more than $110 million worth of gold.

The mine stopped running in the 1930s as water accumulated in its depths and new Depression-era regulations crimped private possession of gold in favor of paper currency, said Kaleb Brown, a spokesman for National Land Realty. Reports suggest that “significant gold deposits likely remain below the 200-foot level, with additional unmined veins within the patented claims,” Brown said in an email.

“This is a rare opportunity for someone seeking a remote mountain retreat with genuine historical significance, a recreational basecamp surrounded by thousands of acres of public land, or a bold investment play on a dormant gold mine with suspected ore deposits still in the ground,” Brown said.

You couldn’t restart digging right away, Todd Walter, the Boise land broker selling the site, told the Idaho Statesman in an interview.

Restarting the mine requires filing a reclamation plan for post-operation cleanup with the Idaho Department of Lands, approval from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, and, if you’re diverting or draining into streams, a green light from the Idaho Department of Water Resources. You’ll need local approvals, too — namely a conditional use permit from Boise County to start a commercial mine, and the normal planning approvals to build new structures on site.

“You can’t do too much too fast,” Walter said, but the mineral rights don’t expire. “That’s the beauty of a patented claim.”

Today, patented claims are rare things. A patent effectively privatizes a piece of once-public land. Congress put a moratorium on new patents in 1994, though existing claims can change hands.

Walter said he’s already gotten calls from “all over the country” about the property, including people interested in the mineral rights. While anyone could sift through tailings and find the odd piece of gold, there are very few people who could realistically reopen the tunnels to a commercial operation, he said. One tunnel, mostly hand-dug, runs some 5,000 feet into the hillside.

“There are certainly a lot of mines that were once very productive, and could be again,” Walter said. “But it’s not an easy business. Hard rock mining is a tough thing to do.”

The Mammoth Mine harkens back to Idaho City’s era as a gold rush boomtown, when it (briefly) became of the largest settlements in the Pacific Northwest. After gold was discovered in 1862, the now-small town ballooned to 7,000 residents, with another 25,000 living in the surrounding hills, according to the Idaho City Historical Society. When the bubble burst, the frontier town an hour’s drive from Boise shrunk back to around 500 people, which is roughly where it stands today.

As the crow flies, the Mammoth Mine property is only about 12 miles from Idaho City. But accessed by Summit Flat Road, which splits off of U.S. Highway 21 around Pilot Peak, it’s just under an hour from town by car — if you can get drive up to it at all. Between the comination of snowpack and rough-hewn roads, Walter said, “you can get to it half the year.”

“It sounds pretty romantic, to buy a gold mine,” Walter told the Idaho Statesman, “But once you get out there, and into the tunnels ... it loses its romance very quickly.”