Introductory Materials

Legal Information

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and John S. Livermore dated June 7, 1992. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with John S. Livermore requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

John Sealy Livermore, "Prospector, Geologist, Public Resource Advocate: Carlin Mine Discovery, 1961; Nevada Gold Rush, 1970s," an oral history conducted in 1992, 1997, and 2000 by Eleanor Swent and Maurice Fuerstenau, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000.

Cataloging Information

Livermore, John Sealy (b. 1918)
Geologist

Prospector, Geologist, Public Resource Advocate: Carlin Mine Discovery, 1961; Nevada Gold Rush, 1970s, 2000, xxiii, 241 pp.

Livermore family in California from 1850, Montesol Ranch, Redington, Oat Hill quicksilver mines; education: Miss Paul's School, San Francisco, Thacher School, Ojai, CA, Stanford and early training in Alaska; WWII experiences: USGS Strategic Minerals Program, Navy Civil Engineering Corps; geologist, 1946-52: El Paso Mines, CO, Humphreys Gold Corp., FL, Standard mine, NV; Newmont Mining Co., 1952-70: Resurrection, Iowa Gulch mines, CO; Cuajone, Peru; exploration in Turkey, Iran, Chile, Ireland, Spain; Ambrosia Lake, NM; Zellidja, Morocco; Algeria; Eureka, NV; Similkameen, BC; Carlin, NV, discovery, 1961; partner, Cordex Syndicate, from 1970: Pinson, Preble, Dee, Florida Canyon mines, NV; exploration, Colombia, Honduras, China; public service activities in Nevada: mining law mediation, Walker Lake conservation, Mackay School of Mines; developing water resources at Montesol Ranch; Corona mine, CA, reclamation; visit to Cuba, 1999-2000.

Introductions by Arthur A. Brant, Director of Research (retired), Newmont Exploration Co., and Andy B. Wallace, Exploration Manager, Cordex Exploration Co.

Interviewed in 1992, 1997, and 1999 by Eleanor Swent and in 1997 by Maurice Fuerstenau for the Western Mining in the Twentieth Century series. The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Preface

The oral history series on Western Mining in the Twentieth Century documents the lives of leaders in mining, metallurgy, geology, education in the earth and materials sciences, mining law, and the pertinent government bodies. The field includes metal, non-metal, and industrial minerals. In its tenth year the series numbers thirty-five volumes completed and others in process.

Mining has changed greatly in this century: in the technology and technical education; in the organization of corporations; in the perception of the national strategic importance of minerals; in the labor movement; and in consideration of health and environmental effects of mining.

The idea of an oral history series to document these developments in twentieth century mining had been on the drawing board of the Regional Oral History Office for more than twenty years. The project finally got underway on January 25, 1986, when Mrs. Willa Baum, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Bradley, Professor and Mrs. Douglas Fuerstenau, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Heimbucher, Mrs. Donald McLaughlin, and Mr. and Mrs. Langan Swent met at the Swent home to plan the project, and Professor Fuerstenau agreed to serve as Principal Investigator.

An advisory committee was selected which included representatives from the materials science and mineral engineering faculty and a professor of history of science at the University of California at Berkeley; a professor emeritus of history from the California Institute of Technology; and executives of mining companies. Langan Swent delighted in referring to himself as "technical advisor" to the series. He abetted the project from the beginning, directly with his wise counsel and store of information, and indirectly by his patience as the oral histories took more and more of his wife's time and attention. He completed the review of his own oral history transcript when he was in the hospital just before his death in 1992. As some of the original advisors have died, others have been added to help in selecting interviewees, suggesting research topics, and securing funds.

The project was presented to the San Francisco section of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) on "Old-timers Night," March 10, 1986, when Philip Read Bradley, Jr., was the speaker. This section and the Southern California section of AIME provided initial funding and organizational sponsorship.

The Northern and Southern California sections of the Woman's Auxiliary to the AIME (WAAIME), the California Mining Association, and the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America (MMSA) were early supporters. Later the National Mining Association became a sponsor. The project was significantly advanced by a generous bequest received in November 1997 upon the death of J. Ward Downey, UC Berkeley alumnus and early member of the mining series advisory committee. His own oral history was completed in 1992. Other individual and corporate donors are listed in the volumes. Sponsors to date include nineteen corporations, four foundations, and 113 individuals. The project is ongoing, and funds continue to be sought.

The first five interviewees were all born in 1904 or earlier. Horace Albright, mining lawyer and president of United States Potash Company, was ninety-six years old when interviewed. Although brief, this interview adds another dimension to a man known primarily as a conservationist.

James Boyd was director of the industry division of the military government of Germany after World War II, director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, dean of the Colorado School of Mines, vice president of Kennecott Copper Corporation, president of Copper Range, and executive director of the National Commission on Materials Policy. He had reviewed the transcript of his lengthy oral history just before his death in November, 1987. In 1990, he was inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame, Leadville, Colorado.

Philip Bradley, Jr., mining engineer, was a member of the California Mining Board for thirty-two years, most of them as chairman. He also founded the parent organization of the California Mining Association, as well as the Western Governors Mining Advisory Council. His uncle, Frederick Worthen Bradley, who figures in the oral history, was in the first group inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame in l988.

Frank McQuiston, metallurgist for the Raw Materials Division of the Atomic Energy Commission and vice president of Newmont Mining Corporation, died before his oral history was complete; thirteen hours of taped interviews with him were supplemented by three hours with his friend and associate, Harry M. Conger III.

Gordon Oakeshott, geologist, was president of the National Association of Geology Teachers and chief of the California Division of Mines and Geology.

These oral histories establish the framework for the series; subsequent oral histories amplify the basic themes. After over thirty individual biographical oral histories were completed, a community oral history was undertaken, documenting the development of the McLaughlin gold mine in the Napa, Yolo, and Lake Counties of California (the historic Knoxville mercury mining district), and the resulting changes in the surrounding communities. This comprises forty-three interviews.

Future researchers will turn to these oral histories to learn how decisions were made which led to changes in mining engineering education, corporate structures, and technology, as well as public policy regarding minerals. In addition, the interviews stimulate the deposit, by interviewees and others, of a number of documents, photographs, memoirs, and other materials related to twentieth century mining in the West. This collection is being added to The Bancroft Library's extensive holdings. A list of completed and in process interviews for the mining series appears at the end of this volume.

The Regional Oral History Office is under the direction of Willa Baum, division head, and under the administrative direction of The Bancroft Library.

Interviews were conducted by Malca Chall and Eleanor Swent.

Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley

January 1998

Western Mining in the Twentieth Century Oral History Series

Interviews Completed, April 2001

Interviews Completed, April 2001
• Horace Albright, Mining Lawyer and Executive, U.S. Potash Company, U.S. Borax, 1933-1962, 1989
• Samuel S. Arentz, Jr., Mining Engineer, Consultant, and Entrepreneur in Nevada and Utah, 1934-1992, 1993
• James Boyd, Minerals and Critical Materials Management: Military and Government Administrator and Mining Executive, 1941-1987, 1988
• Philip Read Bradley, Jr., A Mining Engineer in Alaska, Canada, the Western United States, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, 1988
• Catherine C. Campbell, Ian and Catherine Campbell, Geologists: Teaching, Government Service, Editing, 1989
• William Clark, Reporting on California's Gold Mines for the State Division of Mines and Geology, 1951-1979, 1993
• John Robert Clarkson, Building the Clarkson Company, Making Reagent Feeders and Valves for the Mineral Industry, 1935 to 1998, 1999
• Norman Cleaveland, Dredge Mining for Gold, Malaysian Tin, Diamonds, 1921-1966; Exposing the 1883 Murder of William Raymond Morley, 1995
• William E. Colby, Reminiscences (California mining lawyer), 1954
• Harry M. Conger, Prospector, Geologist, Public Resource Advocate: Carlin Mine Discovery, 1961; Nevada Gold Rush, 1970s, 2001
• James T. Curry, Sr., Metallurgist for Empire Star Mine and Newmont Exploration, 1932-1955; Plant Manager for Calaveras Cement Company, 1956-1975, 1990
• Donald Dickey, The Oriental Mine, 1938-1991, 1996
• J. Ward Downey, Mining and Construction Engineer, Industrial Management Consultant, 1936 to the 1990s, 1992
• Warren Fenzi, Junior Engineer to President, Director of Phelps Dodge, 1937 to 1984, 1996
• Hedley S. "Pete" Fowler, Mining Engineer in the Americas, India, and Africa, 1933-1983, 1992
• James Mack Gerstley, Executive, U.S. Borax & Chemical Corporation; Trustee, Pomona College; Civic Leader, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, 1991
• Robert M. Haldeman, Managing Copper Mines in Chile: Braden, CODELCO, Minerec, Pudahuel; Developing Controlled Bacterial Leaching of Copper from Sulfide Ores; 1941-1993, 1995
• John F. Havard, Mining Engineer and Executive, 1935-1981, 1992
• Wayne Hazen, Plutonium Technology Applied to Mineral Processing; Solvent Extraction; Building Hazen Research; 1940-1993, 1995
• George Heikes, Mining Geologist on Four Continents, 1924-1974, 1992
• Helen R. Henshaw, Recollections of Life with Paul Henshaw: Latin America, Homestake Mining Company, 1988
• Homestake Mine Workers, Lead, South Dakota, 1929-1993, interviews with Clarence Kravig, Wayne Harford, and Kenneth Kinghorn, 1995
• Lewis L. Huelsdonk, Manager of Gold and Chrome Mines, Spokesman for Gold Mining, 1935-1974, 1988
• William Humphrey, Mining Operations and Engineering Executive for Anaconda, Newmont, Homestake, 1950 to 1995, 1996
• Hugh C. Ingle, Jr., Independent Small Mines Operator, 1948 to 1999; Corona Mine, 2000
• James Jensen, Chemical and Metallurgical Process Engineer: Making Deuterium, Extracting Salines and Base and Heavy Metals, 1938-1990s, 1993
• Arthur I. Johnson, Mining and Metallurgical Engineer in the Black Hills: Pegmatites and Rare Minerals, 1922 to the 1990s, 1990
• G. Frank Joklik, Exploration Geologist, Developer of Mt. Newman, President and CEO of Kennecott, 1949-1996; Chairman, Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games Committee, 1997
• Evan Just, Geologist: Engineering and Mining Journal, Marshall Plan, Cyprus Mines Corporation, and Stanford University, 1922-1980, 1989
• Robert Kendall, Mining Borax, Shaft-Freezing in Potash Mines, U.S. Borax, Inc., 1954-1988, 1994
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume I, 1998
  • Anderson, James, "Homestake Vice President-Exploration"
  • Baker, Will, "Citizen Activist, Yolo County"
  • Birdsey, Norman, "Metallurgical Technician, McLaughlin Process Plant"
  • Bledsoe, Brice, "Director, Solano Irrigation District"
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume II, 1998
  • Cerar, Anthony, "Mercury Miner, 1935-1995"
  • Ceteras, John, "Organic Farmer, Yolo County"
  • Conger, Harry, "President, Chairman, and CEO, Homestake Mining Company, 1977 to 1994"
  • Corley, John Jay, "Chairman, Napa County Planning Commission, 1981 to 1985"
  • Cornelison, William, "Superintendent of Schools, Lake County" (Includes an interview with John A. Drummond, Lake County Schools Attorney)
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume III, 1998
  • Crouch, David, "Homestake Corporate Manager-Environmental Affairs"
  • Enderlin, Elmer, "Miner in Fifty-Eight Mines"
  • Fuller, Claire, "Fuller's Superette Market, Lower Lake"
  • Goldstein, Dennis, "Homestake Corporate Lawyer"
  • Guinivere, Rex, "Homestake Vice President-Engineering"
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume IV, 1998
  • Gustafson, Donald, "Homestake Exploration Geologist, 1975-1990"
  • Hanchett, Bonny Jean, "Owner and Editor, Clearlake Observer, 1955-1986"
  • Hickey, James, "Director of Conservation, Development, and Planning for Napa County, 1970 to 1990"
  • Jago, Irene, "The Jagos of Jago Bay, Clear Lake"
  • Jonas, James, "Lake County Fuel Distributor"
  • Koontz, Dolora, "Environmental Engineer, McLaughlin Mine, 1988-1995"
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume V, 1998
  • Kritikos, William, "Operator, Oat Hill Mine"
  • Landman, John, "Rancher, Morgan Valley"
  • Lyons, Roberta, "Journalist and Environmentalist"
  • Madsen, Roger, "Homestake Mechanical Engineer"
  • Magoon, Beverly, "Merchant and Craft Instructor, Lower Lake"
  • McGinnis, Edward, "Worker at the Reed Mine"
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume VI, 1999
  • Robert McKenzie, "McKenzies in Monticello, Berryessa Valley
  • Harold Moskowite, "Napa County Supervisor"
  • Marion Onstad, "Neighbor and Employee of the McLaughlin Mine, 1980-1995"
  • Ronald Parker, "Resident Manager of the McLaughlin Mine, 1988-1994"
  • Richard Stoehr, "Homestake Engineer and Geologist to Senior Vice-President and Director"
  • Joseph Strapko, "Exploration Geologist, McLaughlin Mine Discovery, 1978"
• The Knoxville Mining District, The McLaughlin Gold Mine, Northern California, Volume VII, 2000
  • Jack Thompson, "General Manager, McLaughlin Mine, 1981-1988"
  • Twyla Thompson, "County Supervisor, Yolo County, 1975-1985"
  • Avery Tindell, "Capay Valley Environmentalist"
  • John Turney, "McLaughlin Metallurgist: Pioneering Autoclaving for Gold"
  • Della Underwood, "Knoxville Rancher, McLaughlin Mine Surveyor"
  • Walter Wilcox, "County Supervisor, Lake County, 1979-1995"
  • Peter Scribner, "Boyhood at the Knoxville Mine, 1941-1944"
• Marian Lane, Mine Doctor's Wife in Mexico During the 1920s, 1996
• John Sealy Livermore, Prospector, Geologist, Public Resource Advocate: Carlin Mine Discovery, 1961; Nevada Gold Rush, 1970s, 2000
• J. David Lowell, Using Applied Geology to Discover Large Copper and Gold Mines in Arizona, Chile, and Peru, 1999
• Plato Malozemoff, A Life in Mining: Siberia to Chairman of Newmont Mining Corporation, 1909-1985, 1990
• Donald H. McLaughlin, Careers in Mining Geology and Management, University Governance and Teaching, 1975
• James and Malcolm McPherson, Brothers in Mining, 1992
• Frank Woods McQuiston, Jr., Metallurgist for Newmont Mining Corporation and U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1934-1982, 1989
• Gordon B. Oakeshott, The California Division of Mines and Geology, 1948-1974, 1988
• James H. Orr, An Entrepreneur in Mining in North and South America, 1930s to 1990s, 1995
• Vincent D. Perry, A Half Century as Mining and Exploration Geologist with the Anaconda Company, 1991
• Patrick Purtell, Maintenance and Management at the McLaughlin Mine, 1985 to 1997, 1999
• Carl Randolph, Research Manager to President, U.S. Borax & Chemical Corporation, 1957-1986, 1992
• John Reed, Pioneer in Applied Rock Mechanics, Braden Mine, Chile, 1944-1950; St. Joseph Lead Company, 1955-1960; Colorado School of Mines, 1960-1972, 1993
• Joseph Rosenblatt, EIMCO, Pioneer in Underground Mining Machinery and Process Equipment, 1926-1963, 1992
• Harry M. Conger III, Prospector, Geologist, Public Resource Advocate: Carlin Mine Discovery, 1961; Nevada Gold Rush, 1970s, 2001
• Eugene David Smith, Working on the Twenty-Mule Team: Laborer to Vice President, U.S. Borax & Chemical Corporation, 1941-1989, 1993
• Simon Strauss, Market Analyst for Non-ferrous Metals and Non-metallic Minerals, Journalist, Mining Corporation Executive, 1927-1994, 1995
• Langan W. Swent, Working for Safety and Health in Underground Mines: San Luis and Homestake Mining Companies, 1946-1988, 1995
• James V. Thompson, Mining and Metallurgical Engineer: the Philippine Islands; Dorr, Humphreys, Kaiser Engineers Companies; 1940-1990s, 1992
• William Wilder, Owner of One Shot Mining Company: Manhattan Mercury Mine, 1965-1981, 1996
• Alexander M. Wilson, Leading a Changing Utah Construction and Mining Company: Utah International, GE-Utah, BHP-Utah, 1954 to 1987, 2000

Interviews In Process

Interviews In Process
• Frank Aplan, metallurgist
• Dean Enderlin, "Mine Geologist, Reclamation Manager, McLaughlin Mine"
• Douglas Fuerstenau, metallurgist
• Guy Harris, Dow/mining chemicals
• Susan Harrison, "McLaughlin Natural Reserve"
• Raymond Krauss, "Environmental Manager, McLaughlin Mine"
• Milton Ward, mining executive

Acknowledgments

The Regional Oral History Office would like to express its thanks to the organizations and individuals whose encouragement and support have made possible The Western Mining in the Twentieth Century Series.

DONORS TO THE WESTERN MINING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ORAL HISTORY SERIES 1986-1999

• Organizations
  • American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers,
  • San Francisco, Southern California, and Black Hills Sections
  • Woman's Auxiliary to the AIME, Southern California and Northern California
  • Bechtel Foundation
  • California Mining Association
  • The Cleveland-Cliffs Foundation
  • The Jackling Fund of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America
  • National Mining Association
  • South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• Corporations
  • ASARCO
  • Bechtel Group Incorporated
  • BHP Minerals
  • Chemical Lime Company
  • The Clarkson Company
  • Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc.
  • Cyprus Amax Minerals Company
  • Dow Chemical Company
  • EIMCO Process Equipment Company
  • E. M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Inc.
  • Freeport-McMoRan
  • Hazen Research, Inc.
  • Hecla Mining Company
  • Homestake Mining Company
  • Kennecott Corporation
  • Krebs Engineers
  • Magma Copper Company
  • Newmont Mining Corporation
  • Pacific Gas & Electric Company
  • Phelps Dodge Corporation
  • United States Borax & Chemical Corporation
  • Wharf Resources, Limited
• The J. Ward Downey Bequest Fund
• Patrons
  • Frank F. Aplan
  • Charles and Lois Barber
  • Bechtel Foundation
  • James Boyd
  • Arthur C. Bradley
  • Catherine C. Campbell
  • Curtis Clarkson
  • J. Robert and Edna M. Clarkson
  • Norman Cleaveland
  • Rosemary and Harry M. Conger
  • Barbara H. and James T. Curry, Jr.
  • Donald Dickey
  • Wayne Dowdey
  • J. Ward and Alberta P. Downey
  • Mr. & Mrs. Warren Fenzi
  • Douglas and Margaret Fuerstenau
  • Launce E. Gamble
  • James M. Gerstley
  • Robert M. Haldeman
  • The Hearst Foundation, Inc.
  • Mrs. Paul C. Henshaw, in memory of her husband, Paul C. Henshaw
  • William A. Humphrey
  • James H. Jensen
  • Arthur I. Johnson
  • G. Frank Joklik
  • Arthur H. Kinneberg
  • Mrs. Lois B. Lippincott
  • John S. Livermore
  • J. David Lowell
  • Dean A. McGee
  • Mrs. Frank W. McQuiston, Jr., in memory of Frank W. McQuiston, Jr.
  • George B. Munroe
  • Gordon B. Oakeshott
  • Thomas and Margaret O'Neil
  • Vincent D. Perry
  • Plato Malozemoff Foundation
  • Public Resource Foundation
  • Carl L. Randolph
  • Joseph Rosenblatt
  • Berne Schepman
  • Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Stoehr
  • Langan and Eleanor Swent
  • Milton Ward
  • Mr. and Mrs. Alexander M. Wilson
• Individuals
  • Claude J. Artero
  • Rebecca Bender
  • Bruce A. Bolt
  • Clemence DeGraw Jandrey Boyd
  • James Brown Boyd, Harry Bruce Boyd, Douglas Cane Boyd, and Hudson Boyd in memory of James Boyd
  • Philip and Katherine Bradley
  • Albert T. Chandler
  • David J. Christie
  • William B. Clark
  • Mr. David Crouch
  • Nancy S. and James T. Curry, Sr.
  • Stanley Dempsey
  • Edward C. Dowling
  • Elisabeth L. Egenhoff
  • Christine Finney
  • H. S. Pete Fowler
  • Maurice and Joyce Fuerstenau
  • Louis R. Goldsmith
  • Donald L. Gustafson
  • Jayne K. Haldane
  • Kenneth N. Han
  • Guy H. Harris
  • Bonnie, Russell, and Steve Harford
  • James H. Hickey
  • Mason L. and Marie J. Hill
  • Gael Hodgkins
  • Sylvia Hochscheid, in memory of Robert E. Hochscheid
  • Mrs. Bruce S. Howard, in memory of Henry Harland Bradley
  • Lewis L. Huelsdonk
  • Ruth B. Hume
  • Howard Janin
  • Jack M. Jones
  • Alfred Juhl
  • Evan Just
  • Sheila Kelley
  • James C. Kimble
  • Kenneth Kinghorn
  • Noel W. Kirshenbaum
  • Nancy H. Landwehr
  • Carl F. Love
  • Plato Malozemoff
  • Sylvia C. McLaughlin
  • Sylvia C. McLaughlin, in memory of Jay Kimpston Swent
  • Frances B. Messinger
  • L. Arthur Norman, Jr.
  • Patrick O'Neill
  • K. Osseo-Asare
  • George F. Reed
  • John J. Reed
  • Richard W. Rees
  • Jane A. Rummel
  • Robert S. Shoemaker
  • Simon D. Strauss
  • John R. Struthers
  • Virginia Bradley Sutherland, in memory of Helen R. Henshaw
  • Jack Thompson
  • James V. Thompson
  • Twyla J. Thompson
  • John J. Trelawney
  • William I. Watson
  • Barbara A. Whitton in memory of William B. Whitton
  • William B. Whitton
  • Sheldon Wimpfen
  • Judy D. Woodward
• In Memory of Catherine C. Campbell
  • Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Averill, Jr. Richard Friedlander
  • Fenelon F. Davis
  • Richard Friedlander
  • Richard M. Stewart
• In Memory of Langan W. Swent
  • Marjorie D. Bjorlo
  • Christine W. S. Byrd
  • John and Dagmar Dern
  • Sylvia C. McLaughlin
  • Eleanor H. Swent
  • Jeannette F. Swent
  • Richard L. Swent
  • Regional Oral History Office Staff
• In Memory of William B. Clark
  • Fenelon Davis
  • Lowell Dygert
  • Mary G. Freedman
  • Marilyn Glover
  • Virginia Goldsmith
  • Barbara Henderson
  • John Matschek
  • Hilda Schramm
  • George Shutes
  • Barbara Vollmer
  • Mary Witt
  • Mary Woods
• In Memory of J. Ward Downey
  • Willa Baum
  • Douglas Fuerstenau
  • James Jensen
  • Eleanor H. Swent
• In Memory of Phillip R. Bradley, Jr.
  • Mr. and Mrs. John P. Austin
  • Gail and Heath Angelo, Jr.
  • Earl Beistline
  • The Claremont Book Club
  • Judge and Mrs. John S. Cooper
  • Professor Emeritus Gregory Grossman
  • Marily and Thomas Johnson
  • Remington and Jean Low
  • Sylvia C. McLaughlin
  • Rubye C. Reade
  • Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Shaw
  • Judge and Mrs. John Sparrow
  • Eleanor H. Swent
  • Dr. and Mrs. Edward E. Waller, Jr.

Introduction by Andy B. Wallace

I appreciate this opportunity to write about John Livermore. I am only one of a number of geologists that John helped along in their careers. I have struggled to write something meaningful, and have decided to simply tell a little of my story with John, and trust the reader to know that he has helped others, in many of the same ways.

I first met John Livermore on a cold winter day at Hasbrouck Mountain, just south of Tonopah, Nevada. A few months earlier, Paul Dircksen, a geologist for Cordex, had wandered into my student office at the University of Nevada, looking for a grad student to do some petrographic work on rock samples from Hasbrouck. I happened to be the only one in the office. I did the work and wrote a report to Cordex. In the work I noted an unusual mineral (adularia) that seemed to be associated with gold mineralization. At Paul's request, I accompanied a U.S. Geological Survey geologist (Bill Silberman) to visit Hasbrouck a few months after writing the report.

Hasbrouck is a round knob of a mountain, encircled with drill roads much in the style of a barber pole. Paul, Bill and I were working along the top of the hill when we noticed a tall, lanky gentleman quickly climbing up toward us in very long strides. That turned out to be John. After a very brief introduction, John began firing out questions, many of which had been suggested by my report which he had apparently read in detail. He was very interested in adularia. After an hour of this, John abruptly said good-bye and moved off down the hill. I remember feeling very drained and very stupid, as I couldn't answer even half his questions. I doubted I would see him again.

A few months later, Paul called and asked if I would be interested in a short-term mapping job for Cordex near Beatty, Nevada. I took this job and mapped at the Stirling

prospect in July and August. I heard little from anyone at Cordex until John Livermore arrived in Beatty one night to review my field work. We spent the next two days in the field. I was anxious to show John what I thought was important, but he had his own priorities. I remember slogging up one hill, chattering all the way only to realize John was across the canyon looking at rock outcrops I didn't think were important. The only good thing that happened that day was our examination of what I had mapped as a fault, with weak evidence. We cut a drill site the next day with a bulldozer. Luckily the dozer trench exposed a rusty fault zone about where I had predicted it. That impressed John and led to my getting more work from him--in fact my whole career really came from that work at Stirling.

I mapped properties for John for the next several years. It was a great job, partly because John took time to come out from Reno and carefully review my work in the field. Most young geologists don't get that kind of help from a senior exploration person. He was an excellent teacher.

John believed in leading by example. He was always first at work and last to leave. We worked long hours, while in the field particularly, but no one really minded because we knew the "boss" was working longer. He taught us to treat expense account money from the company like it was our own. We learned to take pride in being frugal and always maximizing exploration effort per dollar spent. He taught us by example to live a healthy lifestyle of hard work, exercise, and proper eating. John is eighty years old now, and could easily pass for sixty as he is still vigorous and healthy of body and mind.

All this time I knew nothing of John, the person. He never talked of personal things. I gathered from office gossip that he was from the Bay Area. I well remember the day the San Francisco Examiner published a Sunday feature article on the Livermore family. I was amazed to learn about his family and their many accomplishments, particularly in public service. John was terribly embarrassed by it and remains to this day a very private person who never wants the limelight.

Over the next ten years, I continued to work with John at Cordex. I became restless as I grew older, and John recognized that I wanted to manage the exploration effort. I know now that he was not ready to leave Cordex, but he did so to clear the way for me to take over. That was a very unselfish act and one that I will always appreciate.

I believe John was happiest when in the field, working in the solitary and lonely way of the exploration geologist. I have watched him get involved in public service and the political arena over the last few years, striving to give back to the mining industry and his country. I know how hard it is for him, and I know if he had his druthers, he would choose to be a simple field geologist, trekking the mountains of the world.

John trained me to be an exploration manager, but the most important things he taught me are honesty and integrity in dealing with property owners. I never saw John do anything remotely underhanded. He always took the high road. Once, soon after John let me start negotiating deals, I cut a particularly tough agreement with a group of inexperienced lessors. When John reviewed the terms, he pointed out that with a few changes both sides could be made happy, and we could start with a good relationship rather than bad feelings. That cost our company some short-term gain, but I believe we came out better in the long run. He has an impeccable reputation in our business, and gets the highest compliment from other geologists--he is known as a "straight shooter."

John gained financial success from his hard work in exploration, but he never changed in any way that I can see. He still lives in the same apartment in Reno, wears modest clothes, and is always driving the most fuel efficient, practical car he can find. He treats all people with respect, and doesn't have an ounce of arrogance. He is in the process of spreading his financial rewards throughout the west. He has funded and still supports major programs at Stanford and the University of Nevada, Reno. He never wants credit and usually is an "anonymous donor" if people let him have his way.

I can't ever repay John for being my mentor. It is difficult to repay someone who never wants any credit for being what he is. I am glad to have the opportunity to write this introduction, and to say a few things which I hope properly reflect the views of many of John's colleagues.

Reno, Nevada

March 1999

Introduction by Arthur Brant

I have the honor of presenting the introduction to the documentation of John S. Livermore's remarkable mining, resource, and humanitarian contributions.

My association and friendship dates from 1952 to the present and has been continuous but intermittent in that our domiciling and activities were in related but different aspects.

This introduction will concentrate on the man, his character, his strengths, behavior under stress, patience, treatment of associates, continuity despite reversals. To me it is a remarkable example of how business and operations should be, and can be, conducted.

As an aside, the most efficient system is based on integrity and honesty, not on how to beat the system. Associates and employees respond best to respect, continuity, the integrity of the operations, and the integrity and effort of the leader.

John Livermore is a quiet, mannerly, honest industrious example, not the blatant, dissonant, sloppy television hero.

As I recall, it was a late spring or early summer afternoon at the old United Verde Extension buildings in Jerome, Arizona, where our group was experimenting with geophysical exploration techniques and searching as well for new mineralization, when John Livermore came into the main room. It was a well mannered entry, purposeful but a little hesitant, bearing straight, dress neat. He stopped before me, tall, relaxed, mannerly, saying in good enunciation he had been released from army service and could we use a geologist.

I had had much experience in judging humans, as a professor teaching several of the returning soldiers, coaching ice hockey teams, men and women, at Toronto, Princeton and Lawrenceville, Berlin, Poland, and Garmisch.

I concluded without doubt this was one gentleman we should hire and recommended he go see Dr. Hal Norman at Leadville, Colorado, where we operated a small mine and active exploration.

This was the start of John's Newmont Mining association 1952--to the Carlin Gold discovery in 1961--to resignation from Newmont and formation of the Cordex Exploration and Development Syndicate.

In the interim, 1951-61 on behalf of Newmont Mining and President Fred Searls, John was active in worldwide exploration. Following Leadville (Resurrection Mine) and Cripple Creek area, Colorado, and the Arizona [type] porphyry copper Cuajone discovery in South Peru just north of the known operations at AS&R's Toquepala and Quellaveco, came a stint in the south Turkey mountains and Iran, far distant from the Grecian culture and biblical history of the eastern Mediterranean cities. One after another our men acquired hepatitis. John included, and our in Canada geologist Platt Benedict. Though associated with Cuajone, I did not run into John in this period.

Apparently John was asked to work out of the New York office, 1957, and on assignment spent time in Venezuela and Chile, and in Morocco and Algeria. I saw John in North Africa returning from one of my frequent trips to South Africa. We had a small operating mine near Oujda. The ore (lead-zinc) was in Algeria but the shaft was in Morocco, a tunnel (drift) running across the border into Algeria. Escorted Algerian workers crossed daily to Morocco and returned escorted to Algeria. John and I had a pleasant day reminiscing and seeing the countryside. John as usual was buoyant and interested in the country and its activities and vineyards to the south. The next day I spent with the Caid of Fez seeing the old walled city and absorbing its history.

Events were leading to the Carlin discovery. Nevada's gold potential was recognized, originally by the D. W. Vandenburg report of 1939, which also mentions fine gold not visible in the gold pan. Additional ore on strike at depth was discovered at Getchell indicating that such occurrences might occur at depth without outcropping. Such was the Carlin discovery. Sub-pan gold with depth continuity suggested, indicated and inferred by John Livermore and Alan Coope in 1961.

John's next stop for the next eight years was manager of geological exploration in Canada, always an active area. Similkameen in B.C. was discovered, Sherritt Gordon was merged, North Manitoba, work at Granduc north B.C. was continued, and effort was made in Ireland and Spain. Ireland was interesting, so historic, the remaining Celtic foothold, so hospitable, so talkative, a bit difficult terminating at night, and reactivating in the morning.

John eventually left Newmont to set up his own exploration organization, as many geologists have done, to concentrate on area and decision, and to experience development after discovery, e.g. Leo Miller of Texas Gulf in Colorado, and Dave Lowell in Arizona and Peru. At any rate, the Cordex Syndicate was formed in 1970, John, Pete Galli and later G. W. DeLaMare and in 1984 Andy Wallace.

One of the first prospects was the Pinson Area, six miles south of Getchell. John found out that DeLaMare had at one time held the property but had let it lapse. John contacted DeLaMare to be sure he was not usurping, and a lasting friendship ensued. Later as a Cordex member DeLaMare, by geologic evidence, found the Preble Mine property twelve miles to the south of Getchell.

The Cordex Syndicate and Cordex Exploration prospered, the Florida Canyon Mine and Dee Mine resulting in the eighties. But note it was ten years after Cordex formation before John allowed Cordex to be active in any Newmont area.

I mention one other item, John's trip to China with Columbia Professor John Kuo, my longtime friend. Deposits visited exhibited limited tonnage potential.

We now touch on John's public service activities, continuing and considerable over time. John's long term interest in the rejuvenation of Walker Lake, and public support thereto. The Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada, Reno, and the DeLaMare Memorial Engineering Library to be dedicated October 15, 1997.

The Arthur Brant Chair of Geophysics intended to develop drill hole exploration systems to give depth and lateral extended coverage. The purpose unfortunately aborted in that a suitable personage was not forthcoming, but eventually accepted into the future by Dr. Jim Taranik with his superb background. Though disappointed John at no time reviled the fates, or lost purpose.

The Montesol family ranch, some ten miles north of Calistoga toward Middletown, covers 7,000 acres and the 4000-foot-high hilltop of Mt. St. Helena west of the highway beyond the area where Robert Louis Stevenson lived and recuperated. The St. Helena mountaintop is the vision-free location of short wave transmission relays for several senders.

East of the highway is the main ranch area. Hills and wooded areas lie to the east with old mercury mines, sloping to orchards and market garden areas and emerging springs before the highway.

Each of the five sons of this remarkable family has built a serviceable and pleasant, but not a lavish, abode scattered through the area between the easterly hills and the highway. A swimming pool and tennis court are present, and homes for the relations and for the maintenance manager. John (third son) and Putnam (fourth son), a gracious and thoughtful lawyer living in San Francisco, shoulder most of the decision making and enterprise operations.

Sources of income are limited, select timber cutting in the high ground to the east, hunting area permits in the east, and walnut orchards, Christmas trees, vegetable gardens in the flat slopes to the west, and more productive, the pure spring water emerging from the east slopes in the lower ground to the west. Care is taken to avoid sedimentation (a problem) and the water is bottled and shipped. Also the rentals for the transmission towers on Mt. St. Helena provide appreciable income. But it is doubtful if the sources cover the considerable upkeep and taxation. But to visit and stay there in the still natural surroundings apart from the throbbing milieu is a rejuvenation.

So this is an introduction and background to a remarkable and admirable man of a remarkable family rooted in the best of family and traditions. Capable, patient and controlled despite some setbacks, never losing temper, never blaming fate, always trying to improve conditions and life for better, and for others. Of high honor and integrity, always the simplest and most efficient policy.

Tucson, AZ

October 1997

Interview History

John Livermore, the geologist credited with discovering the Carlin Mine which started the Nevada gold rush of the 1960s, was of course on the initial list of prospective interviewees for the oral history series on Western Mining in the Twentieth Century. The advisor who first proposed his name cautioned that Livermore's elusive habits could make interviewing him difficult, but persistence would add a valuable chapter to the documentation of contemporary mining. When the interviews began, John said he expected the most exciting part of his career to be in the future; indeed, as this is being written, he has formed a new exploration partnership, bought a new 4-wheel-drive vehicle, and is happily calling himself a prospector once more. During the years that this interview was being processed, his business card changed, identifying him with Cordex, Rayrock, or Public Resource Associates, but one designation remained constant--"Geologist." When forced to stay in town, he stayed fit for field work by not using the elevator to his 18th-floor apartment.

The letter inviting him to participate in the project was sent in December 1990 after he visited our office and agreed to be interviewed. In October 1991 he sent a resume to aid my research. The first interviews were held on 28 May, 7 June, and 31 August 1992, at my home in Piedmont as John was en route from the Oakland airport to Montesol, his ranch home in Napa County. The fourth interview was conducted by Maurice Fuerstenau, Echo Bay Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Nevada-Reno, at the offices of Public Resource Associates in Reno on 20 January 1997. I conducted the fifth interview at my home on 12 April 1997, and the sixth interview at Montesol on 29 July 1997. The final brief interview was conducted in his office in Reno on 14 January 2000.

Notwithstanding his reluctance to submit to the constraints of the oral history process, John Livermore was articulate and forthcoming as an interviewee, and enthusiastic about the overall goal of the project, to preserve mining history. He shared his own Napa County historical research and took me on tours of the Carlin area and the Dee Mine in Nevada as well as the Corona Mine and Knoxville Mining District in Napa County.

In his interview, he tells of growing up in the legendary Livermore family, and of its mining heritage, of geology studies at Stanford, working for the USGS [United States Geological Survey], and serving in World War II in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater. After the war, he obtained a commercial pilot's license and worked as a contract miner as well as a mine geologist. A period spent working for a friend at the Standard Mine in Nevada convinced him that there was a potential for gold discoveries in Nevada, an idea which he clung to through years of working as a geologist for Newmont Mining Company in Canada, Africa, and Europe; he became president of Newmont's Canadian subsidiary before leaving to work as an independent exploration geologist.

Geologist M.A. Kaufman, in his memoir, Mountains of Ore and Rivers of Gold, says that the Carlin discovery was "undoubtedly a masterpiece of geological work." John Livermore's own account reveals the painstaking, tedious study and work that were involved. This adds another dimension to the official Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology report and many magazine and newspaper articles on this topic which have been written through the years.

He tells in his oral history of forming exploration ventures and developing a number of major gold mines in Nevada and elsewhere. In addition to the Carlin discovery, he has had other significant successes. He has been a generous and usually anonymous supporter of many cultural and charitable projects in his adopted state of Nevada as well as his native California. Through his Public Resource Associates, he supports activities to protect or enhance the environment. He has also been an active mediator in mining industry negotiations regarding the federal General Mining Law. He was one of eight inductees (and the only living one) inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame in 2000. He has also been admitted to the American Mining Hall of Fame of the Southwest Mining Foundation, and is the only person to be honored in both halls of fame.

John is very tall, 6' 5", and handsome; during the years that this oral history was in process, he passed his eightieth birthday and began at last to show some trace of gray hair. A bachelor, he is much interested in his nieces and nephews and their children. He has an apartment in Reno and a house at Montesol, the family ranch near Calistoga, California, but is not often found at either of these homes. He maintains offices in Reno and San Francisco, where messages may be left. He seldom writes or answers letters, but usually returns phone calls. He doesn't carry a briefcase; many papers are kept in his car, along with his geologist's pick and a suitcase which is never unpacked. He has a prodigious memory and never referred to notes during the interviews. In an article in New Yorker magazine, April 24, 1989, entitled "Invisible Gold", John Seabrook wrote of John Livermore, "Despite his talent for finding ore deposits, he is forever forgetting and losing things.... Nevertheless, he has a phenomenal memory for rocks."

The tapes were transcribed in the Regional Oral History Office, lightly edited, and in August 1996 a partial transcript was sent to John Livermore for review. In May 1997 the transcript of the fourth interview was sent to both Maurice Fuerstenau and John Livermore for review. Fuerstenau reviewed it and returned it within a month with no changes. John Livermore's transcript was returned in March 1998 with a few small additions and some changes, most of which were to consolidate duplicated material. The interviews were corrected, amended, and indexed at our office. A final typed transcript was sent to John Livermore for further review which resulted in minor changes and some deletion of repeated material. The tapes are deposited in The Bancroft Library and are available for study. Supplementary documents in The Bancroft Library include reports by J. Alan Coope on the discovery of the Carlin Mine.

Introductions were provided by colleagues Arthur A. Brant, retired director of research for Newmont Mining Company, and Andy B. Wallace, Livermore's partner in Cordex Exploration.

John Livermore is the third of the five distinguished Livermore brothers to complete an oral history for the Regional Oral History Office. His brother Norman "Ike" Livermore was interviewed in 1983 about his experiences as a packer in the High Sierra and as a director of the Sierra Club, and his service as Secretary for Resources for California during Ronald Reagan's governorship. His brother George Livermore in an oral history completed in 2000 documents Livermore family history and his career as an architect in San Francisco.

The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to record the lives of persons who have contributed significantly to the history of California and the West. The office is a division of The Bancroft Library and is under the direction of Willa K. Baum.

June 2000

Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley

---

I Family Background

---

Great-Grandfather Horatio Gates Livermore, 1850

Swent

You were just saying that you represent the fourth generation in the family that has had a connection with mining.

Livermore

In California, in the West, yes. My great-grandfather came out from Boston. They weren't mining back there. I'm not sure what business he was in in Boston, actually.

But anyway, I think it started in California with my great-grandfather, who came out in 1850. He started out in 1849, but he got held up somehow or other in Utah, like a lot of people, I guess, so he didn't actually make it to California until later. And he was not a young person; he was in his fifties, I think. And the unusual part about him was, he came out before his own children. Usually it's the other way around: the young people came out and brought their parents out. But he was quite an enterprising fellow, and he came out and settled in Big Bar, I believe, on the American River above Georgetown, and tried some placering up there.

But, I guess like most people who came out here, he didn't make his fortune, and he gave up on mining fairly early. Then he moved on to Georgetown and he got into the logging business. At one point, actually, he was a state senator.

Then, later--this is kind of interesting--his son came out, but he was smart. He didn't come out until he had an assured job in San Francisco. He worked for a drug company called the Redington Company in Boston. They had opened a

---

branch office in San Francisco, so he came out in 1856, and started working for this company.

Grandfather Horatio Putnam Livermore

Swent

What was this grandfather's name?

Livermore

My great-grandfather was Horatio Gates Livermore, and my grandfather was Horatio Putnam Livermore.

Swent

Horatio Gates Livermore and Horatio Putnam Livermore; wonderful New England names, aren't they?

Livermore

They are, yes.

Swent

So he worked for the Redington Drug Company.

Livermore

Yes, and it was interesting, because when he came out, his father was up in Georgetown. It took a long time for them to get together. I think it was something like six months before they finally got together.

Swent

Well, it wasn't easy. That was a long ways away.

Livermore

Right. But then, my grandfather, through this drug company--one of the products they were selling was mercury. This was used, of course, in the mines to amalgamate gold and silver. So an opportunity came along where he decided, rather than just brokering mercury, to try to acquire a source of mercury.

The Redington Mercury Mine

Livermore

So he got interested and involved in the development of a mine up in Napa County called the Redington Mine, which had been purchased from the XLCR in the 1860s. That was quite a profitable mine. His brother, who was Charles Livermore, actually managed the mine.

The interesting thing is, this mine is really not very far from our present ranch; it's only about ten miles away as the crow flies.

---

A lot of their marketing for mercury was in the Virginia City, Nevada, mines for use in amalgamation. In Virginia City, they opened a branch office and my great-uncle, Charles Livermore, went there in 1863, I think. He had a small apothecary store there, in partnership with a Mr. Rice, which didn't last very long.

Great-Uncle Charles Livermore; The Livermore Furnace

Livermore

I guess it was after that that he went down and started managing the Redington Quicksilver Mine. He was an interesting fellow, because he was kind of an inventor; although not trained as an engineer, he tried to develop new methods of recovery of mercury. In fact, he designed a certain type of furnace which was called the Livermore furnace, which is written up in the literature as a kind of modification of the type of furnace they had for roasting the mercury ore.

So anyway, that was really the first real mining venture in my family, that was successful, at least. But that sort of played out in the 1880s. When Virginia City declined, then the mercury market petered out. I think the ore body petered out, too, so the mine was closed down.

Swent

Was there any connection with the mercury mines down at New Almaden?

Livermore

No. I think they were active at that time, of course, and New Almaden was a really big one. Redington was a good mine; it was quite rich. For about ten years or so it was quite profitable, but it didn't have the total production that the New Almaden Mine did. The Oat Hill Mine, which we own at the present time--it's just ten miles away--was an even larger producer, actually.

Swent

Ten miles away from what?

Livermore

From the Redington.

Swent

And you still have that?

Livermore

Yes, and that was actually discovered in 1872 and operated until 1910, and later in the thirties and forties, so that would be another period, you might say, in our history.

---

The Oat Hill came along much later, when my father bought the property adjoining our ranch. But we just leased that, and we weren't actually operating the mine like my grandfather was. So that was really the only mining venture until I came along.

---

Swent

Please tell more about the Redington Mine.

Livermore

Knox and Osborn were the two early ones up there. The Knox-Osborn furnace, of course, I think they invented that. The XLCR was staked in June, 1862. Discovery was in 1861. They came in very shortly after that, within the next couple of years. [reading from a document] Most of their stock was bought by the Redington Company and Livermore. They were partners. This was H.P. Actually, of course, we could say a lot more about H.P. too. We could just go on and on forever.

Swent

This is your chance to get it in the record, John.

Livermore

Well, George [Livermore] has done one [oral history] and I always thought this was more of the mining career. A lot of this old history has been written up a number of times.

Swent

All right. Wasn't the Redington also called the XLCR?

Livermore

It was originally called the XLCR.

Swent

Somebody told me the L in XLCR was for Livermore, so I think he was already involved at an early stage.

Livermore

Let me go through this. I did some very recent stuff in here. In 1862 the claim was staked by Redington et al. That was that great big claim. Then they came in later; after the 1872

---

Mining Law, they came in an relocated it with the proper claims, 1500 by 600. That was in 1875, H. P. Livermore. That was a restake of the earlier one in 1862.

Swent

It says it was in the Quicksilver District.

Livermore

The mine was called the Redington.

Swent

Sometimes it was called the Boston, wasn't it?

Livermore

That was later. The Oat Hill company (called Napa Consolidated Quicksilver Mining Company) took over the Knoxville mine after Livermore and Redington sold. The company was headquartered in Boston and was often referred to as the Boston Company. Actually, I was down at the [Napa County] court house and got some interest-ing stuff. I keep going back and forth [from Reno to Napa]; every time I go by the court house I stop in. One of the early books, unfortunately, the first claim book, they have taken in to the printer to be redone so it is not available. [leafs through notes]

Here is the deed from Knox to Livermore in 1863. Claim located in June, 1862, known as the Lake Mine. That was the first name of it, the Lake Mining Company.

I was just in the court house recently and I traced it all out. I guess you're right; he was in it already with the XLCR.

X was for Knox, C for Charles Osborn, L for Livermore, and R for Redington.

Swent

Was there a Redington person?

Livermore

Oh, yes. He was sent out as the son--I think young Redington was sent out to San Francisco. He established the Redington Company in San Francisco and H.P. came out to work for him. So they were partners. And actually I guess he started out as an employee, but he was a smart fellow and I don't know what kind of resources he had, but eventually he became a partner. Redington was the senior guy and H.P. was sort of working his way up; I don't know the details on that. So Redington for a long time was the lead man and they were in partnership. For instance, down in Bakersfield they were also in partnership together, so they were in partnership in a lot of different things.

But then of course at some point I think H.P. sort of took over the Redington Mine because his brother was managing it, so Redington was a senior partner, always in the picture.

They purchased the mine from Knox and Osborn, I guess. The people even before Knox and Osborn staked the first claim. I have that in here somewhere. Did you get that in your research?

---

Swent: No, I haven't gone back that far.

Livermore

I of course try to go back. I always like to go back to the original prospector, being a prospector myself; I always like to know who the first people on the ground were. Okay, here it is: [reading] "The original claim was staked in December 16, 1861, by Seth Dunham and L. D. Jones." But neither of them are in the XLCR, so they must have been bought out early by Knox and Osborn.

Swent

December, 1861, and then the XLCR was June, 1862, so that's only six months later.

Livermore

Yes, it all happened pretty quick. And it's interesting that H.P. must have gotten onto it very soon after discovery; I don't know how he happened to hear about it, but--.

Swent

Do you want to say any more about the apothecary shop in Virginia City?

Livermore

He was in partnership with Rice. My great-uncle Charles went there, established the store in 1863 in partnership with Rice; it was called Rice and Livermore.

They sold all sorts of patent remedies, paints, oils.

Swent

And assay supplies. That was interesting. You could tell more about that shop.

Livermore

Yes, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

Swent

I think you ought to say more about the Oat Hill Mine.

Livermore

It wasn't discovered until 1872; it was later. We purchased the property in the late 1920s and it did operate again in the 1940s when we leased to Gould. And then later it was operated by Bill Kritikos when the price of mercury went up again in the 1960s.

Swent

Did you go out and visit the mine?

Livermore

Oh, yes, we used to go out and visit when it was operating during the war. I remember going out there and they had a big vat of mercury and we would stick our hands in and just play with that mercury. Of course now, everybody says it's so dangerous that you can't even touch mercury; that's kind of ridiculous, of course.

---

Father Norman B. Livermore, Sr.

Livermore

My father was not involved in mines really except indirectly. He was a civil engineer. He was involved in construction and hydraulic projects; general engineering.

Swent

He lived in San Francisco most of the time?

Livermore

He was born in Oakland. Do you know where the Claremont Country Club is?

Swent

Yes.

Livermore

That's where he was born. Then they moved to San Francisco.

Swent

And his name?

Livermore

He was Norman B. Livermore, Sr.

Swent

And you were born in San Francisco?

Livermore

Yes, in 1918, a war baby, born while my father was in France. We lived in San Francisco until 1930, and then we moved to Marin County.

Swent

When did your father get involved in ranching?

Livermore

My grandfather bought the ranch in 1880, as a matter of fact. My grandmother had tuberculosis, and at that time there was a TB sanitarium up there. It was up out of the fog zone, and in those days the only cure for tuberculosis was sunshine and rest. The sanitarium was run by a very interesting man by the name of Dr. Blake, who was one of the very early doctors in California. He did a lot of early medical research, and was president of the California Academy of Sciences at one time before it was in Golden Gate Park.

So my grandmother went up there, and actually died there, up at the ranch, at a fairly young age. My grandfather first bought eight acres there and liked the area, and after she died, he remarried. He liked the area so much he gradually just started acquiring more land. Then my father bought more land, and so on.

Over the years, we just enlarged the place, but it started there in 1880. So we've been there well over a hundred years now, which is quite a while.

---

Swent

Was there any talk of mining in your family when you were a child?

Livermore

Well, there always was. I think while my father was a civil engineer--I think he felt like a lot of people that mining was kind of a boom-and-bust business. I think he was always interested in it, but I don't think he ever wanted to invest in mining. He thought it was really too uncertain to raise a family on. So he never really dabbled in mining too much, although he was a director of Natomas Company which had extensive placer mining interests. He was in the machinery business, and he used to sell big equipment, steam shovels and things like that. He sold equipment to the mines. Railroad locomotives; he was the distributor for big railroad locomotives and steam shovels and things like that. So he had a little bit of involvement in mining.

I remember he used to talk about going over to the mines at Tonopah, Nevada, selling things. But he never got personally involved in mining.

But he always was interested in them, and I guess I sort of heard about mining. We had a mine on our property, so it always intrigued me. It seemed like kind of a natural thing. While I was at Stanford I got interested in geology and mining engineering.

---

II Education and Early Training

Thacher School, Ojai, California, 1932 to 1935

Swent

Where did you go to school before Stanford?

Livermore

After Miss Paul's I went to the Damon School in San Francisco and Tamalpais School in San Rafael, and then to the Thacher School down in Ojai Valley, in southern California. Private school.

Swent

Was there good science instruction there?

Livermore

Very good, yes. Excellent school. It's an unusual school, because everybody had a horse. So we would all do a lot of horseback riding and camping.

Swent

Good training for an outdoor life?

Livermore

That's right. So I got used to an outdoor life, at school and up at the ranch. I soon decided that I wanted some career that would be in the outdoors. That's how I just sort of gradually got into geology.

Stanford University, 1936 to 1940

Professor of Geology Aaron Waters

Swent

Who were some of your teachers at Stanford?

Livermore

Aaron Waters was one of the teachers who I thought a lot of. I think he had more to do with getting me into geology; he was a wonderful lecturer and quite a remarkable man. I actually

---

started off in engineering; then I started taking a few geology courses, and I really found I was more interested in the exploration side of mining rather than the operating. He got me a job with the U.S. Geological Survey when I was out of school, and it was an interesting start.

Mike Kildale was one of the other professors. He taught economic geology and summer geology. Ben Page, who's an amazing guy. He's still there as an emeritus professor. Gosh, he must be over eighty years old.

---

Professor of History Wallace Sterling

Swent

You mentioned a special history course with Wallace Sterling; what was that?

Livermore

Well, we always had to take a required course in Western Civilization; every freshman had to take that. And some were selected on some basis--I don't remember exactly the basis--to have these smaller special studies classes as part of the course, and I think one quarter I was involved in one of those smaller seminar classes out at Wallace's house and you know he was a remarkable teacher. I never thought at the time he was going to become president [of Stanford].

---

Swent

Did you have any particularly interesting summer jobs or field courses?

Livermore

I had some interesting jobs. Even before Stanford, when I was in high school, I worked in the Sierra Nevada packing mules.

My oldest brother, Norman, was in the mule packing business.

He got very fascinated with this. So I worked for him as a packer--not for him, but for the same outfit that he was associated with. So that was an interesting experience in the summertime.

---

Oil Reconnaissance in Alaska, 1938

Livermore

Then, when I was in college, I had an opportunity to go to southwestern Alaska on an oil exploration party. That got me a little more interested in geology. I had hardly taken any geology courses at that time.

That was 1938. And it was interesting, because they were doing a lot of reconnaissance along the coast, and in those days there was no helicopter to move supplies. We were crossing a lot of rivers, along the edge of glaciers there. The country is very wet, and we couldn't use horses.

So the only way to haul supplies was on your back. There were six of us; we were the human pack mules. We had to move about a ton of stuff from camp to camp, so our job was to move all that stuff on our backs, which was quite an experience.

Swent

Was this for an oil company?

Livermore

This was a joint venture of Union Oil, Tidewater Associated, and Standard of California. I really enjoyed that. We saw some beautiful country, and had a lot of experiences with bears and so on.

Then the summer after that, I worked in the Ventura Oil Fields. That was 1939.

Ventura Oilfields, 1939

Swent

What company was that?

Livermore

That was with the Tidewater Associated.

Swent

What did you do there?

Livermore

We were digging ditches. [laughter] That was a good workout. It was blazing hot there; about 110 degrees in the shade. At that time they used steam boilers to run the drill rig. We were digging ditches for pipelines to provide steam for these boilers. The combination of the normal heat and the heat from the boilers--boy, it was something. But I enjoyed it; it was good hard physical work.

Swent

And they needed Stanford geology students to do this?

---

Livermore

Well, yes. [laughter] Well, that was good experience for me. I wasn't a geologist then. Then they wanted me to go to work as a roughneck on one of the drill rigs. I was sort of tempted, but I decided to go back to school.

Summer Geology with Professor Mike Kildale, 1940

Livermore

Then the next summer, in 1940, I had summer geology. That was with Mike Kildale. In those days, they would split geology: half on the soft rocks, the oil type of rocks, and the second half on the hard rocks. We went down to King City and were mapping an area including the Monterey formation the first half of the summer.

And then the second half, we went to Nevada, up near the Winnemucca area, and we mapped a mine there, doing a large map of the surface geology and underground workings. That was very good experience. Stanford has always had a good, very strong field course in geology that lasted the whole summer. It wasn't just three or four weeks like a lot of the courses are today. We did surveying and triangulation, plus very thorough underground mapping.

Swent

What was the mine that you mapped?

Livermore

It was called the West Coast Mine, outside of Winnemucca. It was a lead-zinc-silver mine. It was actually operating then, but it didn't operate very long. It turned out that it wasn't economic. At the time, it looked pretty good.

Swent

Had it been mapped before?

Livermore

No, it hadn't been mapped at all.

Swent

So this was more than just a little exercise for you.

Livermore

It was a nice gift for the mining company, who ended up with a good geological map, both surface and underground. That was very interesting; I really learned a lot.

---

The Getchell Deposit, Nevada

Livermore

As part of this course, we visited a number of operating mines in the Winnemucca area. One particular mine which attracted my attention was the Getchell Mine, which at that time was a very successful open pit gold mine. I was interested in the story of how the deposit was discovered.

 

The original Getchell outcrop was a very large, bold mass of silicified iron-stained material, which usually would catch a prospector's eye.

The story was that it was right on a main trail that a lot of prospectors and other people had passed for years, and they would bang off chunks of rock and crush them up and pan them, which was the standard way of prospecting in those days, and they never would get any "colors" of gold. This went on for quite a few years.

But somebody had the bright idea much later in the thirties to send a sample in for assay. Well, it turned out there was gold in this rock, and this big mass of silicified material was all gold ore. But the gold was so fine that it would float out of the pan and not be detected, which was the reason it wasn't discovered until the thirties.

That stuck in my mind, because I always thought, oh, that was kind of interesting. This is the type of gold that wouldn't pan, and maybe there were other similar occurrences that the old-timers might have missed. I always remembered this and I followed up on this later on and it turned out of course that this was the same type of mineralization as the Carlin discovery.

Swent

The Getchell was also famous for being very refractory, wasn't it?

Livermore

Well, it was refractory when they got down in the sulfide zone. The oxide zone leached very well. In fact, that was a very profitable mine in the early years, when I was there in 1940. But later, after the war, they got down into the unoxidized material, and then they had a lot of problems with arsenic, and it wasn't nearly as profitable.

A lot of experts tried to solve the metallurgical problem. But it was a tough ore, and it's still a tough ore. They're mining it today, and it's still very, very difficult. They have to use a pressure-leaching system which is very expensive.

---

III World War II, in and out of Uniform

U.S. Geological Survey Strategic Minerals Program, 1940

Livermore

I graduated from Stanford in September, 1940, and Professor Waters got me a job at the U.S. Geological Survey. I was involved in what they called the strategic minerals program. The war had started in Europe. They had a program of evaluating strategic mineral deposits, which was very good, because it had more of an economic orientation than most of the USGS projects do.

I was involved in chromite investigations quite a bit. We were mapping deposits in central and northern California and southern Oregon, and also I mapped a manganese property down by the Colorado River.

Swent

These were strategic in what sense?

Livermore

Well, strategic in the sense that we were short of them in wartime, that they were trying to develop domestic reserves of certain metals. Both chromium and manganese as you know have very important wartime uses. We don't have a very good supply of them, so they were trying to develop even marginal sources in case of emergency.

Swent

Sources that normally wouldn't be economical?

Livermore

That's right. And tungsten is another one we did a little work on.

Swent

If they had to be imported, the source might be cut off.

Livermore

Well, that's right. So that was a good program, because it had a strong economic orientation, which is why it was interesting.

Swent

Were any of these ever developed?

---

Livermore

No. None of them really were. Well, they were marginal. The chromite that we have in this area is a low-quality chromite. It can't compete with good Turkish and South African chromite. It would have only been used if, as you say, the source of supply had been cut off. And it never was completely cut off, so those mines never were put into production.

Basic Magnesium Plant, Henderson, Nevada, 1941

Livermore

But then an interesting opportunity came along. This was in late 1941. They were building a magnesium plant in Las Vegas, Nevada. This was a war program, because we had no source of magnesium at that time, oddly enough. That was a very important war metal for airplanes and fire bombs. That was when the Battle of Britain was going on. There was a tremendous crash program to develop a source of magnesium. In Nevada, there was a magnesite deposit nearby. Also, the Hoover (Boulder) Dam had been built by that time, so there was a combination of a magnesite deposit in central Nevada, and cheap power; this was a process that required a lot of electricity.

Because of that, this plant was being built there south of Las Vegas. This was more of an engineering job, but I was lucky enough to get involved in it. The plant was a duplicate of one in England. They were way ahead of us at that time; they had an operating plant. A group of us--about thirty of us--were sent over to England to familiarize ourselves with this process while they were building the plant. Then we would come back to Las Vegas and get the plant going.

Duplicating a Plant Near Manchester, England, 1942

Livermore

The first idea was that we were to go over in a bomber, so that sounded kind of intriguing. But as it turned out, we didn't. We went over in a troop ship and were based in a little town called Clifton outside of Manchester. I was over there for about six months, I guess.

It was very interesting, because we were there during the blackout, and we had one or two air raids. It was after the big Battle of Britain. We had to learn to get around in complete blackout, which is kind of amazing, because the traffic continued; the buses all ran, and everything. You had

---

a little slit of light on the headlight. Amazing how life went on. We'd go down to Manchester, take the bus, go to a movie or something, in the complete blackout.

Swent

What was the exact date of this time?

Livermore

I went over in January, 1942, just after Pearl Harbor, and stayed until September. I was already committed to this job when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Swent

The voyage across the Atlantic must have been very dangerous.

Livermore

Well, it was, yes. We had several submarine scares going across the Atlantic. We went in a big convoy with destroyer escorts. It was quite a bit of fun. That was the height of the submarine danger.

Then I came back to Las Vegas. By that time--

Swent

Just one more question. Were you still employed by USGS?

Livermore

Oh, no, that was different. I had resigned from USGS. This was a company called Basic Magnesium Incorporated, a private corporation.

Swent

This was one of those companies financed by the RFC?

Livermore

Oh, yes. This whole thing was financed by--I think by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation or some agency. Yes, this was completely government. This was such a crash program that they didn't want to make any mistakes. They wanted to build a plant ten times as big as the one in England. They wanted to make absolutely sure everything would work, so instead of enlarging the plant ten times, they just built ten of them right in a row, exactly identical. And they're still there south of Las Vegas, at Henderson, if you know where that is.

Swent

And did they work?

Livermore

They worked.

One other thing that was interesting about the process is that it required peat.

Swent

There is not much of that in the Las Vegas desert.

Livermore

So they had to scurry around and find a source of peat, and finally ended up hauling peat all the way from eastern Canada to Las Vegas, tying up the entire peat production. That was

---

quite expensive. But they weren't going to take any chances, as they had to duplicate the process exactly. There were big piles of peat right out in the middle of the desert.

But later they found that sawdust worked almost as well.

Swent

It sounds like a bit of overkill to send thirty people over to England.

Livermore

Well, there were all these different departments; it was a very complex process. Part of it was crushing, preparing the stuff, and then there was a chemical process, and then there was an electrolytic process. A lot of different skills were required, so it took a lot of people.

Swent

What part were you involved with?

Livermore

I was in what they called the preparation part, which was crushing the material, preparing and crushing the ore, and mixing of the different materials. We would make pellets of peat and coal. A magnesium chloride solution was added to the pellets and then they were heated in a furnace. The reason for the peat was to provide porosity. The peat would burn out, and then the pellet would be very porous, and amenable to the later chlorination process.

It turned out that this was not one of the better methods for making magnesium. They finally found out there was a method that was cheaper, so the plant did not operate throughout the entire war.

I could have stayed there indefinitely, but at this point I was anxious to get into the service, so when I felt I had fulfilled my obligation there, I resigned and signed up in the navy.

Serving in the Navy Civil Engineering Corps, 1943 to 1946

##

Swent

Did you go in as an officer?

Livermore

I went into the V-7 program at Notre Dame University. They had what they called the ninety-day wonders, because any college graduate could take this ninety-day training and come out as an officer.

---

When I signed up, I thought that I'd be put on a ship. But because of my engineering experience and the fact that I could not pass the color perception test, I was commissioned as an ensign in the Civil Engineering Corps, which a lot of people don't even know exists. It is the construction part of the navy, building civil works. I was assigned to the Seabees [construction battalions].

I was kind of disappointed, because I really thought I'd be on a ship. But actually, it worked out pretty well. I had a very interesting experience, and I think it was probably better than being on a ship, because a lot of my friends on ships were bored a lot of the time, unless they were actually in battle.

Later, I had training with the Marines in Virginia. One of my assignments was as a drill instructor--I don't know how I got involved in that. At one point, I was drilling WAVES [Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service], teaching the WAVES close-order drills. They learned faster than the men. That was kind of interesting. But I didn't like it very much because I was anxious to get overseas.

Finally I did get an overseas assignment, and I was sent to New Guinea. I spent a year there, principally at a base called Milne Bay. We built very large facilities there, an airfield, warehouses, and docks. It was an interesting experience because I learned a lot about practical construction. We were very busy, so as it turned out, it worked out well for me.

Swent

What were the dates of that?

Livermore

That would have been 1943, through the end of 1943, something like that.

Swent

The fighting by then had ended in that area?

Livermore

Yes, the combat was farther north. Then in 1943, they were getting ready for [General Douglas] MacArthur's first landing in the Philippines. We were involved in that. We landed as a Seabee group with MacArthur at Tacloban; if you remember, that's where he first returned to the Philippines, on the island of Leyte.

We were set to build a large base near Tacloban which had been planned from New Guinea with aerial photographs.

---

We investigated where we were supposed to make this big base, and found that the photographic interpretation was a little bit off; it turned out to be an enormous swamp. [laughter]

We had a kind of interesting experience there, landing with MacArthur. This was the famous incident where he could have walked off on dry land from a landing craft, but he had the skipper pull the craft slightly offshore so he could wade in and make a better picture for the photographers.

We had a little bit of a skirmish, even though we were not supposed to be a combat unit. Some Japanese paratroopers landed near our camp one time, but we didn't have any really serious action. We were just a little behind the first wave.

They scurried around trying to find where we could build this planned base. Finally we moved over to another nearby island called Samar. There, the conditions were good, and we built another very large installation, with airfields, a water system, docks, and so on. Again, I got some good construction experience.

Later, we were being staged to go into Japan; that was our next move. But the war ended, so that was the end of that.

Swent

How did you feel about the atomic bomb at that time?

Livermore

Well, we didn't hear too much about it, really, other than that it was a fantastic bomb; we didn't get too many details about it. I guess we heard about a number of people killed, but most people's first reaction was that it was ending the war, and we'd all get back home.

That was the end of our supposed trip to Japan.

When I came back, because I was single, I didn't have many points for discharge. I wasn't one of the first back, and when I did get back, I still had to spend about six months in California at a Seabee base down south of Ventura, at Port Hueneme, to earn sufficient points.

Also, I hadn't gone into service until later. Actually when I was in Stanford, in 1940, my dad had heard about this V-7 program, and said, "You'd better go and sign up for this, because you can be made an officer in ninety days." So I took the test and that's when I flunked that color perception test, which just absolutely amazed me; I didn't realize I had any

---

problem at all. This meant I could not be accepted into the V-7 program [at that time].

Actually, it was very fortunate, because the friends of mine who had signed up in 1940 were called into the service in 1941. So they were in for five years. If I had done this, I would have missed out on some very interesting experiences. So in that sense it worked out pretty well.

Swent

Had your father been in the navy in the First World War?

Livermore

He was in the army. He wasn't young; I think he was forty-five years old or something like that. He had a bad hip, which he hurt in a horse accident as a young man. He didn't limp, but he couldn't squat down. They weren't going to let him in the army, but he just absolutely insisted, and he finally got in the army engineers. Actually, I was born when he was in France in 1918. A war baby.

Swent

The attitudes were different then, weren't they?

Livermore

Oh, yes. He was bound and determined to serve in the war.

Swent

So, you got out of the navy--.

Livermore

I had originally intended to maybe go back to graduate school, but by that time, six years had slipped by, and I just didn't feel like going back to school. I wanted to get on with my profession. In those days, Stanford wasn't even giving a B.S. [Bachelor of Science degree] for four years. So I ended up with just an A.B., a Bachelor of Arts.

---

IV Beginning a Career in Field Geology, 1946 to 1952

Mapping in Ouray and Cripple Creek, Colorado

Livermore

I decided just to start work. I never regretted it; I don't think I missed out on too much. Geology you sort of learn on the job. I looked around for jobs, and I finally took a job in Colorado, kind of a temporary summer job doing some mapping down in the San Juan Mountains, near Ouray, Colorado. Just mapping some property out here for some people in New York. It was kind of a small private company. That was just a summer job, and then I had another opportunity that came up in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

I went to Cripple Creek, and was working as a geologist at a company called El Paso Mines, Inc. They had quite an extensive program of underground development and exploration. They were trying to reopen the El Paso mine. They did spend quite a bit of money driving drifts and raises and looking for some of those high-grade Cripple Creek ore bodies.

Swent

That was gold?

Livermore

That was gold, yes, gold telluride. I guess the money finally ran out, and unfortunately our program was not very successful in finding any important ore bodies. But we did find some smaller ore bodies.

In the old Cripple Creek area there were dozens of mines, and they were all interconnected. One of my jobs was kind of looking around for new areas to prospect, so I enjoyed that, and I had a kind of road map to show where all the different workings were. I would go off by myself all day and then wander around, back in these old workings, climbing up and down raises. I was looking for certain geological features that the ore was associated with. I guess today people would have felt that was really pretty stupid, because nobody knew

---

where I was. If something had happened to me--[laughs]. I never thought anything about it. I really enjoyed it.

One of the things in Cripple Creek we had was very bad gas conditions; you had to be very careful; it was quite dangerous. They had areas where the oxygen was completely removed, and the air became very toxic; there had been several fatalities. I was very careful; I didn't take any chances.

Swent

How did you check?

Livermore

Well, I had a candle with me at all times to make sure that there was sufficient oxygen in the air to breathe.

Contract Miner at El Paso Mine, 1947

Livermore

I decided I wanted to get some more practical experience, so right at the mine there, I became a miner, and worked with another fellow. We drove drifts and did contract mining. Since I knew the mine pretty well, at one point they offered leases on some of the areas that we had opened up, some of the smaller ore bodies. So this fellow and I, we had been contract drifting, and we took a lease. We mined some of these smaller ore bodies for a few months. Unfortunately, we didn't get rich out of it. I made wages; that's about all. It was a sort of an interesting experience. Then the whole mine shut down, so that was the end of that.

Humphreys Gold Corporation; Mining Beach Sands in Florida, 1948

Livermore

I was looking around for jobs, and one came up in Florida, with a company called Humphreys Gold Corporation.

It wasn't a gold mine but it was kind of an interesting mine. It was beach sands containing heavy minerals with titanium in the form of ilmenite and rutile, plus zircon, and also there was a certain amount of monazite. We didn't produce that commercially, though; there was no market for it at that time.

---

It was an interesting deposit, because it was practically on the outskirts of Jacksonville, on the beach. It was a dredging operation, and my job was running the exploratory drilling. We were drilling ahead of the dredge, blocking out reserves, so we had a kind of an unusual drill which was built there to drill down through the dune sands, which was kind of a difficult operation.

Swent

Tell a little bit about it; you had told me a couple of interesting stories about Mr. Humphreys.

Livermore

Well, yes. Mr. Humphreys was an interesting fellow. There were two brothers; one was an inventor, and the other was a businessman. They were a very good combination.

Mr. Humphreys the inventor--one of his inventions was a spiral, the Humphreys spiral, which was a very simple device. No mechanical moving parts.

The sand would circulate around the spiral and the heavy minerals would have a tendency--because of the difference in specific gravity--to settle into the center of the spiral. By cutting off the inside portion of the stream, we could concentrate large quantities of sand very quickly.

This was a very large operation. We were literally dredging I think a thousand tons an hour, something like that. They had a big battery of these spirals, and would produce a concentrate very cheaply, and that's really the only way that made this particular operation profitable.

Then that concentrate was dried, and they had a further refining process, which was an electrostatic process, to separate out the various heavy minerals. That was a very simple device; you wonder why somebody else hadn't thought about it sooner.

The other thing Humphreys invented--he was a fisherman--and of course fishing reels have their axis perpendicular to the pole. And often, there's a problem with backlash. Well, he had the bright idea, why not rotate that axis 90 degrees? The line would come off the top of the reel instead of the conventional position. That eliminated most of the backlash.

You know, inventors are amazing people. No one had ever thought of just simply turning the reel 90 degrees, and so that was his other great invention. Both of them very simple, very practical things, which no one had ever thought of.

---

He invented other things too; his head was continually in the clouds, like most inventors. But his brother was a hard-headed businessman, and between the two of them, they did very well. That Humphreys spiral was used in a lot of different mining applications.

Swent

You said they also had a special drill?

Livermore

Well, that's right. Sand is very hard to drill, because the walls cave in very readily. The normal drills just simply won't work. This was a very simple device. It just had a jet of water inside a casing. A heavy weight at the top of the water jet drove the casing down at the same time as the jet flushed out the sand from the bottom of the casing. They had attempted other methods which simply did not work; they tried to core it, or they tried to just drive it down, just bull it down, driving through the sand without a jet. We were down below the water table, and the sand would just cave in. But this system just worked beautifully. You could just go zooming right down.

Then the cuttings would wash out, and we'd save them. This machine was invented and built right there at the mine.

Also we had trouble driving across the sand dunes with the regular truck; you could easily get bogged down. So they designed special old military half-tracks with a drill mounted on them, and we'd drive them across the dunes, and do the drilling. The Humphreys group was a very imaginative organization.

Swent

So it was your job to find the sands that were productive and tell them where to dredge?

Livermore

Yes, and to block out the reserves, and how much overburden there was, and things like that. So that was an interesting job, and that lasted about a year.

Getting a Commercial Pilot's License

Livermore

I had also another interesting opportunity, because there was an airfield about three or four miles away. I had the G.I. bill [Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944] available, so I thought, why don't I just use it to learn how to fly? So I'd go out to this airfield almost every day after work and on the weekends, and I started out thinking, well, instead of just

---

getting a private pilot's license, I might as well just go on and get a commercial license. Which meant 250 hours of flying. It's surprising how long it takes to get 250 hours of flying, a little bit at a time. One hour at a time, it took me almost a year to do it.

But I did get a commercial license. I never intended to be a commercial pilot, but it was just sort of something to achieve, and I thought I could use the ability later in prospecting around the country. It didn't quite work out that way.

Swent

You have not done a lot of flying?

Livermore

No, not much. I found it was inconvenient, because particularly in those early days, you couldn't rent cars at airports, or four-wheel-drive vehicles, and you'd go out to look at a prospect and you had no way of getting from the airport to where you wanted to go. So I thought it was better just to drive a car. I used to do a little flying, but it wasn't practical.

As part of the course for a commercial license, you have to do what they call "cross-country". It usually meant--to learn navigation--flying a triangle. Go up to one airport, to another airport, and back to the first airport. That taught you the airport procedures and navigation.

So I got the idea, for my cross-country, I'll literally fly across the country, and go home to California. So I did, and I had some very interesting experiences, because I was flying a tiny little plane. At full throttle, it would go about seventy miles an hour. I remember flying sometimes with a headwind over a freeway, and the cars on the freeway below would be passing me. [laughs] I couldn't keep up with the cars.

Swent

What kind of plane was it?

Livermore

It was an Aeronca. I had to stop about every 300 miles to refuel. So I made all kinds of stops all the way across the country.

I was coming from Tucson to Phoenix one time, and I didn't calculate the winds properly. I realized by the time I got into Phoenix it was going to be dark. I wasn't supposed to be flying after dark and I didn't have any lights or anything. There was no radio, of course.

---

There was an air field I could have landed at, a U.S. Air Force field. I said, "Oh, well, I'll just see if I can make it." So by the time I got into Phoenix, it was really dark, so I flew over the airport, and thought now what am I going to do? So I circled for a while, and I waited until a commercial plane came in, and I just kind of sneaked in behind it. [laughs] I landed, pulled right over into the taxiway, and the tower didn't even realize I had landed. [laughter]

But I finally made it out to California. The outstanding experience of the trip was on the way back, because I was hopping, hopping, hopping along. I was supposed to go to a town called Lafayette, Louisiana, and again, with a headwind, I realized I wasn't going to make it. So I looked on my map, and there was a little town out in the swamps in Louisiana called Thibodaux. So I said, okay, it showed an airport, service, and gas. It was a little off my route, but I made it over there, to Thibodaux, which is a little Cajun town. I circled and circled, and couldn't find the airport. Where is this airport? It said right on the map there's an airport.

So I was really out of gas by that time. There was a U.S. Air Force field nearby, but I didn't think I had fuel to get over to that. So I decided, well, I'll just have to make the best of it. I picked out the best field and came in as low over the fence as I could. I got down all right, but I was zooming across this field pretty fast, heading for a big pile of timber. I realized that I was going to crash into this pile of timber. So the only thing I could do was what they call ground loop, where you flip the plane around. Which did the job; the plane stopped, but it did a little bit of damage to the landing gear and the wing. So I was stuck there.

Anyway, I got out of the plane. I asked some of the local farmers, "There's supposed to be a field. What happened to the field?"

"Oh," he said, "they plowed it up last year and planted sugar cane." [laughter] So that was sort of interesting.

But then, I had the highlight of the trip. I went into this little town, which at that time was really very isolated. There were a lot of people who were speaking French. I was kind of the big event in town when I came in; in fact, there was an article about me in the newspaper. Oh, I had a great time there. They had a big dance that night. I had a lot of fun. I met a very pretty girl; her name was Durocher; she was related to Leo Durocher, the baseball player. I had to stay

---

around for two or three days while they brought a truck in to haul my plane out.

Swent

They couldn't repair it there?

Livermore

They couldn't repair it there. I finally went on my way, but it was too bad, because if I could have completed the cross-country, that would have been almost kind of a first, I think, with a little plane like that. So that kind of spoiled that. But that was an interesting experience.

Swent

Well, it could have had a tragic ending.

Livermore

Yes, I could have. But those little planes, of course, they land so slowly--

Swent

You weren't hurt at all?

Livermore

No, not at all.

Swent

And you did get the license.

Livermore

Oh, yes, I got my commercial license all right. I had a little problem with that again, because of this red and green perception business, but they gave me a special test. As I say, I had no radio, so we had to rely on lights, the red and green lights at the airport. Which I can see without any problem.

Then I decided I had had enough at Humphreys Gold, so I headed back West. That was the end of 1948.

---

The Standard Mine

Livermore

I decided I wanted to head back West again, and that was at the end of 1948. I had a chance to work in Nevada, actually for Stuart Rawlings.

He was interested in mining, and he had various interests in Nevada and other places. He got involved in a gold mine in central Nevada near Lovelock. It had operated before the war, and they were forced to shut down with the L-208 order.

##

Swent

How did you happen to know Stu Rawlings? Had you been school friends?

Livermore

Oh, yes, we had known the family. My dad and his father were good friends, so we'd known the family for quite a while, yes.

Swent

Were you about the same age as Stu?

Livermore

Yes, about the same age. He's a little older than I am.

Swent

Had you gone to school together?

Livermore

No. He knew my older brother Norman better than he knew me; he was more his age. He was always interested in mining, of course like his father. He had a lot of interests in Nevada and California at that time. I had just been working in Florida and wanted to come back West, and somehow or other we got talking. He had this mine up at Standard, and they were

---

short of ore at this mine so he hired me just to try to increase their ore reserves.

Shortly after the war, he and some other investors had reopened this mine, the Standard Mine near Lovelock.

They had a setback at the mine. The pit they were working in collapsed on them, and they were desperate for more ore.

There was another area where they had some mineral-ization, so they were looking for a geologist to direct a drilling program to try to enlarge the reserves in order to stay in production. So he hired me.

We did some churn drilling, and found some ore. But the mine was really sort of doomed already. It was a very, very low-grade mine, and they were not making much money. To develop this ore that we were finding would have involved quite a lot of stripping, and they just weren't generating enough money to continue. The mine shut down a few months after I arrived.

Swent

And the price of gold was still fixed at $35.

Livermore

Thirty-five dollars, right. And it was very, very low-grade. It was just a remarkable operation, using cyanide. I remember the mining costs were 40 cents a ton, the milling costs were 40 cents a ton, the overhead was about 40 cents a ton, and the tails were .01, which is about 40 cents--it leached very well. The break-even was $1.60. When we were mining ore that ran $2.50 a ton, then we were doing very well. Hard to believe.

The ore leached well with a very coarse grind; they got a 95 percent recovery. It was a beautiful ore for cyaniding; a brand new mill had been built before the war. But it just couldn't quite get going. The costs went up like most mines after the war, and they had to replace some of the equipment. They had this cave-in in one pit. They just couldn't quite make a go of it.

I was only there three or four months when the mine shut down. That was kind of my first test of open-pit gold mining in Nevada, and of course, that comes in later in the story. This was an interesting type of disseminated deposit, and I knew of a couple of others similar to it, such as the Getchell mentioned earlier, and it always kind of intrigued me that there must be other ore bodies like this in Nevada.

---

Swent

This was low-grade, but it was not fine, not microscopic?

Livermore

Yes, it was, it was microscopic. This was the type which later came to be known as Carlin type. But it wasn't identified at that time. It was a disseminated deposit, with just a little different characteristics than some of the more classic Carlin ores. The rocks were of a different age, but still I would classify it as Carlin type.

Swent

Where is the Standard?

Livermore

It's out north of Lovelock, just off Highway 80.

Prospecting

##

Livermore

After the mine closed, I decided to stay in Nevada and do some prospecting on my own. I was sort of footloose then. I soon realized that my real interest was prospecting, exploration and prospecting. So I decided, well, I'll just work as a prospector, for myself, and I can earn a little money maybe doing consulting work. I did work for Stu Rawlings; he had various odd jobs for me in Nevada and California in some of the properties he was involved in, and I had a few little mining projects, examinations, and then in my spare time I just prospected on my own. I picked up a couple of properties, none of which panned out.

Swent

You say you picked them up--

Livermore

I staked some. I got interested in a mineral called perlite, which was quite a hot item at that time; it's used in plaster. I located this deposit by doing some research in an old government publication. I went out and staked it, but I wasn't able to sell the property.

Anyway, I enjoyed that. I traveled all around a lot of different areas, and sort of mixed up prospecting with a little consulting. One of the places I looked at was right at the area of the later Carlin discovery; not right on it, but nearby

---

where there was a little mine, a placer operation on Lynn Creek, which was actually only a mile away from the Carlin Mine. I don't know whether I actually walked over the Carlin ore body, but I was very close to it. So that was sort of interesting, a place where I came back to later.

Swent

When you're prospecting like this, how did people get in touch with you? Did you have an office?

Livermore

I had a pretty low budget; I wasn't making much money. After Standard, for a while I lived in the back yard of a friend of mine, in Lovelock; I had a shack there where I lived several months. And then I had a little place in Reno that was another little shack--in fact, my brother Norman came over, and he was really amused at the place I was living in. It was really a place just to store my stuff.

Even though I had several interesting jobs, I couldn't really make a living at it. At that time, no one was grubstaking prospectors. I enjoyed it; I just couldn't continue doing that. Later, of course, we hired prospectors and paid them a salary, but nobody was doing that in those days.

Swent

You were doing a lot of research; you weren't just out in the field indiscriminately banging on the rocks.

Livermore

Well, I was doing research in the literature, like any prospector would.

I got very interested in the old 40th Parallel Survey, which was written back in the 1860s, a remarkable document. They covered the whole strip along the railroad, before the railroad was built. The idea was to survey the route of the transcontinental railway, and they did topographic and geological mapping, and they covered an enormous amount of territory. It was all on foot and horseback. They mapped the geology and made a lot of interesting observations which had some economic potential.

I followed up on some of their observations and ran down some deposits that they indicated, which was kind of interesting. They described things in a general way, and then I went in to try to find the exact spot that they talked about, which was sometimes hard to do.

But I found some interesting things. None of them really developed into commercial deposits, but it was kind of interesting to be able to take this report that covered several

---

hundred miles and to actually find an exact spot in a certain canyon that they talked about--[laughs] that was kind of interesting.

Swent

Where did you get this report?

Livermore

Well, it's available. It's a public document. It's a great, big, very thick volume. And of course, that was just one. There were a lot of other reports, there were the State of Nevada and California and the U.S. Geological Survey--there are all kinds of reports--and then the University of Nevada has old records of private mining reports from mining engineers. So there's all kinds of information.

I had access to some old reports. Of course, at that time I was looking not for gold necessarily. I was looking for any mineral that might be profitable. I was looking for barite, which was popular at that time, and another mineral called perlite. In fact, one of the deposits I found from the 40th Parallel Survey was a perlite deposit which I thought might be of interest, and it was. We staked claims, but we couldn't ever capitalize on that deposit. It wasn't quite good enough quality.

So we were looking for a lot of different things--

Swent

Who is "we"?

Livermore

Well, I was pretty much on my own, but I also worked with an old-timer out there, and he had a vehicle--we used to go out together prospecting. But I was mainly on my own.

Swent

What was his name?

Livermore

[laughs] Gosh, I'd have to dig that up. I'm very bad at remembering names.

Then, I would mix that in with a little consulting work to try to pay the beans, and keep myself going. So I'd do a little consulting work for various people, and then I'd go out prospecting again.

Swent

This gave you an appreciation of what prospectors go through.

Livermore

Yes. Well, if I could have gotten somebody to pay me a salary to prospect, I would have probably just kept on doing that. Of course, gold mining at that time was in the doldrums.

Swent

How do you go about peddling a prospect if you find one?

---

Livermore

Well, you talk to the mining companies, and try to get them interested.

Swent

So you have to go and hunt them up.

Livermore

Yes. I had some kind of rewarding things. But none of them really developed into much.

Swent

So this was in the early fifties?

Livermore

Yes, that was '50, '51, and '52.

Swent

You said you were down in Death Valley--

Livermore

Yes, I went down to Death Valley, near Death Valley Junction, and I was mining a little bentonite property for a while.

So that was a kind of interesting job. But that was just--they were mostly all short-term jobs.

---

V Geologist for Newmont Mining Corporation, 1952 to 1960

Livermore

After about three years of that, I finally said, well, I guess I'll have to go to work for a company. I had a couple of offers, but none of them seemed quite attractive. So I decided I'd try to pick the company that I thought had the best reputation for imaginative exploration, and that spent a lot of money on exploration. After reviewing the companies, I really decided on Newmont because Fred Searls, the chairman, was a geologist, and I had heard a lot about him. He had taken on some high-risk exploration, geological bets that no one else would tackle, which kind of appealed to me. So I thought, well, that sounds like a company that I'd like to work for.

It wasn't a big company at that time; I didn't like the idea of working for one of these bigger companies like Kennecott.

I went down to Jerome, Arizona, where Newmont had a geophysical program going on. I applied for a job in exploration.

The Resurrection Mine, Leadville, Colorado; Underground Mapping

Swent

Who hired you?

Livermore

The first person I talked to was Arthur Brant, who was actually a geophysicist. They had quite a program going on in Jerome at that time; they had a big geophysical research setup down there. And of course, he headed up a very remarkable program in geophysics. But at the time, they didn't have any opening for a geologist there, but he said there was an opening at the Resurrection Mine, in Leadville, Colorado.

---

Then I later talked to a Dr. G.W.H. Norman, who was the chief geologist, and I was to report to him. He was a Canadian, and a very remarkable man.

I learned detailed underground mapping under Dr. Norman's supervision. Hal Norman had spent many years with the Canadian Geological Survey mapping the old highly distorted Precambrian metamorphic rocks which are very hard to unravel. Newmont had a copper project in the same type of rocks near Jerome, Arizona. The U.S. Geological Survey had thrown up their hands trying to map these complex rocks; they just showed them as a solid color on their maps. Fred Searls was put in touch with Norman and asked him to see what he could do with these rocks. Sure enough, Hal, by very careful painstaking work was able to map out several rock types and work out the structure of these highly folded and metamorphosed rocks. This became very important in our planning an exploration program.

So I went to Leadville as a geologist, and later I became the chief engineer and geologist, doing a lot of underground mapping, and in charge of surveying and stuff like that.

Swent

This was mine geology now, as opposed to exploration?

Livermore

Yes, this was underground work, as the Resurrection was entirely an underground mine. Dr. Norman was a very remarkable geologist, and I learned a lot from him, how to map underground, detailed stratigraphy. He was interested in that.

Swent

What were the mechanics of making a map underground? What did you have to work with?

Livermore

Well, we had the basic surveys, of course, because all of the underground workings had to be surveyed with a transit.

Swent

Did you do that?

Livermore

I did some of that, but only initially. Then later, I had surveyors working for me. We had a regular survey crew.

Swent

These were areas that had not been mapped?

Livermore

Well, that's one of the things that we were doing. We were opening up old workings that had been surveyed but never geologically mapped.

The work was interesting, because we were continually opening up old drifts. We'd break into these old workings, and

---

then I'd go in and map the geology. We were looking for more ore.

Swent

They had been previously mined, but not mapped?

Livermore

Not geologically mapped. So we would add that to our geological picture, and try to pick out targets to develop, because we were always short of ore there.

Swent

What did you use? Paper, pencil, pens--?

Livermore

Well, we used a hard pencil. And of course, when you're mapping underground, it's always wet, and those old workings are covered with mud. It was the messiest job you can imagine. All the area had been flooded with water, so after a while you were just covered with mud. The only way you could map it was to keep breaking the rock to get a fresh surface, so you'd hit the rock and the mud would splatter in your face. [laughter] It also had a certain amount of acidity to it, so your eyes would sting. But I enjoyed it, because it's part of geology; you're building up a picture, putting it all together, and coming up with targets.

And every time we'd break into a new mine, we'd have all these new levels to map.

We had good surveys, but no geology.

And we worked out a very good stratigraphy, and unraveled the geology that nobody really understood before. It helped us a lot in finding ore.

Swent

Resurrection was a very complicated mine, wasn't it?

Livermore

Yes, it was.

This was a lead, zinc, gold, silver mine, and the price of lead and zinc dropped at a certain point, so they shut the mine down. From there I went down to Peru.

---

Cuajone, Peru

Swent

For Newmont?

Livermore

With Newmont, and that was Cuajone.

We had a joint program with Cerro de Pasco, down in southern Peru near the Chilean border. We were drilling out this porphyry copper with several churn drills.

You couldn't ask for a better climate for field work; never got too hot, never got too cold.

Swent

Peru at that time was a nice place too.

Livermore

Oh, yes. It was very stable, under General Odria; he was a dictator, but I think he was a pretty good one. You never heard of too many human rights violations. The currency was very stable; the sol was the most stable monetary unit of all South America at that time. I can't believe the difference between now and then.

Swent

Arequipa is a lovely city.

Livermore

Oh, yes. It is a beautiful place. We used to go over there quite often.

Swent

Were you there early, before Toquepala was developed?

Livermore

No, no. Toquepala was actually way ahead of Cuajone. What happened was that there were three deposits--I don't know whether you ever heard that story, but it's kind of interesting. Cerro de Pasco had originally drilled all three deposits--Cuajone, Quellaveco, and Toquepala. Cerro de Pasco got hold of them way back during the war, and they were terribly isolated at that time. They had to haul drills in with mule trains, but they had big drilling programs.

They were used to mining up in Cerro de Pasco, where they had 4 or 5 percent copper. In their drilling down there, they were getting 1.5 and 2 percent copper over big thicknesses, which was pretty good by Arizona standards, but the Cerro de Pasco people sort of downgraded them. They thought, well, although they were some of the biggest mines in the world, they didn't compare with Cerro de Pasco. So they were not that excited about them.

---

This is a story that I heard and I think it's more or less true.

They had an option on this property, this Toquepala property. They had drilled out these three wonderful properties. They had a payment coming up, which was--I don't know, some small amount, something like $50,000. At that time, Cerro was sort of the king of Peru. Everything came to them.

The president of Cerro said, "Well, this fellow's asking quite a bit of money. I think we will get him down to $25,000," something like that. So they let the option period expire.

An engineer from ASARCO by the name of Kurzell somehow or other got in touch with the owner of the property, and saw some of the data. He realized right away the enormous potential of this deposit. He made a verbal deal with the owner, and wired ASARCO in New York, asking for something like $75,000 to pick up the option. They took his word for it, sent him the money, and ended up virtually stealing Toquepala from Cerro de Pasco. They lost one of the great copper mines of the whole world because of not wanting to pay $25,000. Of course, that caused a tremendous furor in Cerro de Pasco, and boy, oh, boy, then some heads really fell. In fact, the vice president committed suicide. I don't know whether it was because of that or not.

They changed the whole top management of Cerro de Pasco. That's when Bob Koenig came in. Whether it was all because of that I don't know.

But Cerro de Pasco still held Cuajone, so that's how Newmont got involved, because Cerro was so embarrassed at losing Toquepala, they decided, well, we'll go ahead with Cuajone and maybe we can make something out of that. So then Newmont was invited in as a partner. That's when I was there.

Cerro de Pasco was anxious to develop Cuajone further to counteract the loss of Toquepala. At this time they had drilled a few holes but wanted to determine more accurately the limits of the orebody. Newmont had developed a new electrical geophysical method called induced polarization which was particularly adapted to the detection of large disseminated orebodies such as the Cuajone porphyry copper. Cerro de Pasco thought this method would be useful in quickly defining the potential limits of the Cuajone orebody. They invited Newmont to conduct an induced polarization survey over the area, and in

---

exchange for this, offered them 25 percent participation in a joint venture.

This involved putting an intermittent electrical current into the ground, using the so-called "pulse method." A charge would be introduced between electrodes and the current shut off abruptly. Any conductive material, such as sulfides, in the ground would provide a condenser effect and would hold the electric charge for a certain period of time. A measurement of the rate of decay of the charge gave an indication of the quantity of conductive material--in this case, sulfides such as pyrite or chalcopyrite. By varying the space between electrodes, penetration observation could be made at great depths, up to as much as a thousand feet.

The survey conducted at Cuajone did in effect delineate the extent of the sulfide body, but most of the material turned out to be pyrite rather than the valuable chalcopyrite mineral which contained the copper. So the survey did not really extend the size of the known copper orebody.

The joint venture then proceeded to drill out systematically the copper orebody which had already been indicated. I was brought in on this program, which was managed by Cerro de Pasco, as Newmont's representative. We had several geologists and drills; it was a big project. They had quite a nice camp, with a good road.

Later, Cerro sued ASARCO over Toquepala, and they had a tremendous battle; Cerro tried to get it back, but they weren't successful. Then at some point--this was a couple of years later--they finally decided to put all the properties together, and form Southern Peru Copper Company.

So that was an amazing story, how they lost that property. [laughs]

Swent

When you went there, Cuajone was still a Newmont-Cerro joint venture.

---

Livermore

Yes; Toquepala and Quellaveco were ASARCO, and actually, we weren't supposed to be speaking to ASARCO at that time. We earned an interest in Cuajone by doing the geophysical work and other things.

Swent

What were you doing?

Livermore

Actually, Cerro was running the program, and I was the Newmont representative, laying out drill holes and logging, things like that.

Swent

Did you have the ore body defined?

Livermore

No, we were defining it. By the time I was finished there, we had a billion tons of 1 percent copper ore blocked out. No further development was done at that time, and so that was the end of the program.

Swent

How long were you there?

Livermore

I was there about six months. It was a nice camp, a well-organized camp. We had quite a big drilling program; we had four or five drills going, and we had geological mapping and sampling and assaying. It was quite a good-sized camp there.

Swent

What kind of drills?

Livermore

They were using churn drills, American, and all American drillers.

Swent

On contract?

Livermore

I think they were hired by the company, Cerro de Pasco. I think they just purchased the drills. Because it was a long program.

Swent

Newmont had a lab in Connecticut; did they use that?

Livermore

I was just on loan from Newmont; it was [a] Cerro de Pasco [operation]. They had a full-fledged lab right there. There must have been a hundred people or so there.

Swent

When was that?

Livermore

I think that was in 1954. Then I went back to Leadville, I think in 1955.

---

Iowa Gulch, Colorado, 1955

Livermore

Then I came back to Leadville, because by that time the price of lead and zinc was up again, so we started to crank up the Resurrection again. I enjoyed Leadville, so that was fine.

Then we got going on some exploration work there, and really Dr. Norman was responsible for this, but I was there, and sort of carrying out some of his ideas. We got interested in an area called Iowa Gulch. We drilled into a whole new ore body. That was very exciting to me, because that was really the first discovery I had been involved in. I remember pulling this high-grade core; it was very exciting, in a whole new area.

Swent

And this was lead-zinc?

Livermore

This was lead-zinc, and silver.

So then we did some more drilling, and it was a hard thing to test. The company wasn't making that much money at the time, and we thought we had enough ore for them to justify a shaft and go down and really look at this ore better, and block it out. But the management decided there was too much money involved, and they did more drilling, which we weren't in favor of. We thought we should just take the bull by the horns and go down under the ore and drill up underneath, because it really looked like it could be a commercial ore body.

But they never did follow through on that. And then the price went down again, so the mine was shut down.

ASARCO had the adjoining property. They had an ore body farther north, at the same stratigraphic horizon. Later--this was after I left--Newmont and ASARCO got together, and ASARCO became the operator. They did what we were talking about doing, although instead of sinking a shaft, they came in from the north, under the ore body we had discovered, and drilled it out. It turned out to be a very fine ore body, which they're still mining now.

Swent

How did you happen to find it? Were you following something that you thought was--

---

Livermore

Yes, just by geology. Dr. Norman was the one that had the clairvoyance--he had the idea of working on fault blocks. This was a new area, and we knew the favorable horizon was present there. It was an untested area, and he was the one that really spotted those first drill holes that encountered the ore.

I enjoyed Leadville; it was a nice town. Pretty high country; we were up there at 10,000 feet. We still were walking around in the snow in April; we'd drive down below and then the trees would be in blossom in the valley. [laughs]

Swent

You were up pretty high in Peru, too, weren't you?

Livermore

That was about 11,000, yes. So I spent quite a few continuous years over 10,000 feet, between Peru and Leadville. In fact, I remember one time I had a blood test, and got the results, and the doctor said, "Gee, my, your red count is really up! What's going on here?" [laughs] Well, just over a period of time, your red count increases because of the lack of oxygen.

Swent

It didn't bother you, though?

Livermore

No, it never did. I never got high altitude sickness, really. I went down one time later, and I did have some problems, but that was because I was not feeling very well. But while I was there, no, I could go up and down, it didn't seem to bother me too much.

Swent

You get used to it.

Livermore

Get used to it, yes.

So anyway, that was the end of that. So then an exploration job came up in Turkey, in 1955. Newmont had quite a program of--

Exploration in Turkey, 1955

##

Livermore

Newmont had a deal with the Turkish government, and we mounted really quite an exploration program over there, which I was involved with. We had a couple of teams of geologists, and we did reconnaissance work all over Turkey.

Swent

Did you have to get involved with the government?

---

Livermore

Yes, pretty much. They had control of everything in the mineral programs as the equivalent of the U.S. Geological Survey; you couldn't do anything without being in partnership with them. We ran our particular program, but when we found anything, we had to offer them a 50 percent interest.

Swent

I would think that Turkey would have been completely geologized by now--their mineral resources have been mined for thousands and thousands of years.

Livermore

Well, no, not at all. Not with modern techniques and modern knowledge. No, it's been walked over. They said that about Nevada. Look at all the discoveries that have been made in Nevada in the last few years. It's been gone over, but they keep finding things in Turkey. They found several deposits there. We were looking particularly for porphyry coppers at that time, because gold wasn't too interesting. So we had a little team there. There was a young geologist--well, I was pretty young myself, but he was a little bit younger. I was mostly in charge.

Swent

What was his name?

Livermore

Jim Hillebrand. We had a young Turkish student who was our interpreter. And we had a cook, and we had our own little outfit--a little jeep and trailer. We just took off all over the country. We were sort of following up various leads we had, that we found in Ankara, asking people. We looked at a lot of different things: chromite--Turkey's a big producer of chromite--but we didn't get too interested in that. We were mainly looking for copper. We looked at a lot of copper showings, and we looked at some tungsten.

We didn't come up with anything, unfortunately. I don't think that porphyry coppers have ever been found even now in Turkey. They have pyritic deposits with some copper. But we traveled all around, up in the north, over on the Black Sea, and out into eastern Turkey, and down along the Mediterranean--it was a fascinating trip.

Swent

Does turquoise come from Turkey?

Livermore

Well, that's a good question. I never thought about that. The name maybe comes from Turkey. Turquoise, yes. That sounds like a French word. I never thought about that.

I went over to relieve a geologist, actually, who had caught hepatitis. While I was over there, he was telling me the story about how he got sick; he was out in the hills like I

---

was, and wasn't feeling well. Of course, the Turks don't get hepatitis; they're too tough. [laughs]

So anyway, the geologist was way out in a mining camp, army camp. The doctor said he would give him a shot of penicillin. Of course, he had hepatitis, but they didn't recognize it. It's not easy to recognize. He didn't get any better, so he went down to the Turkish hospital, and he was feeling really pretty sick.

I think the first thing they figured, well, he just got some kind of a virus. The next diagnosis was that he had diabetes. So they gave him a shot of insulin in this Turkish hospital, and of course he was smart enough to realize that if they gave him too much insulin, not only was he going to pass out, he was going into insulin shock. He realized that he had to somehow or other get the word that he had to have some sugar. Imagine what a feeling that was; nobody could understand English. He was getting ready to pass out; he might never come to again.

Finally he got the message across somehow or other, they gave him a candy bar or something and he snapped out of it. Then they finally figured out that he had hepatitis, so he had to go home and recover.

Then I ended up getting hepatitis myself, later on this trip. So anyway, we had a great time traveling around Turkey. That was before there were any tourists in Turkey, except for maybe Ankara. We would drive down through the Mediterranean coast; there wasn't a single hotel; there was nothing there. Now it's all built up like Miami Beach, I understand.

We'd drive by these crusader's castles, and nobody would know anything about them, and there weren't any guide books or anything. We'd drive up canyons and there would be Hittite hieroglyphics on the walls, and all these fascinating things, and nobody seemed to know anything about them. So it was really kind of fascinating.

The Turkish people were interesting people. They were very friendly. At that time, we had a very good relationship with the Turks. Well, it still isn't too bad. But we were giving them foreign aid, and they were very, very friendly, particularly out in the country. Everywhere you went, the Turks were very friendly people. Very fine people, the Turks. Particularly the mountain people. You haven't been to Turkey, have you?

---

Swent

We were there once in 1966, just on a vacation. We went to Izmir and some of the country out there. That's when we had been living in New Mexico; I was surprised how much it was like New Mexico.

Livermore

Yes, well, it is.

Swent

And the people dressed like the Navajos.

Livermore

Yes, that's right. Well, they're interesting people. We were out in the country, in those mountainous areas. I remember in one area, they had this system of whistling; they'd signal; they would talk back and forth across the canyon by whistling. They'd send messages back and forth, and you'd hear them reverberating in the canyons.

The Turks were always very tough and very warlike; hated the Russians, of course. I remember we were out in one town there, and we'd heard that they had caught a Russian spy. The next day, there we saw him hanging up on the main square of the town. They didn't fool around.

Swent

Swift justice.

Livermore

Yes. That was interesting.

Swent

Were you a little nervous about bandits?

Livermore

Well, not really. It's funny, though, we went back to Istanbul and talked with some Turkish people who had never been out of Istanbul and we said we'd been out at Erzërum and places like that. She said, "Oh, my God, you went to those areas? That's loaded with bandits out there!" But we never had any trouble.

Swent

Were you unarmed? Did you carry any arms?

Livermore

No, we didn't carry anything. No, there were some bandits around, I guess, but we didn't carry anything. I think it's like most of these stories; they were there, but no, everywhere we went, the people were very friendly.

Swent

But no copper.

Livermore

No. We really didn't find anything that we could really zero in on, so they just terminated that program.

---

Iran and Hepatitis

Livermore

Then, that program was finished, so I went over to Iran. I was going to continue on over there, and that's when the hepatitis hit me. In fact, I got it in Turkey, I think, but there was an incubation period, so I was traveling on to Iran and I got to feeling very weak. I knew something was wrong. Luckily, when I was in Iran, there was a U.S. Army hospital there. I was very fortunate. I didn't have the trouble this other fellow did, so they put me in the army hospital, and I stayed there for about a month. It's a funny kind of disease, because you just feel weak. I never felt too sick, but anyway, I just stayed there in the hospital and then came back to the States.

Swent

Did you get over it?

Livermore

Took me about six months to get over it. I just felt weak for a long time.

Swent

But you have to be careful that it doesn't come back, don't you?

Livermore

Well, I guess so. I haven't been really taking any medication. Sometimes I think that my liver acts up a little bit. And I've had tests, you know, the liver function test which seemed to be all right. Of course, your liver is pretty good at reconstituting itself. But there's always a chance of scar tissue. I guess if it comes back again a second time, it's pretty bad. Sometimes I have a feeling of some sort of symptoms, but nothing that anybody would ever worry about.

Swent

What about your employer's responsibility at that point? What does your company do?

Livermore

Well, that was unfortunate. The worst of it was because I went over there to relieve a fellow who had hepatitis, so I should have been forewarned. What they should have done was to tell me to have gamma globulin, but they never mentioned that to me. We were traveling around just living off the land, eating in local restaurants; I could have gotten it anywhere.

But I did have a shot over there, because I had one more shot to go on my typhoid. I had a shot in Turkey, and that may have caused it. I may have gotten it with my shot. Looking back on it, I never should have done that. But there wasn't that much known about it, although as I say, I should have known. But no, they didn't tell me much about any precaution to take.

---

But it's funny, the Americans and Canadians are susceptible to it. The Turks never get it.

Swent

They're immune to it.

Livermore

And they're tough. And of course, the other thing you get over there is amoebic dysentery, which is very bad. I didn't get that. I had a lot of digestion problems, but not amoebic dysentery.

Swent

Newmont paid for your hospital care and all of that?

Livermore

Oh, yes. So anyway, I came back home, and I was pretty weak; I couldn't really do field work. So they decided on stationing me in New York. I went back to work fairly soon, which might have been a mistake, actually. I don't know. Anyway, I didn't feel that bad, so I think I took off a few weeks. I got to San Francisco, and got a lot more tests and sat at home. There's nothing you can do about it, really. They talk about a low fat diet, and no alcohol and things like that. I haven't really observed any particular precaution, but I've never been much of a drinker anyway, so that was no problem.

Working Out Of the New York Office, 1956-1957

Livermore

Anyway, I went back to work in the Newmont office in New York. I would go off, and as I got feeling better, I would take trips, examination trips, out to New Mexico.

Swent

This was your first time to be really in the New York City office for very long, so that was quite a change.

Livermore

Yes. Well, it was, yes. And I enjoyed it, because I enjoyed all the things that New York has to offer.

Swent

Was Fred Searls still there?

Livermore

He was still there, oh, yes. But unfortunately, that was in the start of his decline, which was very sad, of course. I don't know whether he had Alzheimer's or what it was, but his mental facilities went, so that was too bad. In fact, it was sort of sad, because he came down to the office for a while, and he couldn't remember. He was such a remarkable man, and I remember his memory--he had the most amazing memory. By that time, of course, Plato Malozemoff had taken over as president. But Fred Searls was still in the office.

---

Swent

Please tell me more about him as you remember him.

Livermore

Fred Searls was a real workaholic. They would tell the story of how as a young geologist he would operate as a consultant for several mines. He would often arrive by train at a mine in the evening, spend several hours underground mapping the work performed since his last visit, prepare a report which he would put on the manager's desk, and catch the train out to his next destination. Later on as president of Newmont he would work all week in New York and spend the weekends visiting the mines. I was at a lead-zinc mine in Leadville, Colorado, and was working a six-day week at that time, but Fred would invariably show up on Sunday so we would have to be present to show him around. But we didn't complain; in those days the job always came first--the family took second place.

Swent

How would you describe his personality?

Livermore

Fred Searls was an amateur boxer and liked managers who were tough and could stand up to the unions. If he heard that one of his managers got in a fight in a bar, his standing would increase in Fred Searls' estimation. He was innovative in testing geologic theories to find ore deposits.

Ambrosia Lake Uranium District, New Mexico

Livermore

It was an interesting experience there. I would take off on trips and examine properties. I went down to New Mexico during the uranium boom there. I tried to get Newmont interested in uranium at that time, but I couldn't talk them into it. But actually, I should have followed up on that. I was in Grants--I was down there when Homestake first started work. In fact, I remember seeing Dick Stoehr there, and he was running the operation. We talked quite a few times. Did you ever go down there when we were there, working there?

---

Swent

I went down in 1957.

Livermore

Were you there when they had all that problem with the water?

Swent

Oh, yes.

Livermore

I remember going underground, just visiting there, and I think Dick showed me around. They had hardly gotten started; they were just driving the development drifts. I remember going out to the face there; they just blasted a round, and then--it was just like Cream of Wheat. It just oozed down over the drift there, and it was terrible stuff. They were having real problems.

It always seemed to me that one solution was to add more water and just pump the stuff up to the surface. I think maybe they did try that. But anyway, of course, as you know, they finally got it dried out. But it was just the most horrible mess, that stuff, to handle. I've never seen anything like that.

I tried to get Newmont interested in some other properties there in Grants. I remember being down there during the day of the Sputnik.

Swent

October 1957, I think, was the Sputnik. And at the same time that the mine was having all its problems with the water, the town didn't have any water, because their water facilities had been overloaded by all the people. We didn't have water. [laughs] It was exciting; it was really exciting.

Livermore

Yes. I was there I guess about two or three weeks. Some of those surrounding properties looked kind of interesting to me but I couldn't get Newmont interested. Plato Malozemoff always said later that he should have followed my recommendation. I don't know, maybe in the long run, it worked out better.

Anyway, I took a lot of other trips. I remember I went down to Venezuela and looked at some stuff there. It was very interesting, because I'd get kind of tired of New York every once in a while; I'd go off on a nice trip, get out in the hills, and then I'd come back and enjoy the city for a while, and then I'd take off again.

Swent

The best of both worlds. What were you looking for in Venezuela?

Livermore

There was a copper property down there that I was looking at, and also a laterite nickel deposit.

---

Then I went to Chile, and spent some time there looking for things. I had a lot of interesting trips.

Swent

Newmont did something in Chile, didn't they?

Livermore

Not at that time. No, we looked at a few things there. Fred Searls was friendly with Walter Hochschild. Actually, we should have acted on that, too, but I don't know whether we ever had a real opportunity. But a couple of the Hochschild properties that we looked at have since turned into wonderful mines. But whether Newmont could have gotten into that, I don't know. But that was an interesting period.

Exploration Philosophy

Swent

When a geologist goes out and finds something great, of course, he gets a lot of glory. When you don't find things, does a negative image sort of rub off on you?

Livermore

Well, of course, you have to be an optimist to be a geologist. And if you don't find what you're looking for in some place, you always think, well, the next time it will be the one. But plenty of geologists, very good geologists, spend practically their whole careers without coming up with a prospect which developed into a mine. There's an awful lot of luck in it.

Swent

But people at the home office look on you as the person who's responsible for its being there or not? Did you sometimes feel that as the messenger of bad news, that you were blamed?

Livermore

Well, I don't think we get blamed for it exactly. I don't know. Because I think they do get discouraged. And that's the trouble with most companies; they don't have staying power. They have a big ambitious program for two or three years, and then they get discouraged, and of course, that is hard on the exploration people because they've been working hard at it and just haven't been in the right place at the right time, and then they cancel the whole program. So you do get under pressure, as time goes on, if you don't come up with something.

We found that in Nevada because we were really pretty successful, but we had a long dry spell there, and you wonder if you're ever going to find anything more. It is difficult for a geologist.

Swent

Especially when the people at the top are not geologists.

---

Livermore

That's right. Well, that was the advantage of Newmont, with Fred Searls being there. That was interesting, when Plato came along, because he was not a geologist. He was a metallurgist, as you know. So he was supportive, but he wasn't that keen on exploration. In fact, I remember one time that he stated outright--this was back in the fifties--he said, "We haven't come up with much ourselves on exploration the last ten years. I think we're better off just to buy mines."

Well, it was kind of interesting, because right after that we found the Carlin ore body, so he had to sort of [laughing] eat a little crow on that one. [laughs]

So I think he decided that there was some merit in doing exploration, and sometimes you can come up with an overlooked ore body. But I remember him saying that. And he admitted that himself, that he'd been wrong. But that's true of the history of a lot of companies: they do exploring, and then they get discouraged, and they think, we'll just buy mines. And then they find that buying mines isn't too satisfactory, so then they say, "Well, I guess we'll go out and explore again." So they go back and forth. And what it takes, of course, is steady plugging. You've got a good organization, you keep going, and you eventually come up with your share of ore bodies.

But during all that period, I didn't come up with very much. I looked at a lot of stuff. So that went on for a couple of years. Of course, I kept feeling better, and after about six months, I was spending more time in the field.

Swent

What was the significance of Sputnik? I was wondering why you had mentioned that.

Livermore

Well, it was just a date. It's like Kennedy's assassination. Everybody remembers where he was at Kennedy's assassination or Pearl Harbor or the Sputnik; they were pretty important events. Ties it down. That was the only reason.

Chilean Exploration

Swent

What were the properties in Chile that you looked at?

Livermore

We were looking at copper properties. We looked at some iron properties; mostly copper, though. We looked at some stuff at Antofagasta and then central Chile. Nothing really we could

---

get a handle on. They were mostly properties that were offered to us; for one reason or another, they didn't seem too attractive. There was one property that I was kind of intrigued with, but for various reasons they decided not to acquire it. But it's still an interesting property; in fact, I think one of the major companies started mining it. It might eventually make a mine.

Swent

Does it have a name?

Livermore

It's called Andacollo. Around the margin of the copper they found some gold there recently; that makes it a little more attractive. I think Noranda has been talking about putting it into production.

And I remember a property called Mantos Blancos, which was a small mine then, one of the Hochschild properties, and that's developed into a tremendous mine. That was down near Antofagasta.

Hochschild was a very interesting fellow, quite a remarkable man that was involved in mining in South America, Bolivia and Chile. He was a good friend of Fred Searls. There's the Hochschild that's in Amax, but I think they were a different family. I'm not sure about that.

Zellidja, Morocco, and Algeria, 1958 to 1960

Livermore

Then this Moroccan job came up, so I headed for Morocco. That was kind of an interesting story. There was a French architect whose name was Jacques Walter who was building a hospital or something like that in Morocco. He didn't know anything about mining. But he got looking around in eastern Morocco, and somehow or other he got onto this lead property, which is way over in eastern Morocco close to the Algerian border, near a place called Oujda.

He was an interesting fellow who happened to be friendly with the daughter of the founder of Newmont, who was Peggy Biddle, who lived in Paris. So through his (I guess) social contact with Peggy Biddle, he was talking about this mine. By that time, I think he'd done a little bit of work on it, and it looked rather interesting.

So I guess she mentioned the Newmont connection, and he thought he needed some technical help, because he didn't know

---

anything about mining. So he got hold of Fred Searls, and Fred got kind of intrigued with this thing. They brought St. Joe [St. Joseph Lead Company] into the picture at a certain point to give them some help in drilling out this ore body, which turned out to be quite an impressive ore body.

Swent

This was Zellidja?

Livermore

Zellidja, yes. They helped them and then Frank McQuiston was sent over.

He helped them to design the mill. They proved up this very large, important ore body; it was a Mississippi Valley type, similar to southeast Missouri. That's why St. Joe was brought in, because the ore was similar to the type of ore in St. Joe's mine. And St. Joe laid out the mining plan. It was a very efficient plant: modern mill, and very efficient underground mining equipment.

This guy was so lucky. It came along right at the time of the Korean War. So he got financing from the U.S. government to provide concentrates. He got the whole thing financed by the U.S. government. Newmont and St. Joe did all the technical work. He ended up with 95 percent of one of the larger mines in the world. He just made enormous amounts of money on that. Somebody said he was making a million dollars a month on that mine, just unbelievable.

And he was a sharp trader, because of course Newmont and St. Joe thought, "Well gosh, with all this technical help, he'll certainly give us a chance to buy into this pot of gold." No part of that. I think they got each 2 percent or something like that for all this work. [laughs] He was a hard bargainer.

But they did find an extension of the ore body, right on the border between Morocco and Algeria.

##

Swent

So they formed another company to go into Algeria?

Livermore

To work in Algeria, and Newmont and St. Joe did get a little bit bigger piece of that. But that never amounted to the same as the original company.

---

But anyway, the mine went along for a number of years, and it was quite profitable. As I say, Newmont has continued to give technical help.

Swent

What were you doing?

Livermore

I wasn't there at that time. But then at a certain point, they started running out of ore, the original ore body. That's when I got into the picture, because they were looking for someone to head up an exploration program. The French geologists at that time--although they were very smart, they hadn't had that much practical exploration experience. They had geologists at the mine, but they didn't think any of them were really capable of directing this program. They couldn't seem to find anybody in France, so I guess they called again to Newmont for some help on this.

Plato Malozemoff suggested my name. So I was sent over there to head up this program. I couldn't speak any French. I did know a little Spanish, but that didn't seem to be a problem, so I took on the project. So I went over there.

Swent

Were you just on loan from Newmont?

Livermore

Yes. And it was kind of a difficult assignment, because I really didn't have the complete authority. The French geologists sort of resented me coming in, although we got along all right. So I was there kind of more as an advisor, although I was supposed to be the nominal head of exploration. They did mostly what I recommended, but a lot of things they did I didn't particularly agree with.

Swent

What sorts of things?

Livermore

Well, [laughs] we had a funny case with one geologist over there. They were very academic, the French technical people. We had one geologist on the Algerian side, and he was a very smart fellow. He wouldn't go underground; he wouldn't map the stopes. I spent a lot of time underground; I did a lot of work mapping the stratigraphy, because they didn't believe in this. I enjoyed that mapping. It was pretty obvious--you could see underground the roof was very bad; the stuff was collapsing and they were getting terrible dilution. You could just see this waste rock coming in there.

I told the manager. I said, "You've got a real problem here with dilution of this mine. I think your geologist is not spending enough time underground."

---

So we talked it over with the geologist. He said, "I don't think it's important to go underground. I have all the knowledge; I know about this mine." The French are sort of intellectual. So he said, "Well, I guess it's an intellectual difference of opinion. You think I should map underground. I don't think there's any point in it."

Of course, you never know when you're mapping geology whether you're going to get anything out of it or not. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. But it's worth a try.

So I told the manager, "My recommendation is that this mine should be mapped, because I think it will become evident that you're getting a lot of dilution in the mine." I even had taken samples to prove it.

"Well," he said, "we don't have enough evidence here." They're very mathematical.

So anyway, I said, "Well, that's my recommendation."

I went back to the general manager and told him, and he said, "Well, you know, he was in the office every day, he was putting in his eight hours a day." He was doing a lot of mathematical calculations. He was very good at that. So I guess the manager said, "I guess the solution to the problem is to fire this guy."

But it was really interesting, because in France, and most European countries, a professional has a much higher status than in America. To fire him--they had a very difficult time firing him. He said, "Well, here I am doing my job, I am down here eight hours a day, and I'm preparing all the reports you're asking me to do, I'm keeping all the records perfectly." Which he was doing. He said, "Your firing me, that's going to ruin my professional career. I resist being fired."

Well, after negotiating for about a month or something like that, they finally--he did agree to resign. They paid him some enormous bonus and things like that. But it was a very interesting thing, because in this country, it would have been very simple.

So anyway, they did get a guy down there mapping, and they did prove what I could have proven with my own two eyes--and he collected all kinds of samples and did mathematical studies--and yes, he said, "You're right. We are getting dilution." [laughter] That was very funny, because they look

---

at it intellectually so differently. They had to have the numbers, you see. They just couldn't go down and look at it. That was too simple. But they mapped, and it helped them a lot in their stoping. That was kind of an example of it.

But they're interesting people. I enjoyed in some ways working with them; they were very intelligent. Wonderful educations. Every geologist has to have a complete engineering training before they even start on geology. So they're all what they call ingeneurs geologues--engineer geologists--and they're very much into mathematics and statistical stuff like that.

I guess I accomplished something over there. We did find a fair amount of ore. It wasn't highly successful, actually, the exploration, and we didn't find any large new ore body, unfortunately.

I was the only one speaking English over there, so I had to learn to speak French. So it was interesting from that point.

Swent

That would be a plus.

Livermore

Yes. And it was a nice country, a nice climate--beautiful climate there; it was up in the foothills of the Atlas mountains, and it was a nice temperature. It was a pleasant couple of years there.

Swent

Was it a good time politically to be there?

Livermore

Well, that was another interesting thing. Morocco had already gained its independence from France. The problem was on the Algerian side, because Algeria was in the process of getting independence, and they were constantly rebelling. We were right exactly on the border. What would happen was they would train these fellaghas, these rebels, they'd train them on the Moroccan side, and then they would try to sneak across into Algeria to join their fellow rebels over there.

They had big barbed-wire fences all along the border, and it was quiet during the daytime, but the war would start at night. We could hear them. There was a French post right above us. At night, you could hear--the French would be machine-gunning these people trying to get across the border.

In fact, we had one drill crew drilling up pretty close to the border, and they started shooting at them. But they weren't hurt, luckily. So that was kind of interesting. Then

---

every so often they would lob a shell that came a little close to the camp there. So it was kind of an exciting period.

It was perfectly quiet in the daytime. We would go over in Algeria, and it was okay in the daytime. But you had to be very careful to get out before the night. When we were there, there were two Americans that were driving in Algeria, and they stayed too long, and they didn't get into where they were going by nightfall, and they were held up and shot. So it was kind of tricky.

Swent

You stayed in Morocco, and just went over to Algeria--

Livermore

Yes. We went down to Algiers, took a few trips around. Nice country. I enjoyed Morocco. Morocco is a beautiful country; it's like California. Nice climate.

Swent

How long were you there altogether?

Livermore

About two years. Quite a while.

---

Swent

You wanted to mention a little more about the Moroccan period?

Livermore

An interesting sideline of my tour of duty in Morocco was the story of Jean Walter, who was the owner of this mine. His wife was a great beauty in Paris, and she had a very colorful history; two of her husbands had died under very strange circumstances. There was a big scandal in Paris, which was in the newspapers for weeks, called "L'Affaire Lacaze," because her maiden name was Lacaze.

Once she and Jean Walter--her husband--were at a restaurant outside Paris, and he stepped outside of the restaurant and supposedly was run over by a car. It was kind of a mysterious circumstance. One of her other husbands died of some mysterious ailment, and there was some question of whether he had been poisoned.

Another incident was when she had a stepson whom she wanted to disinherit. The investigation never really proved it in court, but there were endless investigations in Paris and various subplots: she supposedly hired an Algerian paratrooper to murder her stepson, and her brother, Jean Lacaze, supposedly met with some Parisian prostitutes and money was exchanged--and this thing went on for just literally weeks in Paris. Big investigations, but nothing really came out of it. She never

---

was indicted. But it was quite a fascinating story. This was all going on while we were over at the mine there in Morocco.

My tour of duty was pretty well finished then. I went over with the understanding that I would stay for about two years, I think, and I really was ready to come back and get onto something else.

Eureka, Nevada; Adapting Oilfield Drilling Techniques

Swent

So you went back to the New York office then?

Livermore

No, then I was assigned to a project to Eureka, Nevada. We had a joint venture with two other companies, Cyprus and Hecla. This was an old mine which had been mined in the early days, the Ruby Hill Mine, and a Canadian had discovered an extension of the old ore bodies at considerable depth. This joint venture was put together to drill out this new faulted extension of the ore body.

I was assigned to run the drilling program there, to test for these deep extensions. It was an interesting project, because this ore zone was quite deep. It was down 1,500 to 2,000 feet below the surface.

Some of the early drilling had shown the conditions were very difficult for normal drilling techniques and the cost was very high.

Swent

What were you mining?

Livermore

This was a lead-zinc-silver deposit. I had the idea that oilfield type of rigs might be the way to drill, try to get holes down at a more reasonable cost. This had never been really tried in this type of mining application. I traveled around to several of the oilfield drilling areas, and looked at some of their techniques.

Particularly they had a technique of using compressed air instead of mud to bring the cuttings up from the drill hole. I thought that would have applications, because we were drilling down through rock that had a lot of cavities in it.

Swent

How did this differ from ordinary mining drilling?

---

Livermore

Well, the way it had been drilled before, you circulate water and mud. But because this rock had a lot of cavities in it, you would circulate water and mud down, and it would disappear in the formation. It wouldn't come back up to the surface. Which made it difficult, but mainly, you didn't get any cuttings coming up to the surface, so you didn't know what you were drilling. Of course, to sample the rock, we had to get something to show what we were drilling. The advantage of the air drilling is that you could go down through these areas with large cavities, and you could get the cuttings to circulate back up to the surface.

Swent

You said that this was an extension of the ore body, but you were drilling from the surface?

Livermore

From the surface, yes. So we brought a big oilfield rig in there, using this air method, and it did work pretty well, but not quite as well as we had anticipated.

We ran into some other problems which we hadn't anticipated. We got the cuttings back, but we found the walls of the holes were caving very badly, and we had to set casing, and it got pretty expensive. But we did get the results we wanted, and we did block out this ore body.

It was below the water table, and it looked like it might be very difficult to actually mine this ore body below the water table. But anyway, that project was terminated, because we had completed the drilling project.

Later on, after I left, they did make an attempt to go down with some underground workings and actually expose this ore underground, under the water table, which was another very complicated engineering job. But I wasn't involved in that.

Swent

When you did this drilling, were you then supposed to give a recommendation as to whether they should continue with it or not?

Livermore

Well, yes, and I came up with some reserves, calculated reserves on the basis of this drilling, which looked pretty interesting. Under normal conditions, it would have been a very valuable ore body. The problem was, as I say, it was below this water table, and because the formation was so open, with interconnected channels, to drain the area, which you'd have to do for mining, looked like a very difficult job.

So my recommendation was that they should proceed, and see if they could actually go down and drain this area. Which

---

they did attempt to do later, but I wasn't involved at that part of it.

That attempt was successful in getting down and looking at the ore body, but the cost appeared to be so great that that was abandoned, too. And actually, that ore body is still sitting there. Someday maybe somebody will mine it.

Swent

Does the same group still have it?

Livermore

Well, no. It was turned back to the original owners, which was a subsidiary of U.S. Smelting and Refining at that time. They have their separate company called Ruby Hill Mines, I think. So it's still sitting there. [laughs]

Swent

Well, someday maybe it will be opened again.

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

Let's expand just a little bit at this point about your role in this. You were asked to go and block out the ore body. And then you have to--you get all these cuttings, and you look at them. You send them to an assayer, to somebody to analyze--

Livermore

Well, we had an assay office right there; we did our own assaying right there.

Swent

And then you sit down in your office with those results, and you have mining costs?

Livermore

No, no. I didn't get into the engineering aspects of it. I just calculated I thought there were so many million tons of a certain grade down there. We did some metallurgical testing, so we knew some of the metallurgical properties, but that's as far as I got, because the problems of actually mining it, we knew those were very severe. But I didn't get into that part of it. That was done later.

Actually, Hecla came along later, and they became the operator, and they did a very expensive job of sealing off water in the shaft with cement grout so they could go down and look at the ore body. But they finally decided it wasn't economic at that time.

Swent

How was your report submitted? Did you send in a written report, or did you go before somebody with a chance to be questioned and defend your ideas?

---

Livermore

Well, we had a meeting of the joint venture partners, and at that time, Cyprus was the managing partner of the joint venture. I was reporting to a man named Bob Hendricks, with Cyprus. But then when that work was finished, then they all got their heads together and decided not to do anything right immediately. And then it was later they came along, I think it was at least a year, or maybe it was two years later, Hecla decided to carry on. They decided that they wanted to take over--they became the operator, and they did all this underground work.

Swent

Do you get sort of emotionally involved with this? Do you feel that it's your baby, that you want to promote? Is it hard to be dispassionate about it?

Livermore

Well, it wasn't as if it was a new discovery. Actually, the displaced ore body was found--that was an interesting story--it was found by a very famous Canadian mining entrepreneur named Thayer Lindsley.

He happened to be in Nevada getting a divorce--you had to wait six weeks to get a divorce, and he wasn't about to waste his time. He got studying geological maps and studied some information on the Ruby Hill Mine, and he read the old reports that said that this ore body had been faulted off, and that there might be the down-dip extension still existing. So he went in there and he drilled some holes, and he actually found it. But he had these tremendous drilling problems, using the conventional drilling method, and he had to give up on it.

And that's when we went in. We thought with this new technique that we could--with air drilling and using these big rigs. So it really wasn't the fact of discovering it. All we simply did was try to block out what he had actually found.

Swent

So you didn't feel--

Livermore

--that it was a real discovery--no.

Swent

Who made the drills that you used?

Livermore

The type of drills, you mean?

Swent

Yes.

Livermore

I don't even remember that. But one of the things we had that was very impressive, we had these enormous compressors, because we were drilling down under several hundred feet of water, and in order to lift this water and the cuttings out, we had three

---

enormous compressors and we were operating at a thousand pounds pressure there to remove these cuttings. This is something, as I say, it hadn't ever been done in mining exploration before. We were using oilfield type of equipment. We drilled one hole I think over three thousand feet deep, which for rotary drilling for mining was quite deep.

So it was an interesting project from the drilling point of view. It was a fascinating job. [laughs] And of course, the drills were going twenty-four hours a day, and I can remember that it seems like we'd always have our problems about 2:00 a.m. The driller would come in and tell me that we were having problems with the drills, so I just practically couldn't leave the project for about three or four months; I was there seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day practically.

Swent

How far out of town was it?

Livermore

Well, we were right in Eureka, which is a little town in the central part of Nevada.

Swent

There's a lot of mining around there, though, isn't there?

Livermore

Well, there wasn't much at that time. There had been. No, it was pretty quiet at that time. There was only maybe a thousand people living in the town. It was a pretty small town, actually.

Swent

You didn't try core drilling?

Livermore

Well, we had done core drilling before, but the reason for doing the rotary drilling, we thought we could do it quite a bit cheaper. The core drilling is very expensive. That had been tried before, but we thought that with the rotary drilling, we could do a lot more drilling, and drill a lot more holes for the same price. It only partially worked out the way we thought it would, because we were able to drill down through these open cavities, but we had other problems of caving ground and--it turned out to be more expensive than I had anticipated, but still it was cheaper than core drilling.

Swent

Did you hire the contractors?

Livermore

Yes, I arranged for them all. Yes, I did all that.

Swent

Did you have favorite drillers that followed you around from place to place?

---

Livermore

No, no--we just hired a contractor, and they provided the drillers. No, I didn't have anything to do with hiring the drillers. But I did go out and select the proper contractor, with the right equipment that we wanted.

Swent

Well, this is what I mean, the drilling contractor. You had particular ones that you preferred to deal with?

Livermore

Well, this was something very new. I never had dealt with any of the oilfield type of equipment, so I had to just go around to quite a few drilling projects in the oil country, and not too many of them had this particular type of equipment. I didn't know any of them before, actually. I just had to sort of decide by word of mouth recommendation which one to use.

Swent

Between these assignments, were you going back to New York?

Livermore

No, not really. Not too much. I stayed there. I looked at some properties after the drilling had finished.

Swent

Did Newmont have an office out here in the West?

Livermore

No. I just stayed at the hotel there. No, we didn't have any office at that time.

Swent

Everything done by phone?

Livermore

Everything was done by phone or letters; I was working directly under Fred Searls, who was the chairman of Newmont in New York. He'd come out from time to time. But I was pretty independent, actually. On the drilling, I was working for this Bob Hendricks, but after that was over, I went back under the Newmont supervision, so I was reporting to the chairman of Newmont, Fred Searls.

---

VI Disseminated Gold and the Carlin Discovery, 1961

Livermore

I looked around at some various properties, because I was in that area. I'd always had the idea about this disseminated gold from the time I worked at Standard. I always had the idea that there may be some more of that type of deposit around.

Swent

Standard was the mine that Stu Rawlings had.

Livermore

Yes, Stu Rawlings. But I didn't have any very obvious way to pursue looking for this type of deposit, some kind of a geological theory, for you just can't look everywhere. But about that time, too, I had read an article published by the U.S. Bureau of Mines. I don't know whether you want me to go through this whole thing, because that's pretty much in that Alan Coope report.

Swent

Let's mention it, at least. We can refer to the Alan Coope report.

O.W. Vanderburg Report, 1939

Livermore

This was 1960, and I was reading a report written back in 1939 by a U.S. Bureau of Mines mining engineer, and he had been looking at several properties in Nevada. He was not a geologist, but he was a good observer, and he reported there was something interesting about certain deposits in Nevada. There were four or five deposits that he had looked at--

---

Swent

Is this Roberts?

Livermore

No, no, this was O.W. Vanderburg. It was 1939. He noted that there were several producing mines in Nevada that had certain unusual characteristics, different from a lot of the other standard gold mines. They were in sedimentary rocks as opposed to volcanic rocks, and they were disseminated deposits of fairly large dimensions.

Vanderburg realized that there was the Getchell, there was the Gold Acres, and this Standard Mine where I had worked was in that category. These were unusual deposits in which the gold was very fine. Well, that was a very good observation, and also he said at that time in his report, "I think there are more of these deposits to be found in Nevada." So he was a very far-sighted person.

Swent

What led you to look up this report, and where did you find it?

Livermore

Well, in this business, you're always doing research. That's one of the things in exploration, we're always looking at old reports, and when you get in an area, you look at any reports pertaining to that area.

Swent

Where do you find them?

Livermore

Well, this was in any library. I don't remember where I first saw this; it might have been in the University of Nevada library or someplace. But these reports were very interesting. There was a series of reports put out by the U.S. Bureau of Mines on describing different mines in northern Nevada at that time.

So when I read this report, that really intrigued me, because I had been interested in this type of deposit way back in 1949 and this suggested that some other deposits of this type might exist, which the old-timers could have missed simply because the ore didn't pan. It could be even right on the surface.

Ralph Roberts of the U.S. Geological Survey

Livermore

So I got kind of interested in that, and then another occurrence happened right at the same time. A U.S. Geological Survey geologist by the name of Ralph Roberts was doing a lot of regional work in the area, and he came up with the theory of

---

this very major thrust fault in this area; it was called the Roberts Mountain Thrust, not after Ralph Roberts, but after the Roberts Mountain. By very careful mapping, he had concluded that there was this enormous thrust structure where the rocks had been shoved horizontally about fifty miles to the east in the central part of Nevada.

He gave a talk one time in Ely, which I attended, in eastern Nevada, and he expounded some of his ideas, which were followed up by a paper he wrote in 1960, about the same time, where he took some of the known occurrences and plotted them on a map, and found that a series of these occurrences seemed to be close to where this Roberts Mountain Thrust outcrop was. They weren't all gold mines; there were some lead mines, but there were also several gold mines.

I was very intrigued with that, and I actually talked to Roberts quite a bit after this paper he gave in Ely, and pursued the matter further with him. That really got me interested, because now I had a model to follow to try to find some of these deposits. I thought there was a good chance they existed. Maybe the old-timers would have missed them because of this fine gold, but now with his theory, maybe this was a way to look for these deposits. Maybe just by carefully mapping and prospecting this Roberts Mountain Thrust, we could find more of these deposits.

So I suggested that to the Newmont management, that we set up this project, and they went along with that. Since I was in Nevada and finished with the Ruby Hill job, it was logical that I take on this project.

Bob Fulton, who was vice president of exploration for Nevada, had also read Ralph Roberts' 1960 report and was intrigued by it. He had a geologist named Alan Coope who was already working in Nevada at that time on another area, and so we got together with Fred Searls.

Swent

Who was this?

Livermore

Bob Fulton, Fred Searls, and I had a meeting to discuss the idea of following up on Roberts' ideas.

Swent

Where did you meet?

Livermore

In Nevada. And we agreed that there was something that we could follow up on. Since I was in Nevada, I was the logical

---

one to follow up on this finding, and since Alan Coope was already there, he was assigned to me as an assistant.

Swent

Can you tell a little more about Fulton? What sort of person was he to work with?

Livermore

Well, he was a very unusual man. He was a mining engineer, basically, but he had gotten involved a lot in exploration and was a tremendously active, hard-working person and a great asset to Newmont. He was a workaholic type and on the go all the time. Came up with some very interesting projects for the company.

Swent

Was he older than you?

Livermore

He was about the same age as I was. I was not working under him; I was working under Fred Searls at that time but we worked together very closely, and later of course he took over the Carlin exploration after I left, and really made it into an ore body.

Swent

He was not a geologist?

Livermore

Not a geologist, but he became very knowledgeable in geology, and he had--he was very interested in that aspect of it, and although he was not a field geologist, because he usually worked out of the New York office, he managed a lot of exploration projects and became very familiar with all aspects of exploration.

He was not directly involved in the early work, because I was reporting to Fred Searls at that time. He was following what we were doing, very closely, and after I was transferred to Canada in January 1962, he took over the work and was in charge of the early drilling and the early development, and he was really responsible for developing the Carlin deposit, other than the early prospecting.

Swent

He was not in on the first discovery.

Livermore

No, no.

---

Prospecting the Roberts Mountain Thrust

Livermore

There was another young Newmont geologist in Nevada at the time, a fellow named Alan Coope. He was assigned as my assistant. So we simply started out following up on this theory. There was a general map showing where this Roberts Mountain Thrust was, and it extended all the way from central Nevada up into Idaho. So there was a lot of ground to prospect. We simply started north of Eureka, where the thrust occurred, and we carefully mapped it and followed it and sampled it. We began to get some very low values, nothing very exciting. But we began to realize the association of certain features with gold, which is mainly a silicification known as jasperoid. We began to see that these were certain features we should be looking for as we prospected along this fault.

Swent

Were you just sampling with a hammer and little canvas bags?

Livermore

Yes. That's all.

Swent

Nothing high-tech?

Livermore

No, not really. We just sent the samples in, and ran them for gold. We'd run them for other metals, too, sometimes mercury and antimony and arsenic, which often occurred with the gold. But mainly we were just sampling for gold.

So we had been working along, we were getting a few little values, nothing too exciting. Then at one point I was talking to a manager of one of the mines (Gold Acres), named Harry Bishop, who had been around that area for a long time, and I told him what we were doing, and the association with the Roberts Mountain Thrust, and so I asked him, "If you were going to prospect the Roberts Mountain Thrust for gold, where would you look?"

"Well," he said, "there's a new mine just being developed up north of Carlin, which I would suggest you go up and look at."

The Blue Star Mine

Livermore

I wasn't familiar with this mine at the time. This was a small mine called the Blue Star Mine which was being developed. It

---

had a small mill there. It was not a very well-run outfit; it was kind of a promotional group from Salt Lake City.

But the interesting thing was that sure enough, here this deposit was right on the Roberts Mountain Thrust, which was exactly what we were looking for. So we got looking in that area, and we found that there actually were two or three old properties in what was called the Lynn Window. It had some known gold, so here were three known properties on the Roberts Mountain Thrust. So we decided, well, this is maybe where we should be zeroing in, on this area. We'll just work very extensively on this area.

So we shifted our activities there to the north. So that's what we did: we just mapped and sampled this area very carefully, and we were getting low values. But we found one hill which is known as the Popovich Hill, and we were starting to get some values over a fair area there. At that time, with the price of gold $35, they were nothing that was even close to being economic.

---

Swent

Again, who is "we"?

Livermore

Well, that was Alan Coope who was working with me at that time.

Swent

But you were the leader; you made the decisions?

Livermore

Yes, I was in charge. He was a younger geologist, so I was really in charge of the party. He had just come out of school, actually.

So we decided just to systematically map and sample the Carlin Window--I mean the Carlin and particularly the Lynn Window. We covered a lot of ground very, very carefully, mapping and sampling and studying the rocks, and the alteration.

Swent

How much ground would you cover in a day?

Livermore

Oh, that's a good question. We were doing it very, very slowly. We were mapping all the rocks. I suppose we might cover a mile a day or something like that.

Swent

You were staying in Battle Mountain?

Livermore

No, we were living in Carlin, living at a motel in Carlin. We drove out to the area where we were working, and started

---

walking. We would map the rocks, and then take a lot of samples, and we would send them down to this assay office that was down in the Crescent Valley.

Harry Treweek, Assayer

Swent

How did you select your assayer?

Livermore

Well, he was the only one available in the whole area. At that time, it's hard to believe, there was so little going on, there wasn't even an assay office in Reno at that time. Harry Treweek had a little operation, and his own assay office. He and his wife lived out there all by themselves.

He was a very good assayer. We had confidence in him because these samples we were taking were often very low-grade samples, and we wanted to be sure that what he was reporting were true values, and not just spurious values. Often it's hard to detect small amounts of gold in a sample. You have the danger of contamination and various other things.

Later, various stories came out how we were trying to throw people off the track. One story even was that we only worked at night. That's sort of ridiculous. Because we really didn't have any competition. But anyway, these few legends sort of developed, and that we took the samples way over to Crescent Valley to throw people off the track. Of course, as I say, that was the only assayer around, so that was the reason for it.

Swent

You probably were doing a lot of work at night, weren't you?

Livermore

Well, we wouldn't go out in the field too much at night, no.

Swent

No, but I mean a lot of office work.

Livermore

Well, we worked at night in the office, oh, yes. In drafting up our maps and things like that. Oh, yes, we worked a lot.

Swent

Did you have an office in Carlin?

Livermore

No, we just lived in a motel.

Swent

Did you take your samples over to him at night, just because of the circumstances?

---

Livermore

Well, we would take them over at night, yes, because that was at the end of the day.

Swent

But not to do it secretly.

Livermore

No. And one thing about it, too, we got the results very quickly, which was very important, because we had to know as we went along, we had to have results to guide our work. And he could do these samples in one day, which was very good. A lot of labs can't do that. He was very cooperative. Luckily, he didn't have too much else to do at that time, because his mine was shut down, so he was just sort of living there with his wife. His wife helped him on preparing the samples, so we got very quick results, so that was good.

Swent

How did you know that they were accurate?

Livermore

Well, we had confidence in him. We would send out check samples to other labs. There was a very good lab in Salt Lake City at that time, and we used to send samples in to them.

Swent

Just to compare.

Livermore

To compare them. We developed confidence in him, and he had already a good reputation anyway. So we really felt that his samples, particularly the low-grade ones, were meaningful. A lot of the values we were getting were really just barely traces of gold. We wanted to make sure those were real values, and not just contamination.

Swent

What sort of values were they?

Livermore

Well, you know, like one or two hundredths of an ounce, that's what we were getting. For fire assay, that's not too easy to detect down to those limits. Now, since then, they have much better ways of detecting gold. You can detect them down to much lower levels, but at that time, that was about the limit.

Swent

And did you have anybody from Newmont that was interested in what you were doing?

Livermore

I was reporting to Fred Searls at that time, and also Bob Fulton was involved. He was in charge of exploration in the United States and other areas, and he was actively involved. They came out from time to time, but not very often. We were pretty independent.

Swent

Did they encourage you?

---

Livermore

Well, they did, although I think I mentioned that before, that when we finally got interested--well, they were very interested in the project. In fact, Bob Fulton had quite a bit to do with suggesting the project, encouraging the project. So yes, they were interested in it.

But when we finally kind of zeroed in on Popovich Hill as being somewhat interesting, they came out there. We were getting some of these very low values on this Popovich Hill which were in the right geological setting, so they seemed interesting, although if we'd gotten those same values somewhere else we wouldn't have paid much attention to them.

In order to confirm that we were in the right setting--the Roberts Mountain Thrust--we invited Ralph Roberts of the USGS, who was the great expert on the thrust, to visit the property. The purpose was to verify our conclusion that these values were located in or close to the Roberts Mountain Thrust. We also visited a number of other properties--Bootstrap and Blue Star--with similar settings. This opinion by Roberts gave us confidence in our interpretation and increased the significance of the low gold values which we had been obtaining.

So then we invited Searls and Fulton to come out.

Fred Searls Says to Stake the Claim

Livermore

So I always remember when Fred Searls and Bob Fulton came out, and it was kind of dusk. We showed them what we had, and these very low values, and scattered over a fair area. I said, "I think we should stake claims here. We've got enough encouragement." Fred Searls obviously wasn't too impressed. [laughs] But he said, "Okay, John. If you want to, go ahead and stake the claims."

So we did stake the claims, which of course turned out to be the Carlin ore deposit. But at the time, it wasn't very impressive. [laughs]

Swent

Where did you go to stake them?

Livermore

Well, we just bought posts and staked them right on the spot there. We staked I think sixteen claims there. We had to take them in to the county seat for recording.

---

Swent

Where is that?

Livermore

That was in Eureka, it was in Eureka County. But as I say, we weren't too worried about competition. There wasn't anybody around.

We did find out later there was one fellow who turned out later to be my partner when I came back ten years later. He was sort of following us around a little bit, Pete Galli. But he told me that afterwards. He kind of knew what we were up to.

Swent

This was 1961?

Livermore

That was 1961, but when I came back to Nevada in 1970, we became partners, actually.

Swent

You didn't know him in '61?

Livermore

Yes, I knew him in '61, yes.

Swent

Just didn't know he was following you.

Livermore

I didn't know he was following us around.

Swent

So you were doing about a mile a day, and you virtually started where you ended up, didn't you?

Livermore

That's right. It was not a big area, and of course, looking at the program as a whole, we were fantastically lucky, because the whole program only literally lasted about three or four months. In a program like this, you might be working on it for a couple of years and end up with nothing. But we got onto this very quickly, and that was--that's part of the game.

Swent

But you were very well informed before you zeroed in on it.

Livermore

Well, yes. I think we thought we knew what we were looking for, and a certain type of deposit. And actually, it turned out that we found exactly the type of deposit we were looking for. The only thing, it turned out to be much bigger and much richer than we'd ever possibly thought we'd find. So it's usually the other way around. You make what's called a technical discovery: you find what you think you're looking for, but it's not commercial. That doesn't pay off, unfortunately. So that was good in that sense. Because this was so much bigger than any of the others, the Gold Acres, the Getchell, and Standard.

---

Swent

Big in area?

Livermore

Big in tonnage and in grade. The original Carlin reserves were about three million ounces, and I think most of the other deposits were in the order of a few hundred thousand ounces. This was many times bigger than anything that had ever been found before.

Exposing the Bedrock; Finding the Carlin Ore Body

Swent

Did you have anything to do with delineating the deposit?

Livermore

No. I didn't, because after we staked the claims, then we decided the next step would be to expose the rocks. There weren't very good exposures. Most of our samples were actually chips of rock, which had been broken off the bedrock, lying around the ground. We sampled chips, and we sampled sort of selectively the best-looking chips, because we thought if there was nothing in those better-looking chips, there probably wasn't anything around.

Swent

When you say best-looking, what do you mean?

Livermore

Well, by color, and by alteration.

Swent

What color were you looking for?

Livermore

Well, we were looking for hard rock due to silicification, and iron staining. The two things that are associated with gold are pyrite and silica. So we were looking for silicification. The pyrite breaks down on the surface to iron oxide, so you're looking for a rusty color which indicates that there is pyrite at depth. And certain types of color are quite important. We found that certain kinds of brown, the darker browns tend to be more encouraging than the lighter, sort of the yellowish browns. So there were certain color things that we were looking for.

And the right kind of rocks, of course. You had to be in a certain type of sedimentary rock, certain type of a siltstone, calcareous siltstone, which was the more favorable host rock. Those were the various things we were looking for.

So anyway, we decided that we'd stake the claims. So the next stage was to try to expose the bedrock better, and the best way to do that is with a bulldozer. So we got a bulldozer

---

in, and we put in several trenches there. We got a lot of low-grade values, but in one trench, we had--let's see--on the edge of a dike, we had some much more interesting values. [pause, looking at figures]

Swent

A dike is volcanic, isn't it?

Livermore

Yes, but that was a dike cutting through the sediments. The rocks are sedimentary, but there were narrow dikes cutting through. On the edge of this dike, we exposed, over a width of eighty feet, material that averaged .20 ounces of gold per ton. Now, that was pretty interesting, because that was getting close to a commercial grade. So we realized there that we really had something. That was the real discovery. We realized that this was something that we had to drill out very systematically, and that was the end of that program. That, of course, turned out to be part of the Carlin ore body, the real Carlin ore body.

But then the winter was setting in, and nothing much could be done until next spring. So I was transferred at that time up to Canada, so I wasn't involved in the later work there. The work was taken over by Bob Fulton.

Swent

Did Newmont ever reward you in any way for this?

Livermore

Not directly, although I did later get opportunity on some stock options which were not necessarily related to Carlin, just as other senior people in the company did. But at the time, I never felt I needed a reward. I was just doing the job that I was paid for.

Since then, they've had a lot more programs of bonuses in corporations, and a lot of companies have bonuses. In the later operations that I managed, we always had discovery bonuses for all our people. But at that time, that wasn't common.

Swent

Did they say "Thank you very much," or write you a nice letter, or anything?

Livermore

Well, I guess they appreciated it. Plato Malozemoff was the president. Newmont had been doing a lot of exploration, and hadn't really come up with very much. So Plato was one of the believers that they really were better off to spend their money acquiring properties, rather than exploring for properties.

Swent

He was not a geologist.

---

Livermore

That's right. But anyway, after the Carlin discovery, he had to admit that there was some merit in the company doing their own exploration.

##

Livermore

A lot of companies swing back and forth. That's part of the history of mining, that companies swing back from exploration, which is of course a very bad policy, because you're much better off to keep a program going with the same personnel, and you have the right people working, and over a period of time you keep finding things. But sometimes you have long dry spells.

But anyway, after that, Newmont beefed up their exploration staff, and did concentrate more on exploration. So that was the end of the Carlin thing as far as I was concerned except that I would hear about the drilling.

Bob Fulton did a very good job of managing that development part of it, and I started hearing about some of the early drill holes. The third hole they drilled was a fantastic hole. It ran--I think it was seventy-five feet that averaged over an ounce, which is just an unbelievable hole.

Swent

Was this in that dike area again?

Livermore

No, it was a little farther away. It wasn't in that same spot. It was over in the other part of the property.

So anyway, I remember I was transferred to Toronto there. I had a call back--I always remember--from Plato Malozemoff, who by that time was president. He said, "John, it looks like we have an ore body in Carlin." So of course, that made me feel pretty good, because they'd done enough drilling to know that they definitely had an ore body there, and it kept getting bigger and bigger until it was--as I say, it ended up, the final reserves were 11 million tons of three-tenths, which by any standard, and even at that old price of $35, was a very good ore body.

Swent

And Plato obviously did give you credit for it.

Livermore

Oh, yes. He did. It was very rewarding. That was the whole purpose of what I was hired for.

So that was the end of the Carlin as far as I was concerned, because I wasn't involved at all in the development; in fact, I hardly came back to Nevada at all during that period, because I was pretty busy in Canada.

---

VII Manager of Exploration in Canada, 1962 to 1970

Swent

So you were exploring primarily in Canada?

Livermore

Yes. I was made manager of exploration in Canada, and had a very interesting experience up there. We were exploring all over the country, from British Columbia to the Maritimes and up in the Yukon, and all over Canada really. I saw Canada from one end to the other. We were exploring for different kinds of things.

The Icon Syndicate; A Good Copper Mine

Livermore

One of the first things we got into up in Canada which was again fortuitous--there's always a certain amount of luck in all these things--there was a syndicate that had been operating for a number of years called the Icon Syndicate. They were looking for copper. There were four companies in the syndicate, which was kind of a common way of operating in Canada. You'd get a group of companies together and form a syndicate, and that was sort of to spread the risk of exploration.

I was quite impressed with their manager, Andy Troop. I thought he was a pretty capable fellow. And just shortly after I arrived in Canada, one of the partners dropped out of the syndicate, so they were looking for another partner. Because of their manager's expertise, I thought it would be a good gamble for Newmont.

We took up that other company's position, so we became a one-fourth interest in that. Well, they'd been working for about five years, hadn't come up with much, but the luck of the game: within a year after Newmont joined this syndicate, this

---

Andy Troop came up with a really very fine copper discovery, which was a very, very profitable mine.

Swent

Where was it?

Livermore

It was up in Chibougamau, Quebec. This was an unusual type of ore body in Canada. Most ore bodies are steeply dipping. This was a flat-lying ore body. It was discovered from an airborne survey, and we found the outcrop on the ground, represented by just a few pieces of float.

We started exposing the thing, and it turned out to be a flat vein. We were able to just run workings right into this flat vein and start mining, and it required very little preparatory work. Most Canadian mines require a shaft, and a lot of complicated work. So we started just going in and mining this thing.

There was also a mill nearby that was idle, and we used this mill. It was not a big mine, but it turned to be one of the best returns on investment that Newmont had ever had, I think, because of the low capital costs. That was a very good little mine. So that was very lucky; we just happened to join this syndicate at the right time.

Swent

You can't do much in Canada in the winter, can you?

Livermore

No, that's not true. Actually, some of the best exploration is done in the winter, because you can get around the country better. In the summertime, it's very hard to get around, at least with mechanical equipment, because everything is boggy muskeg, whereas in the wintertime, everything is frozen and you can use snowmobiles and you can land on the frozen lakes with airplanes.

So you can do geophysical work better, you can do drilling better. Actually, in the winter the only thing you can't do is surface geological work, because everything is covered with snow. But as far as the follow-up work, which often meant geophysical surveys or drilling, you could do really very well in the wintertime, particularly when they developed snowmobiles, where you could get around and cover the country a lot better. Even though it would get down to thirty below, you could still work.

---

Similkameen, British Columbia

Livermore

The other thing that we got interested in was out in British Columbia. Actually, this was something I guess that was brought in to one of our fellows in our Vancouver office. Somebody had been sampling a cut in the Transcontinental Highway from Vancouver to back East, and he had found that right in the road cut there was a little bit of copper showing.

So our Vancouver geologist, Don Cannon, got me out there, and we decided that it was kind of a poor showing, but the geology looked interesting, and we should really follow up on it. We did a little more sampling and decided to drill this showing. There wasn't much around the showing, but we got moving out, and we did some geophysical work, and got some better indications. Later, we got some anomalies. That eventually turned out to be the Similkameen Mine, the large open-pit copper mine. So that was kind of interesting to follow that through from the first outcrop.

What was interesting about that was instead of having to build a road to this mine, we had to build a road away from it. We had to [laughs] divert the Transcontinental Highway around this pit, so we couldn't have found a better location, right smack on the Transcontinental Highway. When they were building the road, apparently they didn't notice this copper, and nobody paid much attention to it.

Swent

There was a river there that was a problem too, wasn't there?

Livermore

Well, that's right. A part of the ore was on one side of the river, and part was on the other. They had to build a big bridge across the river. It was very complicated, developing it. And yes, that developed into a large mine. It wasn't a highly profitable mine, but it's still running, actually.

Swent

When you were doing this geophysical work, did you do this yourself, or did you contract it out?

Livermore

No, we contracted it out. Some of the simpler surveys we would do ourselves, but a lot of the work we would contract out. There were a lot of contractors doing that work in Canada. Geophysics, of course, is very much utilized in Canada. You

---

did hardly any work in Canada without doing some geophysics: magnetics or electromagnetics, or induced polarization--all of these different methods.

A lot of the work has stemmed from airborne surveys. The Icon Syndicate Mine was really indicated from the air, as an anomaly from the air, which we followed up on the ground and found this exposure. So a lot of these discoveries in Canada originated from airborne work, airborne surveys.

Swent

They have done a lot more with that than we have.

Livermore

Oh, yes. Because the terrain lends itself to it better. Of course one thing in Canada, you have tremendous areas where the bedrock is covered with a very thin film of glacial material, which we don't have down in this country so much. Therefore the ore bodies are invisible on the surface, and yet they're not very far below. There are a lot of geophysical methods that will penetrate through that glacial cover and identify these sulfide bodies. A lot of large mines in Canada were found in that way after the war--I don't know how many dozens of ore bodies. They had no surface expression at all, which the prospector of course couldn't have found.

And the rocks lend themselves to that type of survey, which doesn't work as well in the western United States. The rocks are not suitable. It works ideally in Canada.

Swent

So were you learning something at this point?

Livermore

Well, yes. I got into geophysics a lot, because we weren't using that too much down in the United States. So it was a learning experience, to see how useful geophysics could be in exploration. And a lot of the mapping was done by doing a geophysical survey; you could tell how to map out the formations, even though you couldn't see them. You could map them out just on the basis of geophysics. So it was very useful as a mapping tool, aside from trying to discover ore bodies.

So those were the two discovery highlights in Canada. I worked on a lot of properties that were interesting, but those were really the only two that developed into sizeable mines.

---

Exploration in Ireland

Swent

You were also doing exploration in other countries out of the Toronto office?

Livermore

Well, that's right, yes. We had several other programs which I was supervising. One was a program in Ireland. We did quite a bit of work in Ireland, and at that time, Ireland was experiencing a boom which had been started by Canadians. Actually, Ireland was never considered to be a very mineralized country. There were a couple of really old mines, but there was no mining going on in the sixties.

But several Canadian companies got interested in Ireland, and came up with several interesting discoveries. We got involved in that, too, and we did some work on some properties, and drilled a few of them. We didn't come up with an ore deposit in Ireland.

Swent

What minerals were they looking for?

Livermore

Well, lead and zinc and copper. They found several quite large lead-zinc ore bodies.

Swent

Lead was what the Romans were looking for, wasn't it?

Livermore

That's right. But there was no recent history; they'd forgotten prospecting. There weren't any modern-day prospectors in Ireland. One of these deposits they found by just looking on the rock walls of a farmer's field. They found high-grade chunks of galena (lead sulfide) right in the rock walls, and the farmer living right there didn't realize it was anything very special. [laughs]

Swent

That's why Waterford crystal is so good, isn't it?

Livermore

Why, because of the lead?

Swent

Waterford crystal has a high lead content.

Livermore

Oh, yes. Yes, there are some pretty good lead mines in Ireland.

We weren't fortunate enough to come up with anything there, but it was interesting for me, because I traveled all around Ireland and saw quite a bit of the country.

Swent

And this was in the late sixties?

---

Livermore

That was in the late sixties, 1965, around in there.

Exploration in Spain

Livermore

Then later, we had quite a program in Spain. I had a couple of geologists working over in Spain, and doing reconnaissance work. So I had an opportunity to travel around Spain quite a bit. We came up with some kind of interesting things there, but there again, nothing that really developed into a mine.

Swent

It's always amazing. You'd think by now that everything that could possibly be found in Spain would have been found long since, wouldn't you?

Livermore

No, that's not true, even though the Romans were mining there.

No, there are always things to be found. Of course, techniques change, and the metals of interest change. We looked at several of the old Roman mines, which was kind of interesting. When the Romans conquered Spain, they demanded a tribute in gold, and the Spanish had to deliver I forget how many tons of gold a year, so they had these enormous excavations with slave labor to deliver this tribute. They moved enormous amounts of material.

They had some very large placer operations, hundreds of thousands of yards. They would build a dam in a river there, and they'd let the lake build up behind the dam. It would be up above where they wanted to recover the gold. This would be placer gold that you'd wash in water. Then they would broach the dam, and this water would come rushing out, and then they would run it through these riffles and work these gravels down below. Then, they'd build the dam back up again, and then they'd broach the dam, and that was the way they did it. They washed some enormous amounts of material that way. Of course, with thousands of slaves, I guess.

But they had some other lode rock deposits. There was this one pit up by a place called Salavi, which was in hard rock, and they made an enormous big hole there, right up on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, on the northern coast of Spain. So that was very impressive, to look at those excavations.

Swent

But you didn't find anything--

---

Livermore

No, we didn't find any commercial deposits there. Several looked kind of interesting, but just didn't come up with what we were looking for there. So this is getting up to the late sixties.

The Newmont Organization: Few, But Outstanding, People

Swent

So you went up there as a manager of exploration, and you became president.

Livermore

I ended up as president of Newmont of Canada, yes.

Swent

Was this a newly-formed company?

Livermore

No, it had been there all the time. It was just a subsidiary. We operated Canada as a subsidiary, Newmont Mining Company of Canada.

Swent

Did this represent any big change for you?

Livermore

No, not really. It wasn't a big organization; the title sounds better than it really is, because it was mainly an exploration organization.

Swent

You were going to New York to meetings?

Livermore

Yes. But we were pretty independent. We were allowed a lot of independence by Newmont. We set up our own budgets, and we pretty well ran the thing quite independently. A man named John Drybrough was my boss when I first went up there. He was the chairman, so he really was my boss all the time. He was the chairman of Newmont Mining Corporation of Canada, John Drybrough. He was a very remarkable man.

Swent

He was Canadian?

Livermore

He was a Scotsman. I guess he was born in Canada, although he was quite proud of being a Scotsman. He was a mining engineer.

But we were able to set up our own budgets pretty much, and operate pretty independently from New York.

Swent

Did you like that?

Livermore

Yes. Of course, Newmont was a very small organization. One thing I liked about Newmont was it was small, and you didn't

---

have to go through any layers of authority. Very shortly after I joined the company, I was reporting actually to the president, Fred Searls, which was kind of unusual. The total employees of Newmont, I think, when I was in the New York office, were something like sixty people, counting all the stenographers--everybody. It was a $400-million company with only sixty employees.

Swent

Including someone who came in every morning to shine their shoes? Were you there in that era? Bob Shoemaker told me that somebody came in in the mornings to shine all the shoes.

Livermore

Well, actually, Fred Searls used to have somebody come in, yes. Yes, it was an amazing organization. They had just a few men, but very outstanding people. One was in charge of one department, one was in charge of the Magma Mine in Arizona, the other was in charge of the South African things, and there was a group of very remarkable men.

Swent

Who were they?

Livermore

W.T. Smith was in charge of the very successful development of the two mines which Newmont acquired in South Africa: Tsumeb and O'Okiep. Henry Krumb, one of the most famous mining engineers of that period, was responsible for the evaluation of porphyry copper deposits in the early twentieth century. Ed McNab was responsible for developing the great Magma copper mine in Arizona and later, San Manuel Mine. Each was given considerable authority by Fred Searls to manage their own operations. Phil Kraft was in charge of the Canadian operations. Plato Malozemoff came in later.

Then they had a few roving geologists--I was one of them --sort of roving around the world. It was kind of an interesting organization. I think they always said that Newmont got a lot of miles out of their small number of people. [laughing]

Swent

And it wasn't all men, either. They had a woman on their board early.

Livermore

Well, that's right, they did. Yes, that's right. She was quite a person.

Swent

That wasn't the usual thing in those days.

Livermore

No, that's right.

---

Towards the end there, I was getting a little restless in Canada. I really missed being in the West. I was from the West originally anyway, and I realized that if I stayed on there, my future at Newmont would either be to stay in Toronto or else move to New York, so I wasn't too keen on that.

Swent

There was something on the French Riviera.

Livermore

Well, that was an examination.

Swent

That wasn't tempting either?

Livermore

No. I think I mentioned that one of the projects that I was supposed to examine one time was on the French Riviera. But I decided I'd probably better not go look at it, because if I turned in a favorable report, they would certainly [laughing] think I was maybe biased. So I didn't look at that one.

But anyway, my work was becoming a little bit too administrative for me. Although it really wasn't a very big organization, I missed the field work. So I decided I wanted to get back into something more closely related to field work.

And I always had in my mind to go back to Nevada, because I still thought there were other ore bodies to be found besides the Carlin Mine. Because actually, after the Carlin discovery, there was a tremendous amount of activity, but there only was one deposit found, strangely enough, of that type. That was the Cortez Mine, which was a much smaller deposit.

Swent

That was not Newmont, was it?

Livermore

No, that was Placer, a Canadian outfit. And everybody thought right away they'd find a whole bunch more like the Carlin, because of the fact that it wasn't pannable. A lot of major companies did an awful lot of work, and they kind of--I don't know. They were looking for an exact duplicate of Carlin, of course. It had to be in a window, it had to be in the right rocks. And they just didn't find any.

So the interest fell off. Newmont went into production in 1965, and I think shortly after that, the people sort of forgot about Nevada.

Swent

But Newmont developed a lot of other mines there.

Livermore

Not Nevada. That was much later. No, in fact, Newmont gave up. It's funny, because Newmont even had a policy--you see, at $35, a lot of these mines in Nevada were somewhat marginal.

---

And even though the Carlin deposit was quite profitable, it didn't compare with the porphyry copper ore bodies. And there was a period of time even when Newmont had decided that these gold deposits in Nevada were too small. [laughs] That seems funny. And actually, Newmont really stopped exploring in Nevada for a period of years there.

But anyway, I had the idea that there were more of these things to be found, and of course, although the price of gold was $35, everybody thought the price was going to go up. You never knew when, but I think that was pretty generally known, that the price couldn't stay at $35. So I thought that there were still some possibilities in Nevada, and I liked the idea of going back to Nevada, because I enjoyed working there, and getting back into more field work.

So I decided, well, I'll see if I can get some backers to go to Nevada. I hadn't been able to do it back in 1949, but at this time, I did have a little success behind me, so I thought I might be able to talk some people into exploring for gold, which wasn't very popular at that time really. Nobody was really looking for gold. Everybody was looking for copper and other metals.

Swent

Precisely what time are we talking about now?

Livermore

That was 1970.

Swent

You were still working for Newmont at the time?

Livermore

I was still working, but I had told them I was going to leave.

---

VIII Cordex Syndicate

Forming the Cordilleran Explorations Partnership with Pete Galli in 1970

Livermore

I had some connections in Canada, and one of the partners in the Icon Syndicate was a company called Rayrock Resources Limited. Later the name was changed to Rayrock-Yellowknife Resources Limited. The president of Rayrock was a very fine man. His name was Jerry Byrne. He and I got along quite well, and so I approached him with the idea of setting up a syndicate similar to the Icon Syndicate, of three or four companies, to explore for gold in Nevada.

He seemed interested, although I must admit that it was kind of brave exploration, because nobody had been looking for gold much, and he didn't know much about Nevada. But I convinced him that there were some possibilities in Nevada, so he thought it was interesting.

So then the question became, how do we get some other companies? And I talked to some other people that I knew, and didn't have a lot of luck, but finally got another company. And then Jerry Byrne himself was really--I have to give him credit for it. He's the one that really talked some of his own friends in Toronto into going into this syndicate.

Swent

You still called it Rayrock?

Livermore

No, it was called the Cordex Syndicate. We did finally get four companies together, so it looked like this was going to shape up.

In the meantime, I had gone back to Nevada to kind of look around, and I decided that I had been away from Nevada for so long, I was sort of out of touch with what was going on out there. I mentioned earlier that I had known Pete Galli back in

---

1961, and I was impressed with him as being a very competent geologist. Also, he was very well acquainted--he'd been there right through this last eight-year period, and he knew what was going on, knew everybody out there.

Swent

He was working for Union Carbide?

Livermore

He worked for Union Carbide. And I got talking to him, and it turned out that he was in a similar situation with myself. He sort of wanted to get out, away from this large corporation. He was intrigued with this idea, so we formed a partnership. We were the managers of the syndicate, and we called it the Cordex Syndicate.

We were sort of puzzling what name to call our partnership, and I guess I came up with the name which later turned out to be not the best name. I thought, well, we could be exploring from Alaska down to the tip of South America; we weren't confining ourselves to Nevada, really, because we were going to look for a lot of other things besides gold, particularly at that time. So gold was part of it, but we were looking for copper and later uranium and various things.

Anyway, the chain of mountains which extends from Alaska to Chile is the Cordilleran Chain, so that seemed like a good name. Cordilleran Explorations. And it gave us a lot of latitude there.

Swent

[laughs] Yes, considerable.

Livermore

Well, it turned out that was not the best name, because people didn't know how to pronounce it, for one thing. Whether it was Cor-dill-eran, or Cor-dill-er-an, or--anyway, we used that name. The syndicate itself was called Cordex Syndicate.

So we started off with a three-year budget, modest budget, and we opened an office in Reno and hired a geologist, and started following up on some of the ideas that both of us had. As I say, on the original go-around, I think they had had too narrow a model. They were looking for an exact duplicate of the Carlin discovery. There had to be a window; it had to be in a certain formation. We thought there were some other areas in the state that had some of the similar characteristics, but weren't exactly duplicates.

---

The Pinson Mine

Livermore

One of our first projects was up near the Getchell Mine, which I had known from the 1940s. There was an old showing up there that had been worked by the Getchell Mine, a little pit. It had been mined out, just a small tonnage. It looked interesting to us, and we thought that it would have some possibilities for an extension along a structural trend.

So we leased this property--

Swent

What was it?

Livermore

Well, it was an old pit there called the Ogee-Pinson Pit. There was a prospector called Pinson who discovered the area. The Getchell Corporation mined a small pit and then hauled the ore up to their mill. It was about seven miles south of the Getchell Mine.

We thought it was worth a little work, so after mapping the area pretty carefully, we laid out a drilling program. Some other people had worked on this area, including Homestake, but they had given it up. But we thought it still had some merit, so we laid out a twenty-hole drilling program, which I thought was a fair test for this area.

Our first holes were not too exciting, actually, and by the time we got to the twentieth hole, that was the end of the program. We hadn't received the assays yet for the final holes, so the program was finished, and we sent the drill away.

Well, when the assays came in, on the seventeenth hole we hit a pretty good showing which turned out to be the Pinson orebody. So that was again a little bit the luck of the game. What it shows is that you have to drill a lot of holes on these deposits, because Homestake had drilled only two holes, and in fact, they drilled right through the ore body, but it happened to be poor at that spot. So they walked away from it.

So then we had to bring the drill back, obviously, and we drilled this thing out, and then it turned out to be a pretty good small ore body.

Swent

And it's still going.

Livermore

It's still going. But at that time, it was not economic, because that was still $35 gold. But we knew we had something and it was quite interesting. That was in 1971.

---

Swent

The official price of $35 was changed in 1968.

Livermore

Nixon raised it to $42.

Swent

Right. Wasn't that in 1972?

Livermore

Maybe it was, but it didn't really start going up until much later, until about 1977, 1978. So we just sat on the property.

Whit DeLaMare and the Preble Mine

Livermore

In the meantime, we were doing more prospecting in another area, and we had hired a prospector by the name of Whit DeLaMare--I think you have his name, don't you?

Swent

It's in the New Yorker article.

Were you doing any of your own prospecting at that time? Were you out in the field?

Livermore

Oh, yes. But we had several of us, and we were all out there prospecting. But he was a full-time prospector; that's all he did. Whereas we had to do some follow-up geological mapping, all he did was go out and do initial reconnaissance, and very successfully.

He was an interesting person, a mining engineer who had had various operating jobs in mines. He had his own company, as a matter of fact, own iron mining company for a number of years. But he was at that time somewhat footloose, and living in Winnemucca. He had several operating offers, but he didn't want to leave Winnemucca. So he got sort of interested in geology and prospecting, and he knew the area quite well.

Pete Galli had known him quite well, and so we got talking one time. It's pretty hard to prospect on your own, because the cost of assaying runs up. He didn't really have quite the resources to prospect on his own, so we asked him, "Why don't you go to work for Cordex?" Which he did. We hired him, and we paid him a salary, but with a bonus for anything he found.

So he was prospecting this area about fifteen miles south of the Pinson. Actually, before he worked for us, he had liked

---

the looks of this area. There was no known gold there, but he liked the looks of this area, and he decided to stake some claims. After we hired him, the first job we gave him was to prospect his own claims. [laughter] And by gosh, he started coming in with some values on the surface.

This was what turned out to be the Preble deposit, about fifteen miles south of Pinson. He first got just a few little chips, float chips of little value, but one contained some gold. It was interesting, because right away we recognized that even on the basis of one sample, this looked like Carlin-type mineralization. This is what we were always looking for. It had the characteristics, the right kind of rock, the right kind of alteration.

So even though it was only one sample, immediately it looked very interesting to me, and we followed up on it. Then we started getting a few values around it, and we put in a bulldozer trench just like we did at Carlin, and sure enough, we found a wide zone of mineralization there. But there weren't any outcrops there, actually.

Then we started drilling, and it was pretty simple. We drilled out a very nice little orebody. That turned out to be the Preble orebody, which was smaller than the Pinson. And that wasn't economic either.

Swent

At that time.

Livermore

At that time. So we just sat on that one.

The Sterling Deposit

Livermore

Then we went down into another area, and I was doing the prospecting in this area. I went down to an area with the same kind of rocks as were occurring down at the Carlin. This was down in central Nevada. I got prospecting around there, and there were a couple of little tiny pits that had some gold values that appeared to be Carlin-type mineralization, so that seemed a little interesting. But at that time the property was tied up. Later Whit DeLaMare found that the owner had died, so we staked a group of claims.

We went in and drilled, and [laughs] we were lucky again, because there were some narrow ore bodies that were not exposed at all. So that original showing didn't really amount to much,

---

but near there--we started drilling around there because the geology looked interesting. We kept going. That's one thing we did do; we did a lot of drilling. We didn't give up on just three or four holes.

So we were drilling out along this structure, and by gosh, we hit another blind zone, which turned out to be the Sterling deposit. Now that again was one that was uneconomic at that time. It was even smaller than the Pinson and the Preble, and then it also appeared to be an underground situation, so it wasn't quite as attractive. It wasn't open-pit.

Pete and I thought this was quite interesting, and we tried to get the syndicate to do more work, but they thought this thing was too small to hang on to.

Swent

You had to have quite a lot of capital to sit on all these properties.

Livermore

Yes, that's right. So the way the thing worked was that if they weren't interested in a property, they would deed it back to us. So that's what happened. They deeded that property to us, so we ended up owning it. Instead of just a part of it, we ended up with the whole thing. That was Pete Galli and myself, Cordilleran Explorations, the partnership.

Swent

What was your incentive? This would be an incentive to find places with low values so they'd deed them back to you, wasn't it?

Livermore

We didn't think about that--we were looking for economic deposits.

Anyway, it was too small for us to do--we knew we wanted to hang on to it, but the gold was still $35 at that time. All these three were found when the gold was $35. And you might say we were the first really to start the new wave of gold exploration in the seventies. There were very few working in Nevada in 1970.

Swent

I would think people would have been following you around by now.

Livermore

Well, people weren't too interested in gold at that time. So the Pinson discovery was really the first discovery in this new, modern wave in 1971.

---

And then others started to become interested. A bunch of people started working, and it gradually developed into a big boom. But when we went to Nevada, our timing was perfect, as we practically had the whole state to ourselves really.

Swent

Were you prospecting on public land only?

Livermore

Mostly public land, yes. And anyway, we had a small organization--I'm getting off the subject a little.

Swent

No, that's okay.

Livermore

I'll finish up on the Sterling.

Pete Galli and I ended up with that, and we knew we wanted to hold on to it, but a fellow came along who was interested in it, and we didn't really have the resources to follow up; the next stage would be more drilling. So a fellow came along and wanted to lease the mine, and we decided to lease it to him.

Swent

Who was that?

Livermore

A fellow named Greg Austin. He had a little bit of money, and he took a real gamble, a big gamble, and drove a drift in to some of these drill holes we had found, and he actually ran into some very good ore. He made that into quite a good mine. The Cordex Syndicate made a mistake in dropping it, because it developed into quite a good little mine. It's still operating an underground mine. Of course, we got the benefits of some royalties out of it, but I always felt it was too bad that we didn't talk the syndicate into holding on to it, because although not a big mine, it's been quite a nice little producer.

And they're still finding more reserves there. They found a couple of other ore bodies that even we must have missed in our drillings. That turned out pretty well.

A Defense of Prospectors

Livermore

So, anyway, getting back to our organization, we had a small organization. We had about four or five geologists working, and we always had one prospector. One thing we did was kind of reintroduce the idea of prospecting. People in the States didn't necessarily believe in prospecting. They thought you

---

had to have either a geologist or more sophisticated exploration, but my experience in Canada indicated that prospecting was still very useful.

Something about the prospecting instinct is different from the geological ability. A lot of geologists are not really very good prospectors. They get very interested in the rocks, and sometimes they don't have the one-track mind of finding mineralization. And prospectors, without a college degree, can often be in some ways better than geologists, because they are very persistent, and they get interested in an area, and they'll go over it with a fine-tooth comb.

And of course, that turned out to be true with this Whit DeLaMare, because although he did have a college degree, he wasn't a trained geologist, but as I'll mention later, he came up with another big discovery for us. So he was a very, very competent prospector.

Incentive Bonuses

Livermore

Anyway, we introduced the idea of prospectors, and also the idea of an incentive bonus, which I always thought was a good idea. There again, that came from Canada, because they didn't do that much in the United States. Canada was very strong on that.

Swent

Did they get a percentage of what they found, or a cash bonus?

Livermore

Often it had a cap on it with a certain limit, but it was a chance to make a really good stake. In fact, this Whit DeLaMare--he has since died, unfortunately--will end up with, I don't know, a couple of million dollars. So it's quite a big stake that he will earn out of these discoveries. So it isn't just peanuts. Some of them are smaller, though. We were fairly generous with them.

Swent

But what you gave them was a percentage?

Livermore

Well, a lot of them had a cap; a common cap was $400,000 or $500,000. But our deal with him didn't have a cap on it, so his family now will end up with a good sum of money.

Swent

Is there just a difference in terms between that and the royalty?

---

Livermore

Well, the royalty of course is open-ended, and this was not. Some of them are based on royalty. They're more often based on net, though. We had an interest in this thing ourselves, of course. We had a chance to earn an interest, and then, in effect, we gave the prospector a certain percentage of our interest, which was a net interest. So it wasn't a royalty interest. It was based on net.

Swent

So this is a good incentive, then.

Livermore

Yes, it was a very good incentive. And I think all the other companies do that now. There are different abilities. You have to have the person who goes out on the ground and does the reconaissance and comes up with some kind of a showing, maybe just one sample, and then you have to have somebody to follow along to evaluate that, and that's where the geologist comes in, of course. He'd come in and evaluate the prospect--and that's of course what I did a lot of myself, reviewing some of the things that the prospectors brought in to try to decide whether they were worth working on, whether we wanted to spend some real money on them. You have to look at the rocks.

So the geologists had a sort of, you might say, the second stage, and they would come in and map the area and prepare for drilling and supervise the drilling. But it's the guy that goes out first who is very important, after all. Without him you wouldn't have anything, so I always gave a lot of credit to the prospectors, because they led you to the area in the first place.

Swent

Do you consider yourself a prospector?

Livermore

I do, absolutely. I always considered myself a prospector. Yes. I like that part of it; I always have.

So anyway, we had a small organization. We had about six or seven people, including a secretary, and that was the size of it. We never made it any bigger. I had a lot of opportunity to increase the staff, increase the budget, particularly when gold started booming. But I just liked the idea of a small organization. I think there's something to be said for it. Everybody has more individual incentive, you don't have to have layers of authority. I'm not involved in the organization any more; I retired, but it's still about the same. It's still going on. Cordex has been going for twenty-two years now, which is pretty good.

---

Cordex Exploration Company, 1973 to 1984

Livermore

After the first three-year contract was up, Pete decided that he wanted to do a similar thing on his own, which was very understandable. Then I just carried on from there alone.

Then, I changed the name, partly because it was not a partnership any more, and we had this trouble with Cordilleran anyway, so I changed the name to Cordex Exploration Company. So it's been operating ever since then as Cordex Exploration Company, and it still is. When I decided to retire in 1984, Andy Wallace took over. I had a contract with these Canadian companies, and they would fund the exploration, but I had the right to earn an interest at a certain point in any discovery.

We operated as J.S. Livermore, doing business as Cordex Exploration Company. In 1984, I deeded the few assets--office equipment, library, etc.--to Rayrock so now they operate as Rayrock Mines, Inc, dba Cordex Exploration Company. There is a new partnership for every mine. Over the twenty-two years, there were actually seven different syndicates.

Swent

So it's still the same Canadian people that are in it?

Livermore

Well, over the years, the companies have changed. For one reason or other, one company would drop out, depending on their financial situation. So we've had a number of changes in ownership, quite a few over the years. In fact, I think right now it's down to basically Rayrock. But I guess we've had five or six companies at various times, and every three years, we've renewed the thing, and then sometimes the companies would change. But it's gone along. Of course, the budgets have gradually increased.

Swent

Have you done anything outside of Nevada?

Livermore

Yes, we did. We had a program in Alaska which was copper--we were farther afield. Oh, yes, we did a lot of work. We did work in Arizona, and we had quite a program in Idaho. We did some work in California. No, we were working over all the Western states, including Alaska, but we kind of decided against Alaska at one point because Alaska is terribly expensive to operate in.

You just get so much more for your exploration dollar in the lower states, and particularly in Nevada. Nevada's just an ideal place to work. It's so easy, it's accessible, and the

---

climate, and the geology--everything is very favorable about Nevada.

So the majority of our work always was in Nevada. But we started off--originally, we did a lot of work on copper, because copper was kind of interesting at that time. Then, the uranium boom came along, and we actually did some work in uranium. Not in a big way, but we had some properties.

In fact, we had a pretty good uranium property up in northern Nevada which was not quite economic. It was pretty close; it was a pretty interesting deposit; there was a neighboring property, and it almost looked like that area would go into production, but then the price of uranium fell down, so that didn't materialize.

Swent

This was a little late for uranium, wasn't it?

Livermore

No. Let's see. It was sort of at the tail end of the uranium boom, yes. Nevada wasn't considered one of the hot areas of uranium, but towards the end of the uranium boom, there was a fair amount of work done. Nevada never did develop a commercial uranium deposit. This was up in northern Nevada, up near the Oregon border.

But let's see. I don't remember what years that would have been. It was in the late seventies, '78 or something like that. But anyway, that didn't develop into a commercial ore body.

As time went on, we concentrated really more on gold, because the price of gold was going up, and everybody was looking for gold. And we had certain expertise there anyway. Towards the late seventies, the price of gold increased rapidly. We kept looking at these deposits, the Pinson deposit and the Preble deposit, and we'd make a feasibility study on them at various levels, and they didn't seem to be quite attractive, or attractive enough. At one point, we almost did decide to put Pinson into production, which would have been a mistake.

Anyway, we finally put it on ice again, and then in 1980 --by that time the price of gold was up to about $250--so then the Pinson looked attractive, so we decided to put the Pinson in production. So we built the mill, and--

Swent

Was there plenty of water there?

---

Livermore

Oh, yes, no problem. There was water there. Most parts of northern Nevada, you don't have much problem with water. By drilling, you can almost always get water.

There again we were lucky, because as we were building the mill, the price kept going up and up. In fact, when it hit its peak was December 1980, when it got up to $700. Unfortunately, we weren't quite ready to go into production then, because we didn't get going until May of 1981. By that time, the price had dropped, but it was still $600.

Swent

Still way up.

Livermore

So we sold a lot of gold at $600. The Pinson Mine, of course, was a wonderful investment. We got our capital investment back in thirteen months, and that was remarkable. So that was wonderful timing. There was one other operation, Alligator Ridge, but we were the first of this new wave of production to construct a full-fledged mill. Alligator Ridge was a heap-leaching operation.

About that time, of course, all hell broke loose in Nevada, and everybody was rushing into the state. Shortly after that--well, not right after that, around '85--they started clicking off all these other discoveries, you know. And gosh, the Paradise Peak and Jerritt Canyon, and of course that's when they found these enormous extensions of the Carlin belt, you know. Tremendous extensions, enormous low-grade bodies, and then all these deep high-grade bodies. That all came along much later, and all of a sudden, the whole thing just sort of exploded. A tremendous boom. You know that the production in Nevada in 1981 when the Pinson opened I think was 200,000 ounces. And in 1991, it was 6 million ounces. Pretty amazing.

##

Livermore

So that was a fascinating period.

It was just unbelievably lucky timing, because I guess we took a gamble, although everybody knew the price would go up. But we were right in on the ground floor, and we saw the whole thing start from nothing, just go up to this enormous boom. And now, of course, the boom has really fallen off, and you're sort of back to normal. But it was an unbelievable period there in Nevada.

---

Florida Canyon Mine

Livermore

The Florida Canyon was one that I had prospected and we'd done some work on. That was another situation where we found some low grade, and the syndicate weren't too interested in that, so they turned that property back to Pete and me. We eventually sold that to another group, and that became a producing mine, too. It's still a very low-grade mine, but I guess they're maybe making a little bit of money.

Dee Mine

Livermore

The next thing that came along was when we found the Dee Mine. In 1980 was when we made the first discovery--that was again by DeLaMare. He was prospecting around up north of the Carlin belt in an area that had been covered quite extensively by a lot of people, but he had such a good eye for ore that he picked up a sample, just one single sample on the surface that had very good values in it. He was on some ground that was already claimed by somebody, and anyway, he brought me out there to look at this thing.

It was only about a mile and a half from an existing mine, from the Bootstrap Mine, so that made it interesting. I looked at the sample, and we checked it in certain ways, so we were pretty convinced that this was a Carlin [type] occurrence. So I got really interested in this thing, and we couldn't do much work on this ground, because it was held by someone else, you see. Otherwise we would have done a lot more sampling before tying it up.

So I had go around to the owner, who was a very strange fellow, and try to make a deal with him, because I really thought this was property we had to get, just on the basis of one sample, really. So I talked to him for a while, and he wasn't interested at all. "Oh, no, I don't want to deal with this property." I kept working on him, and I actually took him over to the Pinson Mine opening, and he was kind of impressed at that.

Swent

It's the Dee that you're talking about now.

Livermore

The discovery was made in 1980, because I took him around to the Pinson Mine opening, which was in 1981, and he was

---

impressed with the Pinson Mine. He thought we were maybe pretty good operators.

So we finally made a deal with him. It was a very tough deal. He drove a hard bargain. His name was Phil Davis, and I could go on for a couple of hours on Phil Davis. He was in the New Yorker article. Anyway, he demanded a very large cash payment within a very short period of time. It was actually $100,000, which is kind of unheard of in mining, to have to put up $100,000 in ninety days on the basis of one sample. But I had figured that--it looked to me like a Carlin occurrence, and I figured if we were lucky, we could get a couple of drills in there and punch some holes down very fast. If we were lucky, we could get enough encouragement to justify the $100,000 payment.

So actually, that's what we did, and the minute the agreement was signed, we had a drill in the ground the next day.

Swent

You couldn't do any more sampling first?

Livermore

No.

Swent

He wouldn't let you?

Livermore

No. Well, no. He really didn't want to know. It was a kind of a funny deal. I think we just had to move on it. He was a very erratic type of guy, and you never knew whether he would just say, "Forget about it." As it turned out, we were lucky enough that we got some pretty good drill holes, and we were able to justify this $100,000 payment.

Swent

On the basis of one sample?

Livermore

So we gambled between the drilling cost, and we gambled a couple hundred thousand dollars on one sample, so that was kind of risky [laughing]--. But it did pay off, it turned out to be a pretty good mine.

Swent

And you named it for DeLaMare.

Livermore

We named it for DeLaMare, yes. Because he picked up the first sample, and that's the most important.

Swent

You should probably mention the lawsuit at least.

Livermore

Yes. Well, a lot of things about Phil are in the New Yorker article. So when he came to make the payment, I went to Phil

---

Davis and I said, "Well, Phil, do you want this in the form of a check, or we can give you a cashier's check if you want."

He said, "Oh, no, I want cash." [laughter]

So that stopped me for a minute, so "Okay."

So he said he'd be in Reno a certain day. I called up the bank in Reno and I said, "I'm going to need $100,000 tomorrow."

"Oh," he said, "gee, in Reno we don't keep that much extra money around, in cash. But we'll have it the day after tomorrow."

So anyway, he [Davis] came down to Reno, and we went down to the basement, and of course, they don't use any big bills any more because of the drug stuff. So we had to count out one thousand hundred-dollar bills, which was quite a job in itself. [laughs]

Swent

What sort of stack is that, I can't imagine!

Livermore

That's the thing. He had a satchel with him. So we counted them all up, and he counted it, and so he put all his bills in the satchel. He lives up at Battle Mountain, which is about 200 miles from Reno. So he was ready to take off in his pickup. I said, "Phil, are you going to drive all the way back to Battle Mountain with $100,000 in cash?"

He said, "Oh, no problem, I've got my .357 Magnum with me." [laughter] Story out of the Wild West.

So anyway, he did. He took off.

The tragic part about it, he didn't believe in banks. He buried the money under his trailer, and somebody had found out about it, and they lured him out of the trailer, beat him up, and took $50,000. So I guess after that, he decided he'd better put the money in the bank.

Then we went ahead and put the Dee Mine in production; it went into production in 1984. I got along very well with Phil Davis, but then we had sort of a falling out. He's a person that doesn't trust anybody, and it turned out that he could hardly read. We didn't realize that at the time. We thought it was kind of funny that he didn't seem to look at the agreement too carefully. He'd say, "Well, I'm just going to take this to my lawyer." Apparently, he really could barely

---

read, and so then later on, he got sort of turned against us. He accused us, and he sued us, for fraud actually. He said that we took advantage of him in signing this agreement, which was an extremely tough agreement in his favor.

But anyway, we went through a lawsuit, and it was just kind of unpleasant. There was some question of interpreting the agreement, and it was kind of a hassle. We finally got that resolved, but that was kind of an unfortunate incident. He was an unusual fellow.

Swent

Is he still there in Battle Mountain?

Livermore

Still there. And he gets all this money--he's been getting over $1 million a year from this mine, and his lifestyle really hasn't changed much. He still lives in a little trailer in Battle Mountain. We always wonder where all the money goes. Some story is that some religious organization is getting a lot of his money; I don't know. Doesn't have any family.

Swent

Has his gold Cadillac.

Livermore

He's got his fancy Cadillac, yes, with a neon sign on the back that says, "Davis Mining Company." And he bought a yacht, which he parks out in front of his trailer. I don't think he's ever used it.

Swent

Somebody said that his feelings were hurt because you didn't name the mine for him?

Livermore

Well, that was very true. Yes, that was a mistake we made. I always felt it should be named for Dee, but Davis didn't like that. That was part of the problem. If we'd called it the Davis Mine, he might not have sued us. He didn't know there was any gold on his property. He had a little barite on his property. If he'd found the gold it would be one thing, but he didn't even know this showing existed at all. We found the gold on his property, so I don't know why he should have gotten credit for it.

Swent

Didn't you say he wanted a barite mine?

Livermore

Actually it was very funny, how he happened to stake the claims in the first place. He had some promoter backing him, and he came to a friend of his in Battle Mountain, and said, "I got this guy that is interested in investing in some gold mining out in Nevada. I want to get some claims; where do you suggest I stake some claims?"

---

This fellow said, "Why don't you just stake alongside me?" So that's exactly what he did. He just staked alongside this friend, and it turned out to be the Dee ore body. So he ended up getting several million dollars, not because of his prospecting ability.

Swent

Well, I guess sometimes it is just luck, isn't it?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

But that's still a good mine?

Livermore

Well, yes, it's going along. The big potential part there is at depth where we haven't really started testing. We may have some of this deep ore like some of the other mines, like the Barrick does. But that's something we haven't tackled yet. That's very expensive, to test for that deep ore.

But that brings it up to 1984. I had hired Andy Wallace from the University of Nevada, and he had done an outstanding job for us, and I thought very highly of him.

Swent

He's a geologist also?

Livermore

He's a geologist. I thought that maybe I would like to get away from some of the routine of running Cordex, and he was my assistant and I thought capable of the job. So in 1984, I decided to resign, or actually to sell Cordex. I had the Cordex Company, which I sold to Rayrock, and Andy Wallace took over and ran the job. He's done an excellent job really, outstanding, including finding another ore body, the Marigold ore body, which is also in production. That's a very fine ore body that Andy Wallace found.

Swent

You're still connected with Cordex, though?

Livermore

I'm not connected with Cordex, other than as a consultant. I'm not financially involved in Cordex. But they're still continuing, and the company has changed. I think right now they're down to just maybe two companies that are in the syndicate, but it's still going on, about the same size crew. So as I say, it makes twenty-two years, which is quite a record for the exploration organizations in Reno; they come and go.

Swent

Twenty-two months is good for some of them.

Livermore

They have a big hiring spree and then they lay them all off. But Cordex has just kind of plugged along, at an even keel, and so it's worked out pretty well.

---

Swent

I've got their office as one of your telephone numbers.

Livermore

Well, I still have an office over there, actually. And I get mail over there. But I don't spend much time over there. I spend most of my time over at the other Public Resource Associates office.

So I guess really, that's sort of the end of my mining.

Of course, being a prospector, I'm particularly interested in discoveries, so in some ways the highlights of my life are all those--but I've done a lot of other things, too.

I did continue, and of course, I'm still continuing, but I had some interesting experience in Colombia and Ecuador, and that comes later. Because after I left Cordex, then I've been dealing with various projects of my own, including work in Colombia, which is kind of interesting.

Swent

No, you haven't mentioned that at all.

Livermore

So I can get into that maybe next time. Central America and Honduras.

---

IX Exploration Abroad, After 1984

---

---

In Colombia, Small Operations Not Worth the Risks

Fuerstenau

John, you sold Cordex in 1984, and I believe your next project was in Colombia. What was the project, and how did you become involved?

Livermore

I was kind of footloose after selling the company, and I was interested in doing some exploration work. I've always been kind of interested in foreign work, having spent quite a bit of time in foreign countries. The president of Rayrock, a company I'd been associated with for many years, had a contact in Colombia--a friend of his who had some properties in Colombia--and wanted some opinions on the value of this property. So Dave Crombie, the president, called me, and asked me if I wanted to go down there and take a look at these properties. That sounded kind of intriguing, so I did go down and I talked to this fellow who really didn't know much about mining, and it turned out his properties were really not of any great value, but I got sort of intrigued with Colombia, looking over the geology of the area, and the history.

They had quite a history of mining, particularly gold mining. I thought, well, maybe I'll just kind of look around the country a little bit to see if it could generate any exploration projects. So I did; I traveled around. I made three or four trips down there, and I spent a few weeks all together touring, and I got onto some kind of interesting things. So I told Dave Crombie that maybe we should mount a little program down there, and I suggested that we bring a young geologist down by the name of Charlie Ronkos who had worked for me in Nevada and who spoke Spanish. So he agreed to that, and Charlie came down to set up an office down there.

---

The idea would be that he would be there permanently, and I would be sort of supervising, and going back and forth occasionally. Anyway, we had one interesting incident. There had been some talk about kidnapping and robberies in Colombia, and I told Charlie, "Don't worry about that, those are all exaggerated stories."

I picked him up at the plane in Bogota, and the next day we went out to ride a funicular railway going up to a viewpoint, looking out over the city. On the way back, we took a short cut to the hotel, not over the main traveled route. As we were walking along, a couple of teenagers jumped behind us and stuck knives in our ribs and took all our money and credit cards. So it became kind of a joke after, and in fact, in Reno, it became quite a big story that we had been robbed down there.

Anyway, we continued and we set up office, actually, in a town called Medellín. That's the second biggest city in Colombia in the northern part of the country, and it's the center of mining. So Charlie set up a shop there--an office there--and hired two young Colombian geologists, and we found out later that Medellín was the center of operation for the drug lords in Colombia. [laughter] I used to walk around, going from the hotel back into town, just walking along the roads, and finally some people told me that that's not a very good thing to do in Medellín, so I stopped that.

We had one incident where we were stopping to get some gas at one place, and there was a taxi parked over to the right of us, and another taxi came in, and he was obviously very annoyed at this taxi driver for stealing one of his fares or something, and he rushed out of the taxi and charged over; I thought we were going to have a good fist fight. Instead, he pulls out a gun and starts shooting at this fellow. That's the way they settle the arguments, and we were right there in the line of fire. Actually, I didn't realize it at the time, but we looked later and we had a bullet hole; one of the bullets went into our jeep. [laughter]

Anyway, we continued there for quite a while; this program went on for a couple of years. Both of us traveled all over Colombia--very interesting. It's a beautiful country, and we saw a lot of interesting properties. We never did fully get into anything that had the size we were looking for. There were hundreds of little mines in Colombia. Colombia was really one of the main sources of gold for the Spanish empire, and there were hundreds of little tiny mom-and-pop operations which we could see all over the place.

---

None of it seemed quite big enough for us, but we kept looking. One of the interesting things was to see all these little operations which were just like what California must have been back in the 1850s, because you have dozens of little operations with arrastras along the streams and small stamp mills, and it was fascinating to see these people operating because there's plenty of water everywhere, so there's never any problem with water to run their arrastras and their other mills.

Anyway, we had a couple of other incidents that concerned us a little bit. One time we visited a mine and after landing in a little airport there we learned that the guerrillas had taken over the airport, so we got sort of stuck there for a while until they finally cleared them out. We were up in another area--we spent some time up in this small farm--what they call fincas in Colombia and we were staying there with a woman who was operating this little farm up there, and she cooked for us, and we stayed up there for a couple of weeks; it was really quite pleasant. Finally, when we were getting ready to leave, we heard that that had been the headquarters, just previously, of one of the guerilla operations in that area. We knew they were around there. Of course we were moving around a great deal, so we weren't that concerned.

One thing we were concerned about is if we really got to the stage of drilling that we would become kind of sitting ducks for the guerrillas. That was the one thing that kind of discouraged us. There was a case of an American being kidnapped right in the lobby of the principal hotel in Bogota.

We finally got a little concerned about Charlie Ronkos, and finally decided to terminate that program. It was a very interesting experience. I enjoyed it down there.

Fuerstenau

When you went down there, as I recall, a former army colonel was going to look after your safety. How did that work?

Livermore

Well, we thought we ought to have some military help there, because we knew of the guerilla problems. So we hired this fellow who was actually a senior retired colonel who had actually been in Korea and headed up a Colombian battalion there; we put him on the payroll and the idea was he was supposed to notify us where the guerrilla activity was, and I don't know whether he was very effective. We'd go back into Bogota and tell him where we were, and he said, "Oh yes, I knew where you were, and I'm following you all the time." I don't think he really helped us. I guess it gave us a little bit of feeling of security; he did help us in a couple of

---

cases we had with the government in some paperwork, but I don't think he helped us particularly with the guerrillas.

Fuerstenau

How long were you and Charlie in Colombia?

Livermore

About two years. Geologically, there was lots of mineralization around, but mostly all small properties. If we had gotten into something really interesting we might have tried to stick it out a little longer.

Fuerstenau

Is there any significant gold production in Colombia these days?

Livermore

There are only these mom-and-pop operations; I forget what their production of ounces is. It's fairly substantial, but there's only one major mine operating, and that's an old mine called Frontino which was actually mined by the British many, many years ago. Most of these mines didn't go to any depth. They were the type of deposit that petered out at shallow depth. This one went on down and they were mining down--way down, two thousand feet with a good strong vein. But that was really the only operation there. There are a couple of little operations, Canadian companies trying to operate down there, but they've had problems. One of their geologists was actually killed, and then there are some dredging areas. Of course, that used to be a big dredging country. The Pato River had enormous dredges, and they have a couple of dredges operating, but one of them got blown up while we were down there by the guerrillas, so that didn't seem very attractive.

I think most companies are very leery of working in Colombia right now. There is a company called Conquistador that's supposed to be trying to do some work down there. You read about how they keep blowing up all the oil pipelines all the time. What you really have to do, of course, the only way you can deal with them is to pay them off. In certain areas, you just have to buy them off. They really actually control some of the rural areas, and they are the government; the government has no control in a lot of these back areas, which is where we were working.

In Colombia, you have to distinguish between the mountain guerrillas, which we had brushes with, and the drug people, who are operating really quite separately, although some people said some of the drug people were subsidizing the guerrillas.

The guerrillas were a political group; most of them were Maoists and they were interested in simply overthrowing the

---

government. The government was always trying to control them, and what they wanted to do was to try to get them to lay down their arms and join the political process. One group did, actually. They decided to form a political party and they ran for office, and about eleven or twelve of them were elected to their local congress--of course, obviously, they were a very left-wing group. They met for one congressional session but during the next six-month period, all eleven of the members were assassinated. They were wiped out. No one knows who did it, but it was obviously right-wing people, ex-army people or something like that. They weren't going to tolerate any left-wingers, so that was the end of that political party.

In Honduras, an Underground Gold Mine with Sulfide Ore

Fuerstenau

You're presently involved with a small operation in Honduras. Tell us about the property and how you became involved with this operation.

Livermore

We had a submission, originally, to Rayrock, the company that I was involved in, with this property in Honduras, and I went down and looked at it, and it didn't seem to be of a sufficiently large size to interest Rayrock, so at the time I didn't recommend it to Rayrock. But I got thinking about it later, and I decided that I might want to take on the property myself. It was owned by a fellow named Bruce Wallis who had been working in Honduras for quite a while, quite a number of years, and was very well-acquainted down there and spoke Spanish fluently. It seemed like an opportunity that might be worth pursuing. I wouldn't have gone into anything if it hadn't been for Wallis, because to go into one of these Latin countries without any connections and not knowing people or who to trust or not to trust is really pretty dangerous; but he had the connections down there.

I thought that the property had some geological merit, so I decided to invest some money into a drilling program and to earn an interest in the property, and we were fortunate. It had been a very small mine, and had some very small reserves, but we were lucky in this drilling program to enlarge reserves, very substantially. So then the question became: what are we going to do with it? We weren't interested in carrying it to the next stage, so we then started looking for someone to put the property into production. It was not a large deposit, it was more of a vein deposit, and most of the large companies wouldn't have been interested in it anyway.

---

We actually shopped it around for a number of years, and only recently have gotten somebody interested in putting a small mill there; 250 or 300 ton cyanide mill and then we hope now to get this property into production. While we were down there, we also did some exploration in other areas, and had a few run-ins even down there with some mountain guerrillas--not guerrillas, but just sort of bandits really. Nothing serious, but it's something you have to always be aware of in those countries.

Fuerstenau

This would be an underground operation of sulfide ore, is that right?

Livermore

There's some open-pit ore, but mainly underground. It's a pretty strong vein, and we hope it will carry to considerable depth. We have some deep drill holes--pretty high-grade drill holes--so we're hoping that the reserves will be extended at depth.

Fuerstenau

What are your reserves estimated to be?

Livermore

We have about a hundred thousand ounces of gold, which is of course pretty modest by modern standards. There's also a second property that we think they can join with this property to provide ore for this mill. There's probably another hundred thousand ounces at this other property which is about thirty miles away, so the two can be combined.

Fuerstenau

Building a mill for an operation of that size is pretty expensive. Are there any used pieces of equipment around? Used mills that you might be able to use?

Livermore

We're very lucky; the fellow that's interested in this property is a metallurgist, used to be the mill superintendent at the Pinson Mine, and he got interested in it, and he was doing consulting work at a property in Nicaragua, which is right next door. He made a fantastic deal with this company: they were replacing this old mill with a new, brand new larger mill and they had the old mill they wanted to dispose of, and he made a deal to get this new mill, mainly for his own consulting services. So he actually acquired this mill at a real bargain and the plan is to move this mill up to our property in Honduras, which isn't that far away. It's only about a hundred miles away, and I think it can be hauled up there by truck. So that's been giving this property a big boost because we can get a mill on the property with very little cost.

Fuerstenau

Any idea on when this operation might be on stream?

---

Livermore

Probably towards the end of this year, which is 1997. We're hoping we might be in production by then.

Looking for Carlin-type Deposits in China

Fuerstenau

You made mine examinations for lateritic nickel in Venezuela, and for gold in China. Where is the deposit in China? Is it a Carlin-type deposit? How about the size of the operation?

Livermore

Indirectly, through a friend of a friend, I heard of a Chinese geophysicist from Columbia University who had been doing some work in China, and he talked to me about a possible visit to China to look at some properties in southern China. Having worked so much in Carlin deposits, I had always been intrigued about other Carlin-type deposits in the world. Actually, one peculiar thing about the Carlin deposits is that they only really exist in Nevada. There was some talk about them in Russia, and various other countries, but one of the places they do talk about Carlin deposits is in China.

So I was intrigued to be able to go over there and look at these deposits and see if I thought they really were bona fide Carlin deposits, and I had a good opportunity with this Dr. John Kuo, who was born in China, and spent most of his professional life in Columbia University at the Lamont Observatory, so he had the contacts. I did go over with him and we connected with the Chinese government there and had several visits to Carlin deposits in southern China in the Guanxsi Province.

In looking at these deposits, they had certain similarities, but there was nothing that appeared to have the extent of the disseminations that we have here in Nevada: the enormous deposits, where they are milling hundreds of millions of tons. The deposits were more narrow, structurally controlled. So I would say they had some similarities, but I wouldn't say they were really a classic Carlin deposit because the mineralization didn't spread out in great widths as we see here in Nevada. They're more confined to structures.

---

Milling on a Small Scale

Livermore

At one of the properties--we did look at the mill there, and I was kind of interested in the milling operation, and they had quite a large establishment there. This is an open-pit operation and they had big trucks and they built a dormitory for workers, and they had quite a fancy mill there which looked to me like it was almost the size of our Pinson mill and certainly capable of quite a large tonnage.

So I asked him what they thought they were going to put through this mill. I thought it was capable of several hundred tons a day surely, and they said, "We expect to operate at a rate of about a hundred tons a day," which kind of amazed me because--thinking back, they're not interested in profit as we know it. What they want to do is keep people employed so at the rate of a hundred tons a day, they probably could operate there for fifty years. [laughter]

Fuerstenau

[laughter] Theirs is also a socio-economic problem.

---

X Public Service Activities

Public Resource Associates and Mining Law Reform

Fuerstenau

I would like to turn to your public service contributions next. You formed the Public Resource Associates in 1985 with your brother [Putnam]. What was the background behind the formation of this organization?

Livermore

My brother and I really got started on--dealing with the 1872 Mining Law. The question was coming up at that time about revising the 1872 Mining Law. I had always been interested in revision and I had thought for a long time that the law is an anachronism; it doesn't apply to modern exploration methods and it's a very cumbersome law in a lot of ways, although it does have a lot of advantages as far as the industry is concerned. The way the law is written, the industry can operate on the public land without a great deal of control.

We thought we could maybe help on this process, and our idea was to get some of the industry people and some of the environmental people together and see if some kind of consensus legislation could be developed. The industry position was, of course, that they were only looking at very minor modifications of the law, and I had the feeling--still do--that the law should be changed in a more major sense, and that was sort of my objective. We had quite a few meetings. We had what we called a dialogue group, and we had five or six representatives of industry and four or five representatives of the environmental community who were more the moderate environmentalists; we didn't invite some of the more radical groups like the Sierra Club, which at that time was interested in a leasing system, which of course was anathema to the industry. The Wilderness Society was also interested in that, so we didn't invite them, but we had the National Wildlife Federation, which is the biggest environmental organization in

---

the United States, and the Audubon Society, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. We had some representatives there, I think, that were really interested in trying to solve the problem. They're not such pure ideologues.

We had a number of meetings, and we really came to agreement on quite a few things. One of our problems was that the representatives of the industry were not speaking for their top executives there. They were there as individuals. That, of course, hindered the process. We never could get the top industry people to go along with this process. Their feeling was that they should not give away their negotiating hand; they should try to give only very minor--accept only very minor changes in the law. So that was one of the problems. Anyway, we had a number of meetings, and one of the big problems that we didn't really get a consensus on, which was the toughest of all, is the land use planning and surface management, which is a very sensitive issue. The industry people want as little surface management as possible, and the environmentalists wanted a lot more government control over the land. We never did quite resolve that. Finally we realized that this principle was not acceptable to the industry, and they thought that they were dealing from a lot of strength and that they would probably only have to give up very minor changes in the law, so they took over the negotiating process, and our effort sort of withered away.

Fuerstenau

What's your prognosis for any change in the mining law? It doesn't seem like this is an issue that's going to go away.

Livermore

Well, I still think that the industry is not going to be successful. The industry's position is that they don't want to change any part of the mining law. Some of the things like the claim-staking procedures, and extra-lateral rights--everybody agrees are ridiculous; that we should get rid of those. The industry position is that by accepting changes in those provisions it would open up a Pandora's box to a lot of more major changes. Well, that's one way of looking at it. I look at it more from the point of view of public policy that I think some of those changes should be made, but it's really getting down to just tough negotiations and what industry will have to give up. I think they still think that they will get away with minor changes in the law, which I don't think is going to happen.

Fuerstenau

An item of interest: your brother [Norman] is, or has been a director of the Audubon Society, is that right?

---

Livermore

That's right, and another brother [Putnam] is actually a lawyer, and did a lot of legal work for the Audubon Society, so my family has strong ties to the environmental community, and that's one reason I think we were able to put this thing together and get these environmental people to engage in this dialogue. I still think that the industry would be wise to try and work something out with the environmental people and try to develop consensus legislation. But so far they don't appear to want to do that. As part of this mining law effort, we had for a while an office in Washington, D.C.

##

Livermore

There's still a certain amount of input, I think, we could have in the process. Anyway, when that kind of died down, we had the organization, and we set up an office here in Reno.

Public Policy Issues in Nevada

Livermore

We decided to pursue other things--other public policy issues, and mainly concentrate just in Nevada. We had already been working on some of those issues, but I hired Susan Lynn, who had a good background in planning and had been involved in Congressman Santini's campaign, and was quite well known in the community, and we started work. Then we employed another woman who was later replaced by the present person we have, who is Desna Young, a former BLM employee.

We decided to work on Nevada issues, and Susan Lynn has been very interested in the Truckee River, improvement of the Truckee River and maintaining minimum flows in the river, which is a very important issue, I think. Desna has been interested in developing a trail system in the Truckee Meadows and improving access to public lands through private property. As Reno is growing and enlarging in area, access to the public land is becoming more and more difficult because the new sub-divisions are closing off access. So she has been working on that.

Walker Lake, a Crisis Situation

Livermore

One of our projects also has been to support an individual, Graham Chisolm, who is working on the Walker Lake problem and

---

trying to figure out ways to prevent the loss of the fishery in Walker Lake, which is really a crisis situation. We've had these recent wet winters, but if the level of the lake had been decreasing the way it was earlier, the experts say that the total fishery would have been destroyed in about two years. So we're trying to work with different groups, and do research on possible ways of getting more water into the lake --maybe more efficient ranching or some possibilities of pumping water. Plus various other issues, and solutions to the problem. We have also employed a hydrologist to calculate water balances in the Walker River Basin. Trying to help out in some small modest way to try to solve the problems.

Fuerstenau

Is there anything the federal government, or the state government might do to help this situation?

Livermore

Well, Senator Reid is very interested in this problem; and one of the problems as Senator Reid himself has said is that none of the other elected officials in Nevada think it's a good issue, and one of the things Graham Chisolm, who is very well-known here, having worked for the Nature Conservancy, is trying to do is develop more public interest in Walker Lake, and to point out to the governor and to our state legislature that this is an issue they should be looking at. It's a very critical environmental issue.

The federal government has been doing some general studies--the U.S. Geological Survey--but it's a tough political issue because--of course, probably the water has to come from the ranchers, either by more efficient use of the land or by purchasing water rights. A lot of the ranches are for sale. We are not interested in that part of it--but some group is talking about setting up a land trust, which will purchase land that is available and make water available. There's a big wildlife refuge which probably has extensive water rights--you could argue which is more important: the wildlife refuge or Walker Lake. There is some reason for saying that this wildlife refuge could dedicate water to the lake and not hurt their wildlife refuge.

There are a lot of different ways of approaching this thing, but it's a very complicated problem that's not going to be solved overnight.

Fuerstenau

It's good that you and other persons and agencies are looking at saving this really very wonderful resource down at Walker Lake.

---

Livermore

It's actually unique. That type of lake--there are only a few of them in the whole world. Unfortunately, there are no endangered species there; that would make it a lot easier.

The Rural Alliance for Military Accountability

Fuerstenau

There is an organization called The Rural Alliance for Military Accountability. How long has this been in existence, and how did you get involved?

Livermore

I don't know the background of that organization; it's been going for several years. We got interested in only one phase of their work, and they have representatives all over the country. There's a Grace Potorti here in Reno who has been associated with them for some time, dealing with military matters. We have become interested in what she's doing, and we've helped to support her work. She is a very remarkable woman who is very knowledgeable about the military issues and she's been very concerned like a lot of people have, with the military establishment that is continuing seeking more land in Nevada and also more air space.

She appears at these hearings, and she's very effective. She gets information under the Freedom of Information Act. She has all the facts and figures when she goes to these hearings, and actually has been quite effective in slowing down--not only here in Nevada, but also in Idaho and other places--the constant demands of the military for more space, which I feel myself--and a lot of other people--I just can't understand why they are continually needing more and more land. They won't cooperate--for instance, you have the navy at Fallon--they won't cooperate with the air force at Nellis Base near Las Vegas. Nellis has this enormous area down there, but they have to have their own area. Of course, I'm not a technical expert. Anyway, I just have the feeling that some of these requests for land should be questioned, and she does that. It's pretty hard to stop the Department of Defense, but she slows them down. [laughter]

Fuerstenau

[laughter] I know that the navy is trying to get more space out at Fallon these days."

Livermore

One thing that has come up, and Grace has been on--she was just quoted in the newspaper and she's been on the radio--one of the things is that the national guard is giving up a very large air space to the north of us they don't want any more.

---

Of course, the navy immediately applies for it. They don't require any hearings or any environmental impact [study] because that's one agency to another; so she's raising the devil about that.

There should be, at least, some hearings because they say, "Here's a big space that's being given up, we'll just take it." Whether they really need it or not, I don't know. I'm sure that they, because of modern weaponry--they probably do need some of the space; I don't know. But I have the feeling that if it's there, they just take it.

The Foundation for American Communications

Fuerstenau

The Foundation for American Communications was started by John Cox to educate journalists. I know that you co-sponsored two seminars on public land management; could you tell us about these seminars?

Livermore

Well, I've always thought, for one thing, that industry, particularly the mining industry, does a very poor job of presenting their case to the public. Industry comes up with some statement to the public, or news commentaries or advertisements, and immediately the public reaction is, it is self-serving; you can't believe anything industry says. That's a real serious problem industry has: how do you present your case? The mining industry has a very good case to present to the public. They get beaten down all the time by the media. Somebody says the way to get your message across is not from industry directly to the public; it's to get third parties involved. If you get the third parties saying that the mining industry is not doing a bad job on reclamation and various things, then the public hopefully will listen to that. They will not listen--I don't think--to industry. Sometimes they will, but I think industry makes a mistake.

This Jack Cox started this organization, which is to educate journalists, because the mining industry gets lambasted in the media, and usually the articles are very unfair. The problem is that the general public--if you write something negative about industry--that supports their natural feeling anyway, because most people think that the industry is all greedy people and they are irresponsible. So when an article comes out, maybe the facts are all wrong, but the public believes it. Anyway, the media loves to put out negative stuff about anything; it sells papers. So the whole

---

idea of this organization is to hopefully try to educate journalists about economics and how industry works, and show the other side of some of the environmental issues.

Hopefully, when they write their articles, they will be more balanced. What they do is line up some very outstanding professors, like economic professors from Harvard University and nationally known, and they put on seminars for journalists, and they get representatives from all the newspapers and sometimes, the radio--mostly written newspaper journalists. They're very well-received, and they're very popular, and many of these newspapers send representatives off to these meeting. They have them on all subjects, but what I was particularly interested in are some dealing with public land issues, and those are the ones that we have helped to support.

Fuerstenau

Where were these seminars held on the public land issues?

Livermore

One was held here at the Department of Journalism at the University of Nevada. Jim Gentry has been very interested in this process, and he has some other seminars. The last one was held in Denver. These are only two; I guess they've had several dozens of these meetings all around the country. I think it's unique, and kind of a new method of getting the message across. I know for instance the industry put out a video one time, and this was put out by Caterpillar tractor, and they hired an outfit back East who does videos for public television. The idea was that this group said, "Okay, we'll take this on, but it has to be a balanced production." So they had representatives of industry talking about certain mines and how they were doing reclamation, but then they had some environmental representatives too like Glenn Miller.

Well, when some of the industry executives saw that--"Oh no, we don't want that." Caterpillar was going to pay for this because they do a lot of business in mining. So they scratched it and did it all over again. What they did was, they came out with another video which was just saying: "Industry: what great guys we are, and we're doing this and doing that." That's an example, I think, of how not to do things, because who's going to watch that? You're never going to get that on public television. The only people who will watch that is at other mining conventions. Everybody is saying what a great video it is, but to me, that's not the way to do it. But I'm just one person. I'm kind of a maverick in this whole thing; that's not the way to get the message across.

---

I think this other video was very good, but some of these people were making valid criticisms. They were talking about bird kills--you have to face those issues. Mining has done very well with the bird kill issue; I think they've stopped it. But when these issues come up, you have got to face them and answer them. Say, "We know we have a problem with bird kills, and we're doing this and we've done this, and actually, that problem has sort of gone away." The cyanide problem--we know that's a problem, and this is how we're dealing with it. But to say, "Everything is just dandy; everything's perfect"--I don't think that's the way to do it.

Fuerstenau

I agree with you. The mining industry has never really done an effective job in their own PR.

Livermore

No, they haven't.

Fuerstenau

Were journalists countrywide invited to attend these?

Livermore

Oh, yes. All over the country. There tend to be more Western people because they're dealing with more Western issues, but they come from all over the country. Small newspapers, big newspapers; the New York Times, and little tiny newspapers in small Western towns. I think it's important of course, that this group is not considered to be subsidized by industry because that would defeat the whole purpose. Jack Cox has done that. He has support from the Ford Foundation and various foundations, and he has had some support from industry, but it's not an industry-backed thing. I think there is widespread support. For that reason, I think people will accept it as being a balanced program, not just something that industry has subsidized. I think he has done a good job on that.

Fuerstenau

You support the Nevada's Women's Fund; is that right?

Livermore

I do. I'm a supporter of women; of women's improving themselves. I'm very impressed with what women are accomplishing now. I'm particularly interested in encouraging women to enter the science and engineering fields and supporting scholarships for women in those fields. They're very capable of doing it; we know that.

---

Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada-Reno

The Arthur Brant Chair of Geophysics

Fuerstenau

You've been very supportive of the Mackay School of Mines with scholarships, research support, and funding the Arthur Brant Chair and the DeLaMare Library. Who is Arthur Brant, and why the chair in his honor?

Livermore

First of all, I think I've been very fortunate in spending a rewarding professional career in Nevada; it has not only been rewarding professionally, but also financially for me. So I feel that it's only proper of me to return something to Nevada; to put something back into Nevada because it has been so important to me in my career. One of the things that I've been interested in is the Mackay School of Mines in general.

The chair in geophysics came up actually a few years ago. It was proposed by Jim Taranik and it appealed to me as a niche that I think could be developed in the Mackay School of Mines. The school is strong in seismology, but in exploration geophysics, it doesn't have too much of a department. Mining geophysics has been neglected, and is being neglected now in a number of universities: UC Berkeley, the University of Arizona, and the University of Utah. My feeling in this--and Jim Taranik felt the same way--that this is a chance to develop a center of excellence in geophysics here in the Mackay School of Mines, filling a niche that maybe doesn't exist in some of the Western universities. In doing that, the question is: what do you call the chair?

Well, the man that I worked with at Newmont for many years, Arthur Brant, was an absolutely remarkable man and one of the leaders in mining geophysics since the war [World War II] and was mainly responsible for developing the induced polarization technique and advanced forms of electromagnetic exploration; just a very remarkable man. He seemed to me a logical person to be memorialized by this chair.

Fuerstenau

I remember when you and he both came to campus when the Arthur Brant chair came into existence. Is he still alive?

Livermore

Still alive, yes. He's about eighty-five years old.

Fuerstenau

Is he still active?

---

Livermore

He has bad arthritis, but he's mentally still very active. He's looking forward to the dedication this fall of the chair, and he has given some money to the library for the room named for his wife, the Lilli Brant Room. He is certainly interested in that. He has become interested in the university.

The DeLaMare Library and Whit DeLaMare

Fuerstenau

Tell us about Whit DeLaMare, and your interest in seeing him honored by the naming of the library, the DeLaMare Library.

Livermore

Whit DeLaMare was a very remarkable man. He was a graduate mining engineer, and he worked in various operating jobs for some of the large mining companies and he had his own iron mining company in the Jackson Mountains. I got to know him when I came back to Nevada in 1970. At that time, he was kind of at loose ends. The iron mine was shut down and he was living in Winnemucca, and he found that he didn't want to leave Winnemucca to take another operating job, and he found he was kind of interested in geology, and he was studying maps and doing a little bit of prospecting. Pete Galli and I got talking to him, and asked him if he wanted to join our organization, which was Cordilleran Explorations. This helped him because the cost of analyzing samples gets kind of onerous for an individual, so we offered him a salary plus a bonus for anything he discovered.

He, at that time, was over sixty years old, and he decided that what he really wanted to do was just prospect; just climb the hills of Nevada. Having had an engineering background, and studying geology, and he was a curious person --he read all the reports and he developed ideas looking at aerial photographs--he soon learned the things to look for, particularly for Carlin-type deposits, although he wasn't always only looking for that. So we just turned him loose, and made a few suggestions of where to prospect, but a lot of it he did on his own. He'd bring in these samples--my job, though I did quite a bit of prospecting myself actually, was often to follow up what he'd found, and then decide whether we wanted to pursue in a more serious effort. He just did the initial work.

Once he collected some samples then he would go on to somewhere else, and we would have to decide if we wanted to do a thorough geological evaluation. A lot of things he brought

---

in we decided weren't of interest--he was awfully good at finding high grade, but sometimes it would be a vein only an inch wide or something. Anyway, he came up with a lot of very good discoveries--either direct discoveries, or rediscovering places. The Preble, of course, was a new discovery; an area that he selected. He liked the looks of the area, and did some sampling. On the basis of just one sample--it was obvious to me that this was a Carlin occurrence, and we had to follow up on it, and we did, and it developed into the Preble deposit.

The Dee was a similar situation where he found a sample that he liked the look of in an area that a lot of other people--geologists and prospectors--had tramped all over. But he spotted this area. Again, just on the basis of one sample, I was convinced that this deposit really deserved a lot of work. We did follow up on it, and it turned out to be the Dee ore body.

I've always given great importance to the prospector because he's the one that goes on the ground first. It requires good work to follow up on, good geological work, and a good evaluation, but if you don't have the first guy on the ground, you're never going to find anything; he's the one that leads you to the spot in the first place. I don't think a lot of people give the prospector as much credit as he deserves. In large companies, others often want to share the credit. He's the first guy on the ground, and Whit was very good at that.

Fuerstenau

How many years did Whit work for you then?

Livermore

Twelve years. He unfortunately got cancer, and he died from that.

Dee was a graduate of the Mackay School of Mines, and he did a lot for the state in these discoveries he made, so I thought it was very proper to have him be memorialized in the library, and the university agreed.

Fuerstenau

Now the library is going to be funded from royalties from the property out by Valmy as I understand?

Livermore

Yes.

Fuerstenau

How is that going to work?

Livermore

Well, the university--it was twenty years ago or more--somebody--we never did quite run that down, I did a lot of

---

research on that--but some person who bought a railroad section of land decided for some reason to give it to the university. So the university had this plot of land, and a few people had looked at it, but nobody thought there was any obvious mineral potential there; it was just real estate. But Cordex, headed by Andy Wallace, who took over my job of running it--got interested in this area close by, a couple of miles to the north of the university land.

On the basis of good geology, he did some drilling, and found a pretty interesting ore body. Then, in expanding his operations, he eventually got working down toward the university property, and by some drilling, he found some quite large reserves on this property. The university was having trouble finishing the library. We had raised more than half a million dollars, and they got some money from Keck, but they still needed another couple of million dollars. It seemed to me that here was the chance to get this library done.

##

Livermore

I proposed to the administration that maybe this royalty should go to the Mackay School of Mines and be used to finish off the library. President Joe Crowley did agree to that. So now the money is being used for that purpose, and the library is in the process of finally being completed after quite of a number of years.

Fuerstenau

When is the scheduled dedication for it?

Livermore

It's in October.

Fuerstenau

Very good.

Livermore

But the library will be finished long before that, in May. They wanted to have the dedication at the same time as the Homecoming in October.

---

XI Developing the Resources at Montesol

Volcanic Terrain Favorable for Water Storage

Fuerstenau

I realize that Montesol, your ranch, has been discussed in the previous portion of the interview and that your brother [George] is going to provide quite some detail with regard to the history of the ranch, but I think it would be important also for you to talk about the geology of the water resource that is presently in production and being marketed.

Livermore

Well, when my grandfather and father put the property together over the years, we knew we had some wonderful water up there. We've always been very proud of our springs. We have over thirty springs on the property, but we never really thought of commercializing it until my brother Put and his wife Pari got involved. The geology is a volcanic terrain--we are adjacent to Mount St. Helena, which is a large volcanic pile. Those rocks tend to be quite favorable for water storage because they tend to be porous, and they're actually tuff, volcanic ash deposits, deposited in layers, and they tend to hold the water. The rocks underneath the volcanics are very impervious. Other parts of the surrounding area where you get into the basement rocks are very unfavorable, so we just happened to have very favorable rocks for water storage.

We have the headwaters of the Putah Creek drainage; we control the headwaters of this drainage. There's no one above us. So really from the point of view of water purity, we have another interesting additional factor as far as the possibility of water pollution. The other thing we have is a very interesting feature right at the main ranch, which is a very large landslide which has produced a lot of springs; springs which come out of the base of some of these slides. We found, in drilling bore holes close to our springs--we drill down through this landslide, and at the contact between the landslide and these impervious base rocks, we get good

---

water production in these bore-holes. That's where we're getting our water.

Some of this landslide material has quite large openings and big boulders and we are able to get some pretty productive bore holes. The problem we have had is not a problem of quantity, it's a problem of quality, because in the same volcanic terrain, you get alteration of this ash to a very fine colloidal clay called bentonite. That appears in the water; you don't really notice it. You look at the water and it's absolutely crystal clear, but you have got a tiny, tiny amount of this colloidal clay which won't meet the standards of water quality. In a couple of our bore holes we haven't had this problem, but in one of our best holes, unfortunately, we have this problem.

The solution appears to be now that we may have to filter this water to bring it down to the standards that are required. So that's been a problem we've had to overcome, and it looks like maybe we have it overcome now. Aside from that, the water is very pure water because we're in an area of very high rainfall and that water is a very local source; it doesn't move very far through the rocks. We have about seventy or eighty parts per million of total dissolved solids, which is enough to give it a taste--everybody says that the water tastes very good, and yet it's really very pure as far as minerals are concerned. It looks like we have a pretty good asset there--a commercial asset that we never thought we had before.

Fuerstenau

How deep are the bore holes?

Livermore

They're very shallow, and they are drilled adjacent to springs so the water can be classified as spring water. This landslide only runs about seventy-five or a hundred feet thick, so a lot of these holes are getting water at forty feet. They're very shallow.

Fuerstenau

Naturally flowing, or do you have to pump?

Livermore

We have to pump. We don't have any artesians, although the water that does come up is somewhat artesian when it comes up to ten feet or so, but it doesn't come up to surface. It is good water. Of course, we're prejudiced I guess, but I think everybody does say that it is very good tasting water.

Fuerstenau

As a matter of fact, since I learned that Calistoga water is your water, we now buy Calistoga water. [laughter] How big is the ranch?

---

Livermore

It's about seven thousand acres total.

Other Ranch Activities

Fuerstenau

Do you run any cattle on the ranch?

Livermore

My brother [Robert] used to. It's not suited for cattle. A lot of it is actually timber, but we do have some grassy areas, but it's very steep, and it's not really suitable for cattle. He did it as more of a hobby than anything else. We don't run any cattle there. We do logging. We have some good forest. In fact, the original forest, which is all logged off, was beautiful Sugar Pine--enormous trees--plus Ponderosa Pine, and Douglas Fir. We're in an area of very high rainfall because of Mt. St. Helena; it sort of intersects the clouds and then dumps all the water. The trees grow well there.

Fuerstenau

Do you still have a logging operation in effect?

Livermore

Yes, we do. We log; not all the time, but we do selective logging. We don't do it every year; maybe every four or five years we do some logging. We're doing a lot of reforestation. We've planted more than about fifty thousand seedlings over the last few years in trying to improve the forest. There are certain areas that have been burned over, and we're trying to restore the forest in those burned-over areas. We also have a lot of hard wood. There is a lot of oak; we do harvest some of that for cordwood.

Fuerstenau

Do all of the family have dwellings on the ranch then? I know you do.

Livermore

Yes, we do. We have five different dwellings. Each brother has a house. Then we have another house which we bought from a family that used to be our neighbors, and that's used as sort of a joint house; different members of the family use it on a reservation basis.

The Oat Hill Mine

---

Swent

Maurie Fuerstenau interviewed you in January, and now we are meeting in Piedmont to pick up a few loose ends that we've left from previous interviews and maybe cover some new ground as well. Where would you like to start, John?

---

Livermore

With the ranch.

Swent

All right, let's go back to the ranch and the environs there. Let's begin with Oat Hill or Corona? Which would you like to start with?

Livermore

Did I cover the Oat Hill before?

Swent

No, you didn't talk about the Oat Hill at all.

Livermore

Well, I guess the Oat Hill mine, which was the third-largest producer of mercury in California and was quite a substantial operation from about 1875 up to 1910--there were several hundred people working there at one time--was abandoned during the Depression, and the property came up for sale. My father purchased it at a very reasonable price.

Swent

When was that?

Livermore

That was about 1925, I think. Then when the war came along, the price of mercury increased, and there was a group--the H.W. Gould Company--that became interested in the property and actually leased the ground and operated it for several years while the price remained up. They installed a large rotary kiln there, and it was quite an operation.

Then after the war, they shut down and nothing happened there for quite a while. But then again in the late fifties and early sixties, the price of mercury came up again and there were various people interested in the property--including Newmont Mining Corporation. We had a small operation developed there by a person by the name of Bill Kritikos, who had a small kind of mom-and-pop operation with a gravity plant there. He produced for a few years, and it was a pretty marginal operation. Then the price dropped again, and nothing has been done on the property since then.

Swent

Was the geology unusual there?

Livermore

It was. It was a different type of deposit from most mercury deposits in California, which are usually associated with serpentine. This deposit was several miles from the nearest serpentine, and it was a sandstone deposit. It was quite high grade. The values in some cases disseminated out into the wall rocks, which was somewhat unusual for mercury. So this was kind of a unique deposit in the state.

---

With the environmental problems of mercury, it's probably very unlikely that this mine or any mercury mine in the United States would ever be reopened again.

Swent

So you're not planning to start it up?

Livermore

No.

Swent

There was somebody named Ansel who had it for--wasn't it Ansel that operated it? Was that after your family bought it?

Livermore

We had several very short-term--they had several people lease the property. Monsanto had been there one time. Several people did exploration work during the fifties and sixties, but they never did go ahead with anything. The closest to an operation was actually Newmont, and they drilled out a low-grade ore body--over a million tons. They were ready to put the property in production, but they were trying to get a guaranteed price from Mallory, who was one of the big consumers of mercury. But they couldn't get that guarantee, so they decided not to go ahead with it. Then the price dropped.

Swent

Was that when you were with Newmont?

Livermore

Yes. So that was the end of that.

The Corona Mine

Livermore

The Corona mine, which was an adjoining mine, was a more traditional mine on the serpentine contact, and which I acquired myself later. It had an interesting operation in the sixties under a person named Hugh Ingle

and his son. They put in a little plant there, a small rotary kiln and condenser plant. It did pretty well in the sixties for a while, until the price dropped again. The property adjoins the main ranch, and I'm interested in trying to solve some environmental problems there, reclaim some of the old dumps.

Swent

How will you do that?

---

Livermore

Well, by trying to terrace the dumps and trying to revegetate them. There's also an acid mine drainage problem at one of the old tunnels. We would try to plug that tunnel, and see if we can stop that acid mine drainage.

Swent

Would that be similar to what they've done at the Reed Mine?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

What's wrong with acid drainage? What damage does it do?

Livermore

It ruins the fishing in the creek, of course, and it stains all the rocks. So visually it's very unattractive because the creek below the mine--all the rocks are all stained with iron oxide. There are a few fish, but it doesn't support much fishing there. The people downstream, and the state in general, is unhappy about the situation; they'd like to see it cleaned up.

Swent

What is the stream?

Livermore

James Creek.

Swent

But this is not a recent affair.

Livermore

Oh, no--it's been there seventy-five years.

Swent

You mentioned that there are people who call you up or write to you. You were telling about getting a letter from somebody who--

Livermore

Yes. There's a lawyer that's trying to cause some trouble on this. He apparently goes around and looks at records in Sacramento of what mines have this acid drainage problem. There are plenty of them in California. It's really kind of a shakedown. He says he's going to start litigation, and what he's hoping to get, I think, is some kind of a settlement where he'll be bought off.

Swent

This is the sort of scam that develops in situations like this, isn't it?

Livermore

We were going to try the solve the problem ourselves, because I think it's something that I think we can do with a very minimal cost.

Swent

And what's your motivation for that?

---

Livermore

It's kind of an experiment to see how it can be done, how we can get the thing revegetated and eliminate the erosion problems. It's kind of a--you might call it kind of a research project.

Swent

I'm just wondering what makes you do it.

Livermore

I'm interested in mine reclamation. I've been involved in the reclamation of several mines in Nevada. It's a serious problem that the industry has to face. We're doing a better job at it than we did initially, but I think it's the responsibility for all of us that have been in mining to try to figure out better ways to reclaim these old mines.

Swent

You think you'll learn something from this that you'll apply?

Livermore

I think so.

Swent

You'll apply it some other place then?

Livermore

Yes.

Geothermal Resources

Swent

Well, that's a good motivation.

Livermore

The other thing I might mention was the geothermal interest up there at the ranch. We're located only five miles south of the main geothermal field, which is the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world.

Swent

Is that the Geysers?

Livermore

The Geysers, yes. We're theoretically on the continuation of that zone. As I say, we're only five miles away. We had quite a bit of interest at one time with Amax. They did a lot of drilling on our property, looking for similar reservoirs of steam. They drilled a lot of holes 2,000 feet deep, and one production well over 7,000 feet deep. But the temperature was not quite good enough, and I think there's less interest in geothermal exploration now in that area because the pressures in the Geysers field itself are declining. I don't think there's the same interest in geothermal exploration that there used to be. For a while there was a lot of activity around there.

---

More About Marketing the Spring Water

Swent

I think it turned out not to be as economic as they thought, didn't it?

Livermore

Yes. The other thing that we have is the water situation at the ranch. We've always been very proud of our springs and very good quality water and good tasting water. My brother [Putnam], who is a lawyer in San Francisco, was successful in working out a deal with the Calistoga Mineral Water Company to purchase our spring water. So we're now in the water business. We're only ten miles from the Calistoga plant, so we fill up these tank trucks with water and haul them ten miles to the Calistoga plant. That was kind of an interesting new development.

Swent

Yes, you had discussed this briefly with Maury Fuerstenau, but I didn't know if you wanted to say any more about it.

Livermore

Oh, I did get into it.

Swent

A little bit, but you did not go into the issue of particulates in the water.

Livermore

Yes, we had some permitting problems, and we had problems with downstream users. Of course, this water is actually coming from boreholes close to a spring. Under the state and federal regulations, that can be classified as spring water if the water is close to a spring and of the same quality and same aquifer. So we're not taking any surface water, but we've had trouble with some of the downstream users who are taking surface water from shallow wells and have not a very good water source--for a while there, they were claiming that we were taking water that they had been using downstream. But I think we have pretty well proven to them that the underground water that we're taking has no effect on their surface water.

Swent

It's a whole new way of looking at water now, isn't it? It may be more valuable than gold in a few decades.

Livermore

Also it sells more than gasoline, which is hard to understand [laughter].

Swent

Somebody has built quite a plant there, I see.

Livermore

This is the loading station, where they load the tank trucks up.

---

Swent

That's a whole new industrial development.

Livermore

That's quite a fancy layout.

Swent

Did Calistoga put that in?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

New signs on the highway and everything.

Livermore

Yes, it's quite an installation.

Swent

So you've gotten interested in water as a resource.

Livermore

Yes, and it's something of course that we never thought would ever be commercialized. So that's a little bit of luck [laughter].

Swent

Do they give you free bottles of bubbly water?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

Yours isn't bubbly, though.

Livermore

No, this is spring water. It's very pure spring water. Our water runs about sixty parts per million total dissolved solids, and the Calistoga mineral water runs 500 parts per million. That comes from wells in the valley. So there's quite a difference.

Swent

Do you want to tie in your groundwater tour with that? You've been getting interested in groundwater, haven't you?

Livermore

That could become a public resource, and of course I am interested in groundwater in Nevada; that's another subject.

Swent

I think you just took a tour of California groundwater, didn't you?

Livermore

Right, yes.

Swent

So that's a new interest of yours.

Livermore

Right.

Swent

A very important one.

Livermore

So I guess that covers the ranch pretty well.

---

Tours to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and South Africa

Swent

You felt that you talked about lateritic nickel already. I wasn't sure that you had. And then now a couple of these trips, and you were a little reluctant to discuss them, because you were there more or less as a tourist--I think it's worth telling that you've had a couple of interesting trips within the last few years. One was to Russia. This was a People-To-People group, was it?

Livermore

A People-To-People trip, yes.

Swent

Everybody on the trip was a geologist?

Livermore

They were engineers and geologists. We visited several mines in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The highlight of the trip was to visit one of the largest gold mines in the world, the Murentau mine, which is a very impressive operation. It's one of the jewels of Russian mining. A lot of Russian mining has been neglected, particularly with all the financial problems, but this mine is very profitable. It's a beautiful plant and very well run. It's quite an impressive operation.

Newmont has a deal now, where they're treating the so-called waste dumps in this mine that have piled up over many years. There is still a lot of gold in what they considered waste dumps. They're processing these waste dumps by a different method--by the heap leaching method--and recovering a lot more gold out of these dumps. It's quite a profitable operation. So that was something that was interesting to see.

Swent

I think you were also impressed with one of the mills, you had mentioned.

Livermore

It was an enormous mill. The one building, the mill, was one kilometer long [chuckle]. I don't think there's any mill in North America that long. It is typical of the Russians; everything they do is in a big way. The number of people they have working there is several times what we would have. They have an enormous number of professional people that we would never consider affordable. A lot of them are doing work that we would consider proper for technicians. And then they built this enormous infrastructure way out in the middle of the desert, a large town of 50,000 people with high-rise apartments. Of course, the mines in Russia have to provide everything: they have to provide the schools and the hospitals, which mainly are serving this mine, plus a couple of other

---

smaller mines in the area. They had to build a 200-mile pipeline for water. It was a very, very impressive operation.

They look at things differently. The capital cost is something they don't look at. They look at the operating cost, and the cost of infrastructure--which we have to figure in our economic calculations; they don't figure that in so much. This mine is very profitable, but I don't think there's any way it will ever pay off the total infrastructure [laughs] that was built.

Swent

When were you there?

Livermore

That was in 1994.

Swent

So that was after the collapse of the USSR.

Livermore

Yes. This was when Uzbekistan was independent.

Swent

But it was still a socialist kind of structure.

Livermore

Well, some of those countries still have very strong central governments, and the head of Uzbekistan is still almost a dictator. He was the former head under communism, so he stayed on as president. So it's a very strong centralized government --not a democracy by any means.

Swent

So they don't have to do careful cost accounting.

Livermore

No.

Swent

Then your African trip was more recent.

Livermore

Yes, Newmont, my former employer, had several mines in South Africa which I had heard about for a number of years and always thought that I would sometime be sent down there by the company to work on some of these mines. But I was occupied with other projects. I thought it would be kind of interesting to go down and see these mines that I had heard about, and at the same time to travel around the country and get an idea of the politics after the changeover in government and also do some game viewing. I traveled around quite a bit, and I got all the way up to Namibia and almost up to the Angola border, which is where one of the Newmont mines--called Tsumeb--was.

I had always heard that South Africa was a beautiful country, and it is--particularly around Cape Town. It's some of the most beautiful country in the world, really.

---

Swent

You got to Palabora too, didn't you?

Livermore

Went to Palabora, and I visited a platinum mine, and I visited a diamond mine, and I visited a couple of gold mines. I covered quite a bit of ground.

Swent

What was your impression of their mining?

Livermore

Oh, very modern. They have top-notch people, very fine professional people. They're right up to our standards--in fact, they've been in the vanguard of mining research. Very strong research. In fact, some of the new techniques that we've been using in the United States were developed in South Africa.

Swent

Which ones?

Livermore

Like the carbon-in-pulp process, and some more technical parts of the process that we used at the Pinson mine. They've developed some geophysical methods and a lot of different metallurgical methods of treating gold and uranium ores.

Swent

You're using something at the Pinson that was developed in South Africa?

Livermore

Yes. The carbon-in-pulp process that is the main process used in this country was really developed in South Africa. Homestake had tried it in part of their plant, but Pinson was the first full-fledged operation in the United States.

Swent

So you were glad to see it.

Livermore

Yes. I think I did discuss the China trip, didn't I?

Swent

You talked to Fuerstenau about that, a little bit.

Let's do San Luis first and then come back to Nevada, shall we?

Livermore

Okay.

The San Luis Mine, Mexico

Swent

You haven't mentioned San Luis at all. You were a director there for a few years.

---

Livermore

Yes, I was invited to be a director at San Luis, which was a very famous silver mine in Mexico.

I enjoyed making several trips down there near Mazatl n. This mine was one of the great silver mines of the world, actually--very high grade.

Swent

When were you there, John?

Livermore

Oh, I don't know. I'd have to look it up. It was almost twenty years ago.

I was very interested in the geology. It was one of the classic examples of epithermal deposits, so it was interesting to get a chance to learn more about that in detail.

Swent

Your friends, the Rawlings, had a long connection there.

Livermore

That's right, going back to Colonel Rawlings, of course, who really was the one that discovered it for the Hearst interests.

Swent

Were you a director when it was Mexicanized?

Livermore

Yes, it was Mexicanized before I became director. We decided that the mine had seen its better days, actually, particularly the main property--it looked like the ore was weakening at depth, and the price of silver was very high in 1980. So we decided to sell the company, and so that was the end of San Luis. It was taken over by a Mexican company. That was in 1980.

Swent

Was that a decision or was it forced on you?

Livermore

No, it wasn't forced on us.

Swent

Was that an option?

Livermore

You're talking about Mexicanization?

Swent

Yes.

Livermore

Well, that was much earlier. The mine was Mexicanized long before I joined the board.

Swent

I see. It was already Mexicanized when you were on--

Livermore

Yes.

---

Swent

That is, it was over 50 percent owned by Mexican--

Livermore

It was 51 percent owned by Mexico. That was a problem, but they were able to survive; they had to reinvest some of the money in Mexico, and that was one of the problems, I think--it had something to do with the decision. I was involved as a geologist, and it looked to me like the mine was--that partcular main mine was bottoming at depth. The company is still continuing; they have other deposits around there. They're still operating.

Swent

They've discovered very rich deposits just on the other side of the hill, I understand.

Livermore

But the price was right, and there was this other company that was interested in it, and I think it was a wise move. The Mexican partners--well, there were problems there, not having control of the mine. Of course, before Mexicanization, that was a wonderful mine and a very profitable mine.

Swent

Do you still have your mine in New Mexico?

Livermore

It's just a prospect in New Mexico, yes. We're hoping to develop that sometime.

The Hasbrouck and Sterling Mines, Nevada, Brought up to Date

Swent

Maybe you'd like to talk a little bit more then about these Nevada mines, to bring them up to date. It's been five years. I don't think you had mentioned the Hasbrouck at all.

Livermore

The Hasbrouck is a property near Tonopah, Nevada, that was another interesting epithermal occurrence. We did some drilling and proved up a very large low-grade body of gold ore. For various reasons, it wasn't quite economic. Those reserves are still there, and some day they may be mined. It didn't lend itself to heap leaching, which is the cheapest method to produce gold. If it had, that would've been economic. Because of the nature of the ore, it didn't leach very well in the coarse sizes. It's a resource, and maybe it will be mined someday.

Swent

In coarse sizes, you said?

---

Livermore

Yes. It has to be ground very fine to get recovery, but the ore wasn't good enough grade to justify the cost of fine grinding.

Swent

So that was a metallurgical problem.

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

But you still have that.

Livermore

We still have that, yes.

Swent

When you say "we"--

Livermore

I do. I have a royalty there. I only have part of the royalty, so there are other people. I don't own the property, I just have a small royalty interest.

Swent

And the Sterling?

Livermore

I think we discussed the Sterling, didn't we? Yes. That was in the list of the properties that we worked on.

Swent

Didn't you tell me that it had just closed?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

Bring it up to date.

Livermore

It turned out to be a pretty good mine--

##

Swent

In a case like that nowadays--

Livermore

Of course, I don't know how that works to have those big gaps in there. [referring to the editing of the interview transcript]

Swent

What?

Livermore

You have part of it in one year and then have another part five years later or something [laughs].

Swent

Oh, that's all right; don't worry about it [laughs].

Nowadays when you have to obliterate all evidence of a mine, it's harder to go back in and open it if the price goes up again, isn't it?

---

Livermore

Yes, it is.

Swent

That's one of the problems with--

Livermore

Well, particularly an underground mine, yes, because all the workings cave and it fills up with water. So it gets very expensive.

Swent

Is this an underground mine, the Sterling?

Livermore

Yes. However, in this case, there's not a water problem because it was above the water table. It won't fill up with water, but the workings tend to cave in, so it's kind of hard to open the mine again.

Swent

The Getchell--I had thought that you were still involved with that.

Livermore

No, I didn't--well, except the Pinson's right next to the Getchell. In the early stages of exploration, we at one time thought we might try to buy the Getchell mine. We did buy a portion of it. Pete Galli and I bought a portion of the Getchell holdings. Other than that, I really haven't had any connection with Getchell.

Swent

What about one of these others? Which one do you want to talk about?

Livermore

There's nothing except the Pinson mine. Of course, I'm out of the Pinson mine; I've sold my interest in both the Pinson mine and the Dee mine; I sold to my partners in both cases there. I still do have a royalty interest in the Pinson.

Swent

They're still doing well, aren't they?

Livermore

Still operating, yes.

Swent

The Preble was one that you mentioned. What's the status of that?

Livermore

I had mentioned that too. That's been mined out for some time.

Swent

Do you want to mention platinum?

Livermore

No, I haven't been involved with that.

Swent

Just in general--you were telling me about platinum--

---

Livermore

There have been a tremendous number of scams with platinum as well as gold. Platinum is famous for wild promotions, partly because the platinum is a difficult metal to analyze for, so a lot of people get spurious platinum readings and they think they have a big deposit. Most of them are scams. Of course, in this area there have never been any commercial platinum deposits in Nevada or California. The only platinum occurrences in the western United States are in Montana, actually.

Swent

People can always dream.

Livermore

Oh, yes. The rocks aren't right, actually. You have to have certain kind of rocks to get platinum.

Swent

I wanted a more information about the kind of vehicles that you used--or the transportation methods, I guess I should say, that you used. The Carlin I think you discovered on foot, didn't you?

Livermore

Of course we used mostly four-wheel-drive vehicles in Nevada. In Nevada you can go practically anywhere, even the tops of the mountains, but still you have to tramp along and you can't get away from the need of climbing the hills. So that was our main methods of prospecting. We would use a vehicle to get close to where we wanted to go and then just climbing, mapping, and sampling, and a lot of hiking in the hills.

Swent

Do you think this global position system is going to replace the tramping?

Livermore

That's very helpful to simply locate yourself. It speeds up the process of mapping because you can locate yourself accurately. With computers, of course, you can transmit that information back to a central point. Theoretically, you could be mapping out in the field, and by the time you get back to your office your map will be all compiled for you.

Swent

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

You don't have to go back and spend hours trying to transferring data to a map.

Livermore

So from that point of view, and of course particularly--I worked a lot in the tropics--in the Andes and the rainforests. In very high relief, it's very hard to know where you were and to locate yourself, for collecting samples or for mapping. So

---

that global positioning system is a tremendous advance there, and being able to locate yourself in areas where there are no maps at all. That is going to become a tremendously important tool for geological mapping.

Colombian Horses

Swent

When you were in Colombia, how were you getting around?

Livermore

Colombia, of course, is a very rough country. It's very mountainous, and the road system really isn't that well developed, and it's amazing how many farms and even pretty good-sized haciendas don't have any road access. The roads are terribly tortuous, winding and narrow.

So getting around Colombia is a very slow process. The roads are very bad. A lot of access has to be by horse. So we did quite a bit of horseback riding and used mules for equipment. In some areas it is a horse economy, and they have beautiful horses there. They're small, but they're very, very tough and vigorous. It's the type of horse they call the Peruvian paso. They have a special gait: it's kind of a running-walk gait which is beautiful to watch, and it covers the ground very fast and very easy. It's very easy riding; you can cover ground almost as fast as trotting, but it's much more comfortable because you're sort of gliding along. It's very pretty to watch somebody riding along with that gait. So we did use a lot of horses in Colombia.

Swent

How does this work then? How do you rent a horse?

Livermore

In any village you can rent horses, and it's no problem because they have horses everywhere. As I say, a lot of the back country--the farming, of course, there are those steep areas; it's amazing how they can farm on these steep slopes. They had corn patches, and way back in the back country they say you have to ride several hours to get to the nearest little village. And then in the nearest village you're still pretty isolated; you'd have to drive over these terrible dirt roads for miles and miles to get to any kind of bigger town [chuckle]. So access is Colombia is very difficult.

Swent

Did you have a Colombian with you?

Livermore

Yes, we had Colombian geologists working with us. And we always had some Colombian helpers.

---

Swent

If some stranger comes up to me in a little village and wants to rent my horse, how am I going to know that he's going to bring it back?

Livermore

Well, that's a good question. They didn't require deposits usually, as I remember. They know for one thing you have your vehicle there, so I guess they could take over your vehicle. They know you're going to come back for the vehicle.

Swent

The vehicle is a four-wheel-drive?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

A jeep or a Land Rover or something like that?

Livermore

Yes, that type of--.

Swent

So you leave that there and then you take off with the horse.

Livermore

Right.

Swent

Did you stay out overnight?

Livermore

We often did. We'd camp out or maybe stay at a little farm, what they called fincas.

Swent

You had to arrange for feeding the horses?

Livermore

It was grass. That's one thing about Colombia: it's so green. So that's not a problem. But yes, we stayed out--I remember one place we stayed, a little finca, with a woman who cooked for us there, and that was kind of convenient. More often than not, we would maybe go out for the day and then come back and stay in a little village, in some little hotel.

Swent

It's amazing how those things--and this is the modern era--but they were still--

Livermore

They haven't put much money into the roads in Colombia. They have got a pretty good rural electrical system, and they have power lines going out in the back country. But even some of the main roads were in very bad shape when I was in Colombia. Of course, it's difficult country to build roads in because it's so mountainous.

---

El Transito Project in Honduras

Swent

What about Honduras? Where is your project there?

Livermore

Honduras is not quite as bad because you don't have the tremendous relief as in the Andes, where you're going up and down tremendous elevations. In Honduras the relief is not as great. It's only a couple of thousand meters. In Colombia, we were going up 3,000 or 4,000 meters. The problem wasn't as severe, but it's still a problem in Honduras getting around some of the back country. In a lot of those countries, when you get off the main highways the roads are usually built with broken rock because it rains so much. They hold up very well in the rainy season, but they're terribly rough to drive over [laughs].

Swent

What are you using there?

Livermore

We had four-wheel-drive vehicles there.

Swent

Horses?

Livermore

It just so happens that I haven't used horses that much in Honduras. In most of the places we've been to, there's some kind of road to get there. The country is not as isolated as parts of Colombia are.

Swent

So what are they? Jeeps or Land Rovers?

Livermore

Jeeps, yes. Any kind of four-wheel-drive pickup, or a Blazer--that type of vehicle. But you have to have them in that kind of country because the roads are very bad. Also, of course, it's very wet and muddy country. That's why you have to have these roads; if you get off the road you're just up to your hubcaps in mud right away. You have to have a good, solid road or you can't get around in that country. It's not like the Nevada desert.

Swent

What happens if you have car trouble?

Livermore

You just have to--

Swent

Have you learned to fix it yourself?

Livermore

You have to have a few tools and hope you can fix it. You can get a ride back into town. One of the problems you have down in some of those countries is thievery: you can't leave a vehicle out--they'll steal the parts right off your car if

---

you're not careful. We've had that happen a few times. So you have to be careful about that.

Swent

I remember when we were in Bogot once, seeing people take the windshield wipers off their cars and put them in their pockets when they parked.

Livermore

That's right.

Swent

Just automatically stuck them in their purses or their pockets before they left the car parked [laughs].

Livermore

I remember when we were parked way out in a tremendously isolated area, and there didn't seem to be anybody living around there. We were out about a couple hours from the vehicle, and we came back, and we had obviously interrupted somebody who was starting to dismantle the vehicle because he had taken certain parts off. Luckily we were able to drive back into town. I think if we'd have been gone another hour [laughter] he would have had the thing torn to pieces.

Swent

You're on your way down there soon, you said.

Livermore

I'm going down there, yes.

Swent

It's in production now?

Livermore

No. We're working towards that; I think by the end of the year, maybe, it might be in production. It's kind of a slow process getting all the permits and everything. We have been working on that property for seven or eight years now, so it will be interesting to finally see something going there.

Swent

What do you call it?

Livermore

It's the El Tr nsito. It's right on the Pan-American Highway; it's quite a good location.

Swent

That doesn't often happen.

Livermore

No. The only trouble is it's down on the coast, which is very hot. You get up to a little elevation there in that area, and it's a beautiful climate. But down at sea level it's awfully hot. It takes a while to get used to that. It never changes: day and night, 365 days of the year, it's just hot.

Swent

This is the Pacific coast, isn't it?

Livermore

Yes.

---

Swent

Is there a town there?

Livermore

Yes, it's a very small town. But luckily there's a motel there that we could stay at--it's on the Pan-American Highway--so we have a pretty good place to stay, actually.

Swent

Air-conditioned?

Livermore

Yes. It even has a swimming pool. So we're pretty lucky in that respect.

Swent

So you don't mind too much going there.

Livermore

No, except for the heat. It's hard to get used to that hot weather when you're just down there for a few days.

Swent

I remember once you told me how difficult the plane schedules were getting there. Is that still true?

Livermore

Yes, it's hard to get into Tegucigalpa, which is the capital. It's difficult sometimes to get in there. The service is better than it used to be. It's not a very big city, actually.

Swent

So you fly to Tegucigalpa and then rent something?

Livermore

Yes, we drive from Tegucigalpa, and it's about a two-hour drive. Actually, it's a good road, it's a paved road. It's very accessible, this mine. It's good from that point of view. Other mining areas in Honduras are much more difficult to get to.

Swent

And the politics aren't too bad?

Livermore

No, it's a pretty stable country. They have elections every four years, and they have two political parties. Honduras is a poor country, but they've never had the terrorism that Nicaragua and El Salvador have had. They've had some minor terrorism. It's a fairly stable country. We think we can operate there all right.

Swent

It's always a little iffy going into those places though, isn't it?

Livermore

Yes, you never know quite the government attitude--.

Swent

Do you have local partners?

Livermore

No, but my partner, Bruce Wallis--who is from New Orleans, actually--has spent many years down there, and he has some

---

quite good connections there. I wouldn't have gone into this thing otherwise, without somebody who was pretty knowledgeable about the country. You can get into a lot of trouble unless you have some pretty good contacts. There are plenty of slick operators in all those countries--in all countries, as far as that goes.

Swent

Do you want to say anything about Bre-X and what it's done to the gold mining industry? [laughter] We might as well; it's the current news story.

Livermore

We'll have to wait until we see what the dénouement of that is. We really don't know yet.

Swent

We may never know. It's given a bad name to gold mining, I'm afraid.

Livermore

Oh, it certainly has, yes.

Swent

It will scare off a lot of people.

Livermore

Is that about it?

Swent

What about religion? Your mother was--

Livermore

Oh, I don't want to get into that! [laughs]

Swent

You don't? Well, your mother was very religious, I understand.

Livermore

Yes, yes, she was. But I guess I'm one of those people who sort of have my own religion, I guess.

Swent

You're too busy to spend any time in church, obviously.

Livermore

Right.

Swent

Do you have any church connection in Nevada?

Livermore

Not really. I was brought up in the Episcopal church; I suppose if I have any connection it is with the Episcopal church--I haven't been much of a church-goer.

Swent

You've kept your connection here at Grace Cathedral.

Livermore

Yes. I'm basically a Nevadan, I guess--or half Nevadan and half Californian.

Swent

Well, you're getting to be more of a Nevadan all the time.

---

Livermore

Yes, I've spent quite a few years there.

Swent

You've been a very good citizen of both states.

Livermore

I've been very fortunate in my life.

Swent

You're doing a lot of good things with your good fortune.

What about clubs? Do you belong to any clubs?

Livermore

I'm not a joiner. I never have been a joiner in my life. No. Whether it's because I was out in the hills so much, I don't know. I've never been into that too much.

Swent

Is anybody in your family following in your footsteps? Do you have a successor?

Livermore

My nephew, Robert Livermore, is into environmental remediation, which is--

Swent

Is this the one in Salt Lake?

Livermore

He lives in Phoenix. It involves a certain amount of geology, but I can't say that any of my nephews are following in our footsteps. I guess it's typical of the modern era. My brothers were largely involved in natural resources--one of my brothers (Norman) was in the lumber business, I'm a miner, and another one's (Bob) a farmer, and my lawyer brother (Put) did a lot of natural resource work. But none of our nieces and nephews are in the resource business. They're all in the service business: lawyers or doctors, or some environmental work. But I guess that's kind of the generational change. Somebody's got to still recover the natural resources; somebody's got to do it. It's not a popular field any more.

Swent

No, it isn't. Who's going to take over running the ranch?

Livermore

Well, some of the next generation will. I don't know which one.

Swent

They'll be interested in that.

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

But you're not grooming a successor yet.

Livermore

No, they're all pretty busy.

Swent

They're building more houses up there for the next generation?

---

Livermore

They're talking about it. One of my nephews is building a house. Of course, we have a quite a few already. But we're talking about building one or possibly two more houses. But not right away.

Swent

There are a lot of things to talk about, but I think maybe that's enough for now. Do you think you've covered the ground pretty well?

Livermore

Oh, I think so, yes.

---

XII More Recollections of School and College

---

Miss Paul's School, San Francisco

Swent

This is July 29, 1997, and we are at Montesol, just filling in some of the gaps from our earlier interviews. You had said that you went to Miss Paul's as a child and you told me off the tape some more about Miss Paul's teaching technique.

Livermore

We didn't realize at the time, of course, but it really was a very progressive school at that time. The fact that it was just two houses down from the house was just kind of amazing.

Swent

Was it in her own private home?

Livermore

Own private home. Yes, the two maiden aunts, the Misses Paul, and then they had several others, mostly women. They had an elderly French teacher, a mademoiselle from France who taught us French. I forget who the other teachers were. But it was very loosely organized; we didn't have regular classes.

Swent

Was it just boys?

Livermore

No, it was boys and girls. I don't know how many there were. It was a small school. Twenty-five people maybe. But we had this system, I remember, we had the old mimeographed sheets on cardboard, pasted on cardboard. Then we'd read these lessons. When we got a lesson finished, we'd move on to the next lesson. There weren't any organized classes as such, so of course we had a lot of individual attention. The teacher-pupil ratio was very high.

In fact, we all of us--not that we were necessarily smart--because of the school, when we got into high school, we were about two years ahead of our contemporaries. In fact, both my brother George and I took five years of high school,

---

just kind of an extra year of high school. Then we took a whole year out before we went to college just because we were really too young to go to college.

The other thing about the school was that it was very informal. We used to come up here in the summertime and spend the whole summer at Montesol. In the fall, we were very relaxed about school; we'd get back to school sometimes two and three weeks late [laughs] in the fall and it didn't seem to make much difference. We'd just pick up where we left off. So the whole thing was very informal, but it was a really outstanding school. Unfortunately, when we moved over to Marin County, my youngest brother Bob wasn't able to take advantage of it; he, unfortunately, had to go to a public school, so he missed out on that episode. It was really a great school.

Swent

It went all the way through what would be eighth grade?

Livermore

I think so. I went one more year of grammar school. I went to Damon for one year, which was the successor to Potter School. It had gone out of business. Of course that was right in the middle of the Depression and all these schools were having problems. I think Potter School went bust. So I went to Damon for one year. So I guess we went through about the seventh grade.

Swent

And you had no textbooks, just these mimeographed sheets?

Livermore

I don't remember any books. We must have had some books, but I always remember clearly those boards.

Swent

What sorts of things did you study?

Livermore

Well, we studied all the regular courses. One of the things I remember, we had chess. We all learned to play chess; that was part of our instruction. And then we had a little garden: we all had to have a little plot of land back of the school which we got to plant. We planted flax, I think. Something like that.

Swent

Flax?

Livermore

I think that's what we planted. I forget what it was.

But other than that, we had French of course because we had a mademoiselle with us. So we all got sort of a basic grounding in French, which helped later in life because I think I learned the pronunciation; when I went to Morocco later and really learned French, it helped me to get the correct

---

pronunciation because I had learned some of it really early. I don't remember anything else particularly. The others were just mostly lots of three R's.

Swent

Math, science?

Livermore

Math and a lot of English. And simple science.

Swent

Did she have any particular philosophy about citizenship or history?

Livermore

I don't remember that. No, I don't remember that part of teaching. We all learned to read very early. I forget at what age I was reading, but we all learned to read early. I used to read out loud. We had the phonetic system so we could learn to read. In fact, my mother used to always say that I would read these books and I didn't know what I was reading at all. But I could figure the words out phonically and I could read them fairly well even though I didn't understand what they were.

Swent

What kind of books did you enjoy reading for fun?

Livermore

Well, it was typical boys' books. We had the Boy's Life, that was a favorite magazine. We read Treasure Island and all those great books. But the two magazines were American Boy and Boy's Life. Those were the two, I think, for boys. We read all the common books. We did a lot of reading.

Swent

You liked to read.

Livermore

Liked to read. We developed that up here at Montesol, particularly.

Swent

When you were up at Montesol as a child, there weren't all these other houses here.

Livermore

We all stayed in the one big house.

Swent

And is that the house that burned?

Livermore

It was burned down. Yes, we all stayed there. We had a hut out in the woods; we slept out in the open in the summertime. And then of course, we worked a lot up here, plowing, harvesting, picking fruit. So we were busy and we had a lot of chores. Then after lunch, we would all have to get out on the porch and read. We all had a book we were reading. So that was a standard: we had to read for half an hour or so before you went back to work again.

---

Swent

That sounds wonderful.

Livermore

Yes, it was.

Swent

Good for you.

Livermore

Yes, so we all developed an interest in reading.

Swent

Did your parents read a lot also?

Livermore

Oh, yes. My dad was a great reader. He was just constantly reading. My mother, too, but she had some other activities. But he was always reading.

Swent

When you finished at Damon School--

Livermore

Then we moved over to Marin County. So then I transferred to Tamalpais, another boys' school. That would have been my first year of high school. That was right in the middle of the Depression.

Thacher School, Ojai, California, in the Depression Years

Swent

When was that?

Livermore

That was in 1931. I went to Tamalpais for one year and then I went down to Thacher for two years. That was, as I say, right in the middle of the Depression. My dad decided that he just couldn't afford Thacher. So I went back to Tamalpais for a year; and then I guess he decided that it would be nice if I finished up at Thacher so I went back to Thacher. [laughs] So I went one year to Tamalpais, two years at Thacher, then one year at Tamalpais, and one year at Thacher. So that was five years of high school.

Swent

Yes. A lot of adjusting to make.

Livermore

Well, I didn't--it didn't bother me too much.

Swent

Was another brother at Thacher at the same time?

Livermore

My first year; George was there the first year.

Swent

Then did Put go?

Livermore

He came later. He wasn't there when I was there.

---

Swent

George mentioned Thacher was such a powerful influence in his life, but he was there for consecutive years.

Livermore

He was there five years consecutively.

Swent

So that would be much more of an influence.

Livermore

He was a big horseman there. He was always in the gymkhana. He loved the school. We all did too, but he particularly I think got more out of it. It was very good for him.

A Trip to Europe, 1936

Swent

So then you had a year in between school and college.

Livermore

I was still way too young to go to college. I was only about seventeen years old. So then I took a year and I worked up at the ranch for about six months. Then I went on this trip to Europe. We were very fortunate because our grandmother, my mother's mother, was a great traveler, believed in travel; and she gave each one of her grandchildren two thousand dollars for a European trip. That was a lot of money in those days. That was a wonderful thing. Now all these teenagers are just hopping over to Europe like nothing, but for teenagers to go over to Europe in those days was kind of unusual.

Swent

And from here, it was a very long way.

Livermore

So we all had these trips to Europe which were very, very rewarding.

Swent

Did you go alone?

Livermore

No, actually George and Norman, and a couple of other friends, we all went together but then we separated and we split up. But we were all more or less over there at the same time. Norman and George and a good friend of ours, Jim Green, and a couple of other fellows. As I say, I didn't to the Olympic Games but I was in Berlin. I wanted to go to Vienna, Venice, and some other places, so--

Swent

You planned your own itinerary?

Livermore

Yes, pretty well.

Swent

How did you travel?

---

Livermore

Well, we traveled around cheaply, you know, by train. We did a lot of bicycling in England. And in France we rented bicycles. I always stayed at cheap hotels.

Swent

Did you stay at youth hostels?

Livermore

No, I don't think we did. We stayed at little pensions. I don't think we stayed at youth hostels. Then we had various friends we visited, stayed with in different places. So that was interesting.

Swent

What did you gain from it that you remember?

Livermore

Oh, just generally broadening to see other countries. I was always kind of interested in history. One thing, in those schools, we took a lot of history. I remember we took a whole course just on English history, which I don't think anybody takes nowadays. You'd take whole semesters or maybe a whole year of English history. [laughs]

Swent

You had some interesting observations about Hitler and Germany.

Livermore

Well, yes, because I was--I didn't go to the Olympic games but I was in Berlin for several days. Just seeing the city and reading about how the economy had improved and the whole national feeling of confidence after going through this terrible Weimar Republic with their hyperinflation. People's fortunes were wiped out. It was a general feeling of optimism that Hitler was doing great things for the country; and I have often said--of course it's sacrilegious to say it, but I think that if Hitler had been assassinated right at that time in 1936 he would have been a hero. Nobody knew that he was going to become a megalomaniac at that time.

Swent

There was a good feeling then.

Livermore

Oh, yes. And we didn't see enough of what was going on of course to--. And you didn't get the feeling of militarism at that time. I don't remember seeing any of these mass--you hear about these Nuremberg mass demonstrations. I don't remember seeing that so much. You didn't get that feeling of militaristic buildup. We probably didn't see enough of the country, I guess.

Swent

It must have been a wonderful time.

Livermore

Oh, it was, yes.

Swent

How did you go over and back?

---

Livermore

We went over on a freighter, actually. Norm and I went over on a freighter from Los Angeles. We went down through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic. That was an interesting experience; there were just four or five passengers. Then we came back in style. We came back on the Normandie. Beautiful ship. Some people say the most beautiful passenger ship that was ever built.

Swent

It must have been beautiful. Did you and Norm come back together then?

Livermore

No, he went on to India, actually. George and I came back together.

Swent

So you kept sort of rendezvousing?

Livermore

Yes. We'd meet and separate. We also had different things we wanted to see.

Swent

How long were you there?

Livermore

Oh, three months, I guess. Well, before that, we'd had a family reunion down in Texas. That was right after I finished working up here. And that would have been the winter of 1935, I guess, around Christmastime. And after that I took a trip to Mexico. This was one with my mother and my uncle and aunt. We went down and had a nice trip down in Mexico.

Swent

Mexico City?

Livermore

We went to Mexico City. Even in 1936, I remember there were still traffic problems in Mexico City. Of course, the streets hadn't been widened. And then we went down to Acapulco. That was interesting too, because at that time it was a little sleepy fishing village. Nobody around at all. I remember there was an American couple down there on their honeymoon. I often thought, "Gee, if you want to just get away from everything, the place to come would be Acapulco." Think of it now, of course, it's a regular Miami Beach but that was kind of interesting. And then it was right after that that I went to Europe.

We had one experience in England. A friend of Norman's had actually married the Earl of Berkeley and we visited the Berkeley castle, so that was quite an experience. That was kind of interesting. It was a very old castle from, I think, the twelfth century or something like that, which he had remodeled at enormous expense. All modern fixtures and stuff.

---

Swent

That must have been great fun. When were you doing the packing with Norman?

Livermore

Well, when I was in Stanford--

Swent

Had he started the packing business when you went to Europe?

Livermore

He had started the packing business. He had always been interested in horses. As quite a young boy, he went out to some friends of the family who had a very large ranch in Texas that was part of the King Ranch, actually. The names were Lassiter. It was either close to the King Ranch or part of the King Ranch, a tremendous ranch in Texas. He always enjoyed riding. He got very much interested in cowboys and riding. He learned how to spin a rope, for instance, like Will Rogers. He could do that, you know.

So he got interested in mule packing in the Sierra Nevada, and actually bought into a mule packing business. He was actually in the business. So we worked for him, all of us. I think all of us, Put, Bob, and George all worked for him in the summertime. And I worked for him for two summers or maybe three summers as a packer, which is an interesting experience. We got paid five dollars a day as I remember. But it was fun. Enjoyable up in that beautiful country. So that was an interesting experience during the summer in my first couple of years in college.

Later on, I went to Alaska.

Swent

You had mentioned that. But you told me Norman's influence on you was--that Norman had a big influence on your life.

Livermore

Well, he did. He got us interested in horseback riding and camping. He had the motorcycle; so then we all had to have motorcycles. So we sort of aped him and followed him.

Motorcycle Riding

Swent

Did you have motorcycles in the city? In San Francisco?

Livermore

No, by that time we had moved over to Marin County.

Swent

I see. And you all whizzed around on your motorcycles?

---

Livermore

Yes, I had one. Of course, nobody had cars in high school in those days. But I had a motorcycle.

It was a Harley-Davidson. That was before the Japanese got in the business. So I rode the motorcycle to school every day. That was kind of unusual because no one had transportation to school. Then we used to take all of these trips all over the state. There wasn't much traffic then, but we never wore helmets or goggles or anything. We'd just go whizzing down the highways. But we'd travel all over the state, covered a lot of ground; just had a wonderful time riding around on motorcycles.

Swent

Who is "we"?

Livermore

Put had his motorcycle. But he and Bob, we didn't do it together because we had motorcycles in different periods. I had a motorcycle and then I went away. Put, he may have even taken my motorcycle. He had a motorcycle. So we all had accidents. Put had some very bad accidents on motorcycles. He banged himself up, and I had some accidents. That was later, when I actually hit a tree on a motorcycle--banged up my knees.

Swent

Where was that?

Livermore

That was when I was in the navy. That was later. I had a few minor accidents, skidding around, skinned up a little bit. Put had some quite bad accidents, actually.

Swent

How did your mother feel about all this? [laughs]

Livermore

Well, she was an amazing woman, really. She had five boys who were always getting into scrapes. She was the type that--she must have worried, of course, but she didn't show it much. She didn't tell us we shouldn't do this, do that, it was too dangerous. She was very good on that. I think that's one problem some of the modern mothers, is that they're too protective of their children. We all survived, luckily, to adulthood.

Swent

Your father?

Livermore

He was good. Of course, he encouraged us to take risks. It was very important for children to learn how to take risks and overcome them. If you're just fearful of everything--. I remember we used to climb trees; we'd go way up on the tops of these trees. Now they say, "Oh, that's too dangerous." But you have to know what you're doing, of course, what you can't

---

do. And you have a few mishaps then. You hopefully don't have anything serious.

Swent

Well, but then on the other hand, they pay immense amounts of money to go these Outward Bound camps and schools.

Livermore

And of course they have modern dangers, reckless driving. So these kids are exposed to other kinds of dangers.

Swent

Where they have less control.

So you did have the knee injury in the navy,

Livermore

That sort of bothered me and is still bothering me. I actually also injured my knee at Thacher when I was high-jumping. That was my first knee injury, actually.

Sports at School and College

Swent

What about sports?

Livermore

Well, I engaged in a lot of sports. I never was I'd say a champion in a sport. I liked to do different sports. I never liked to specialize; so I played tennis; at Thacher I played baseball, soccer, and swimming. I was in a lot of different sports. I liked sports; I always have liked sports. But today everybody specializes and I possibly could have been very good in some one sport if I had specialized. I never did.

Swent

I guess basketball would be the thing now.

Livermore

Thacher didn't have a basketball team at that time. So I didn't play basketball. Later, they did. They didn't have football, either. But I did play football at Tamalpais; so I have played football. So I played most of the sports.

Swent

What about at Stanford? Did you do any sports?

Livermore

I was on the freshman baseball team, but I didn't--I started to go out for the varsity. I might have made the team, but I had labs because I was taking engineering all the time and that interfered with sports. I don't know that I would have made the team anyway, so I just stopped. But I like to play baseball. Thacher being a small school, we didn't get enough really good training. For instance, we weren't exposed to curve ball pitching [laughs]. And I had to come up against

---

curve ball pitching in college. I couldn't handle that very well. But now, of course, kids get all kinds of experience; and they have these automatic pitching machines, you know, so you can practice on them.

Swent

Were you a pitcher?

Livermore

No, I played first base. Norm, of course, was a very good baseball player. He was captain of the team and played in the Olympics.

Swent

In 1936?

Livermore

Yes. They had an exhibition game, that's what it was. The first time they ever had baseball and it was just an exhibition between two All-Star College teams.

Swent

And you didn't go to see it?

Livermore

Well, I didn't want to wait around. I would have had to wait around for several days. And I don't know why, I didn't want to sit around that long. I had to get on. I had a certain amount of time and I wanted to see as much as possible.

Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity Stanford

Swent

What about your fraternity at Stanford?

Livermore

Well, I joined the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity mainly because my two brothers had joined it. You either joined a fraternity while I was there or you lived in a dormitory. So the fraternity had the advantage of an overall living community. I never was a strong fraternity person. In fact, I think you could argue against fraternities because it was kind of a social system at Stanford. Those fraternity people felt they were superior to the people living in dormitories. I never particularly liked that, so I wasn't a strong fraternity supporter. I did stay there. I made some good friends there.

I remember when I was at Stanford, they had the sorority system, a very bad sorority system because they had so few sororities and all the girls were clamoring to get in--

##

---

Livermore

I was just saying that there were very few sororities at Stanford and tremendous competition, and a lot of heartbreaks for the girls that couldn't get into the sororities. In fact, a lot of girls actually dropped out of the school if they didn't get into a sorority, so it was a bad system. And Stanford dropped the sororities. I don't think they have revived them. The fraternities were a little different because there were a lot more of them.

Swent

Did you keep up your San Francisco social life while you were at Stanford?

Livermore

I was not a very social person; never have been a big social person. I worked very hard at Stanford; I took engineering courses and it kept me pretty darn busy. I can't say that I had a tremendously active social life.

Thacher being a boys school, we weren't exposed to girls, so when we did have a dance, those of us who were supposed to be the real outdoor types, we wouldn't go to dances. We would go camping instead. [laughs] So I was sort of backward I guess you'd have to say in my relationship with girls at an early stage.

Swent

Yes, well, it's all right.

Did you go to the dances at Stanford?

Livermore

Well, I did, yes. I had some friends there, but not like a lot of people at Stanford.

Swent

You have been on an engineering advisory counsel at Stanford.

Livermore

Well, the earth science advisory council.

I graduated and I've always been interested in Stanford and supported the school. It has changed a lot, of course. The field that I was in, which was mining geology and mining engineering, doesn't really hardly exist anymore. Everything has moved toward environmental science. Stanford had a very active mining department when I was there, but that's all changed. So the school, the earth science department, they're training very few people in my field right now, which is economic geology.

But I still support it. It's a wonderful school--of course a much better school. When I was at Stanford, it wasn't really that outstanding. It was only after I left when President Sterling took over and the science department,

---

Silicon Valley developed, and the engineering, that Stanford became such an outstanding university. We never admitted it, but it didn't really compare with UC Berkeley at that time.

Scout Camp and Impetigo

Swent

This came in a little earlier, but we might mention it. You had said your Boy Scout experience was very brief.

Livermore

Well, our dad was very active in the Scouts. He was on the board of the Boy Scout Council. Norm had been an active Scout because he was in San Francisco at that time. He was active in the Scouts; I think he became an Eagle Scout. Then we moved over to Marin County and since we had Montesol, we didn't have to feel the same need for scouting like urban kids would.

At some point I guess somebody decided that I should go to Scout camp, so I had to join the Scouts. I became a Tenderfoot, which is about as far as I got. Because then I went to the Scout camp and the first thing I did when I got to Scout camp was I caught impetigo, which in those days, before antibiotics, was a very annoying skin disease which produced big scabs on your skin. It was very, very unpleasant. The only treatment was to peel off the scabs and put an ointment on it. It was a very contagious disease, so you couldn't go swimming. It actually spoiled my whole summer because I couldn't go swimming, I couldn't do anything. [laughs] It took literally months to all heal up.

Swent

It was a dreadful disease.

Livermore

It really was, but I mean, it was just annoying. It didn't interfere with activities too much except for swimming. You couldn't swim because it was very contagious. That's how I caught it, swimming up at the camp.

Swent

So that was the end of your scouting.

Livermore

That was the end of my Scout career.

Swent

I never had impetigo, but I remember it was just something people were very aware of and afraid of.

Livermore

I remember scabs as big as a fifty-cent piece on your knees and every place.

---

Swent

And it doesn't even exist now.

Livermore

Well, with antibiotics, no. They kill it right away now.

Swent

What about polio?

Livermore

Well, we had serious problems with polio but luckily none of us caught it. It was active in those days, of course. A lot of my friends, people I knew, got polio. We were just lucky.

Swent

Well, Montesol protected you from some of those, probably.

Livermore

Yes.

Letters from Parents

Swent

Do you think we should jump up a few years, then? We're just filling in things today. I wanted you to mention your mother's letters to you.

Livermore

Well, of course we were away at boarding school and our mother carried on a great correspondence. I didn't reciprocate very much. I was a terrible letter writer; I just hated to write letters and still do.

Swent

I've noticed. [laughs]

Livermore

[laughs] It was an effort. I was supposed to write a letter from school once a week. I always thought, "I can't figure out what would be interesting to put in the letter that my mother or father would be interested in." I guess I wasn't correct. Anyway, it was always a struggle. But she wrote wonderful letters. And my dad did too, and going on after, when I was travelling around in geology during the war, he wrote us all long letters. I've kept all those letters, so between his letters and my mother's letters, I've got quite a volume of letters. The trouble is she didn't put dates on them. That was unfortunate. He did. But it's kind of hard to date them because she didn't put a date on them.

Swent

Did they write individually to each son?

Livermore

Yes. Well, no, I think in some cases my dad would send copies around. But if it was something that was particularly important, he would make it individual. Of course I was close to my dad because he was an engineer also, so he was very

---

interested in what I was doing. Particularly early in the career, he was always making suggestions--you might want to do this; you might want to do that--but he never pushed any of us. He was always helpful in making suggestions about different things. One time I'll always remember he thought maybe I might be interested in going into research, scientific research. I was always interested in science, but I wasn't really quite inclined that way. I was more interested in the applications of science.

Swent

Did you write to your brothers? Did they write letters to each other?

Livermore

No, not too much. Yes, I have some letters from my brothers. But not too much. We did some, yes. George, I think, was the best. He wrote some wonderful letters when he was in the service. I was very bad at that, I don't know why. I never could quite get inspired to write letters.

Swent

You were busy doing things instead of writing about it.

Livermore

Yes. I was not a good communicator. Never have been. I'm not very proud of that.

Swent

You've done fine.

---

XIII "Post-retirement" Activities

The California Academy of Sciences and Dr. G Dallas Hanna

Swent

Would you like to say something about the California Academy of Sciences?

Livermore

Well, I got interested in the Academy through--my dad, of course, he had been president of the Academy of Sciences and he'd been interested a long time, going back to his safari in Africa. He had been interested in the exhibits of African heads that were contributed mainly by Leslie Simpson. But also some of them were contributed by my dad. So he got very interested in the Academy at that time, and that was way back in the twenties.

He was a president for quite a few years, was always supportive. In 1938, they had an expedition to Alaska, which was run by one of the Academy scientists. It was actually an oil company trip because he had two roles; he did--

Swent

Who is he?

Livermore

Dr. Hanna. He was another very interesting person. Dr. G Dallas Hanna.

Swent

G with no period; right?

Livermore

That's right, yes. He was organizing this trip to Alaska, which was an oil company expedition, and my dad heard about him. He needed some people up there to move their equipment;

---

these were human pack mules, you might say. And so they needed about four or five husky young people. He thought it might be an interesting experience for me, so I signed up for it and I actually took a quarter out of Stanford. I was up there for about four months and it was a fascinating experience. That's what we did. We had about a ton of equipment--I think I talked about this before.

Swent

Yes, you did, but I didn't know it was connected with the Academy of Sciences.

Livermore

Well, that's how it started. So I had that experience and I met this Dr. Hanna, who was an absolutely remarkable man. He was a real Renaissance man: not only was he an expert paleontologist and one of the greatest experts on diatomites in the world, he was also a consultant for oil companies because he knew how to classify and distinguish a small tiny fossil which they call foraminifera, which were very important for oil companies in sorting out stratigraphic units. So he was hired as a consultant by Union Oil Company.

I got to know him. I used to keep in touch with him at the Academy. I used to go out there quite a bit. He was one of these fellows, just a workaholic; he was there seven days a week working all hours. Among other things, he was a mechanical person; he could build anything. After the war-- Did I put that in there?

Swent

No.

Livermore

They wanted to build a planetarium and the instruments to project these stars. The only people in the world that made those instruments were at Zeiss in Germany. Well, after the war, the Zeiss plants had all been bombed, so Dr. Hanna decided he'd just build one himself. And he did. Designed all the optics, built the whole thing. He was absolutely an amazing person.

Then later on, quite a few years later, they asked me to become a trustee, which I did because of those connections. And I served a term there and enjoyed it. I wasn't able to participate as much as I liked to because of living in Reno, I couldn't attend all meetings. I'm still interested in the Academy, it's a great institution.

Swent

It is. Put, I think, was later on the board too, wasn't he?

---

Livermore

No, actually, they wanted him to be on the board, but I think that he didn't want to be on the board. So then they shifted to me. [laughs] I think they really wanted a lawyer.

Swent

I see. Well, I imagine they wanted a scientist--which would be you. As a trustee, what responsibility did you have?

Livermore

Well, we had different--

---

Swent

I had asked you if there was anything particular to say about your being a trustee at the Academy of Sciences.

Livermore

Well, nothing. I am interested in what they're doing. Of course, the Academy is going through some tremendous problems right now which I'm not involved in. It looks like they're going to have to move out of Golden Gate Park. At least the museum part. I'm still what they call an emeritus trustee, so I'm still somewhat involved. Honorary trustee, I guess they call it.

Swent

You're still welcome to write checks. [laughs]

Livermore

Yes, right. [laughs] And I get all the minutes. But I don't attend all the meetings anymore.

Swent

Well, it's a wonderful institution.

Livermore

It is. They don't get the support they should. I don't know why that is. Particularly corporate support. They're not very successful in cultivating corporate support.

Swent

That sort of thing isn't quite so appealing now.

Livermore

No.

A Trip to Armenia in 1995

Swent

Well, we have several things still to talk about. You really didn't say anything about your Armenian trip. Was that significant?

Livermore

Not really. It just was kind of more of a tourist trip and supposedly going over to look at some mines over there, but--

---

Swent

But you were there at an interesting time.

Livermore

Well, it was interesting.

Swent

This was in 1995?

Livermore

Yes, 1995. The reason I went over there--when I was in Iran, with Newmont--I think I mentioned that before--this Armenian person was my sort of general factotum and we travelled around together. Did I mention that?

Swent

I don't think so.

Livermore

Anyway, he's the one that brought to the attention of Newmont some properties in Iran, so I was in Turkey at that time and had finished up my Turkey work. So I went over to Tehran and we were traveling around the country with this man. This man's name was Tigran Serajian. Anyway, he was very helpful to me because we would go into these little tiny villages in Iran and the first thing he would do would be to look up an Armenian family. And all over Iran, all over that country, there are Armenian families.

They would welcome us with open arms. They knew everybody, the right people to see. So it was very, very useful having him there. Then, unfortunately, I got sick over there. I got hepatitis and that cut short my visits with this man. So then I came back. I had never heard from him after that.

Then in 1995, I got a call out of the blue from Tigran. He said, "Would you like to go to Armenia? I think there may be some mineral potential over there that's worth looking into." I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get involved in mining in Armenia, but it sounded kind of intriguing to go to Armenia. I'd heard a lot about the country when I was in Turkey, so I said, "Yes, sure, I'll go over."

So I went over. He had great hopes that I was going to get something going. Of course, all expatriate Armenians are all sort of interested in trying to help the country. We talked to some government officials and really didn't get very far.

But I had a very interesting trip over there to observe this country which was in terrible shape economically and politically. The aid they had been received from Moscow--they had had very strong aid for many years--that was completely cut off. The market for their industries was mostly Russia--that

---

was cut off. They had a war with their neighbor, Azerbaijan, going on. And their energy supplies were next to zero: the lights went on only for a few hours a day.

It was a terrible mess. And you would see all these buildings all around the town of Yeravan, the capital--it was a beautiful town with big wide avenues--you would see these buildings with construction cranes all around, and they were all idle. The buildings were just shells. And you would see all this construction that had just stopped overnight. So there was enormous unemployment. And yet, the most amazing this was that you would walk down the street and people seemed to be well dressed. There were no beggars, no homeless people. You just wondered how was the whole system working.

I remember we met over there a nice Armenian who showed me around. We took some trips to beautiful countryside. Unfortunately, the country is very weak in resources: agriculturally, it's a mountainous country, and about all they had was sheep. It's a very poor country. So anyway, we travelled around the country. But it's very pretty. From a tourist's point of view, it is beautiful. Old monasteries. It could be quite important to them from a tourism point of view.

The trouble is that most countries you get people that are speaking English; in Armenia, like in most of the former Soviet Union countries, they did not want them to learn English. So they all spoke Armenian and Russian. All the street signs were in either the Armenian alphabet, which is another alphabet, or the Russian alphabet--so you can't read any of the street signs. [laughs]

And I tried to hire an English-speaking guide and they said, "I'm sorry." It's unbelievable. "We don't have any English-speaking guides." So anyway, this fellow--

Swent

Your Serajian spoke English.

Livermore

Of course, he spoke English. But then he left. And I was there by myself for about a week. I got by. There was some guy there that showed me around. He and his wife, who was Russian, they could speak a little English. You could get by, though. He said, "I'm going to take you to the symphony." So we went to a beautiful symphony hall, crowded with people, a fine orchestra, chorus all dressed up in white tie. Just like you'd see in New York City. And I said, "How in the world can these people afford to go to the symphony?" He said, "Do you know what these tickets cost? Twenty-five cents."

---

Swent

Oh my!

Livermore

They are very strong cultural supporters. Who subsidized the thing, whether it was the government or private business, they carried all this on and people could still afford it. It was still the same system. The rent was practically nothing and the food was subsidized, so they had this sort of a safety net so that people could survive without really practically any income. It was an amazing sight to see how this system was working. How it worked at all--

But they had enormous problems and I don't know how they are going to pull out of it. There were enemies all around them. They were fighting with Azerbaijan on the east. The Georgians don't like them. Their former enemies were Turkey on the south; they hate each other. The only country that is somewhat friendly and is not a very good friend is Iran to the south. And they were talking about building a pipeline from Iran because they have a terrible shortage of energy. Anyway, that didn't work out from a mining point of view. I didn't think it would, but it was an interesting experience.

Swent

What sorts of mineral resources do they have?

Livermore

Well, they have a few gold mines there. The one gold mine I was going to visit was right on the border of Azerbaijan and they had a war going on there, so they didn't advise that. But it's not rich in metals. There's no petroleum although they're right next to the enormous Baku oil fields, but that's controlled by their enemy, you see. Azerbaijan is not going to give them any oil. But they're very smart, intelligent people. They'll work out of it maybe somehow.

Of course, the whole story of Armenia has always fascinated me: how they were pushed around by the Turks; the history of the old Armenia, which is now Turkey, is a fascinating history. Wars on all sides and they were massacred, and they would keep coming back. Then somebody else would conquer them and raze all the cities. I have a book on Armenia; it's fascinating how they survived. And now they only have a tiny little part of what used to be Armenia. The main part of Armenia is now all Turkey. The Turks drove them all out after the First World War. You know about that.

Swent

There was a big exodus after the first World War.

Livermore

First World War. And that was even almost a worse genocide than the Holocaust. You don't hear about it so much.

---

Swent

People used to use the expression "starving Armenians."

Livermore

That's right. We used to hear that. They were sort of like the Jewish people; they were too smart. The Turks didn't like them around because they were the merchants and the intelligentsia. The Turks were jealous of them, and they just told them you have to get out of the country. They gave them about two, three day's notice.

Swent

A very ancient culture.

Livermore

It's quite a story. But they're very much like the Jewish people. They were not going to give up their identity, their culture, and their religion. They have their own language and alphabet. I think we can cross some of that off.

Swent

No, I think that's all very interesting.

Moving up here now, I thought you should expand a little bit more on your decision to leave Newmont.

Livermore

I think I went into that, didn't I pretty much?

Swent

Do you think you did?

Livermore

I think so.

Swent

Your life would have been very different if you had stayed.

Livermore

That's right. I would have probably gone to New York. Yes, I think I explained that pretty well.

Swent

You said a little about what you enjoyed in New York.

Livermore

I enjoyed the two years I was there, but I didn't want to end

my career in New York. I wanted to get back out West. I wanted to get back into field work. That was the main thing. My job was becoming too administrative. And I wanted to get back to Nevada. I thought there was still a lot of opportunity in finding more gold deposits in Nevada. Simple as that.

Swent

You certainly did that, certainly did that.

Well, the things that I have left on my list are Montesol and Walker Lake and Corona--

---

The House at Montesol

Livermore

Well, Montesol, you ought to get Norm in on that because he can give the very early history. He remembers a lot more about this, because, after all, he's seven years older. Both he and George. Also, George has got a wonderful memory.

Swent

He talked some. You haven't see his oral history.

Livermore

No, I haven't seen it, no.

Swent

Let's just, for the record, why don't you talk about the things that are in the house here, a lot of memorabilia of your father's African safari. Is that photograph one that he took?

Livermore

No. That was just a gift. I think Sara's [Dunsford] family got that for me.

Swent

But it is Africa?

Livermore

Yes, but it has nothing to do with the safari.

Swent

But you've got an eland head here, and a--

Livermore

That lion and-- Those two wood inlays, whatever you want to call them, were given to me by Arthur Brant. Those are very nice. He acquired them some time ago. He and his wife gave those to me. They're not connected with the safari.

Swent

One is a tiger, isn't it?

Livermore

Yes. But they're African scenes, but they're not connected with my dad's safari. They're interesting. You know, they're inlaid wood. But other than that-- You see, when all those heads were distributed, I didn't have a house so I didn't really get any of the heads. But they're all distributed around the different brothers.

Swent

They had been in your father's home?

Livermore

When we had the house in Ross, the whole ceiling, the halls-- we had a great big room just sort of like this, all these heads all around. George has got some of them. And Bob has some and Norm has some.

Swent

Now you have the eland.

Livermore

I have the eland, yes.

---

##

[leaves room to bring mounted dyk-dyk head]

Livermore

That's full grown.

Swent

I saw one when I was in Kenya. They're lovely little things, just about six inches high. They look like a little rabbit, actually.

Livermore

Hard to believe they're full grown.

Swent

And then the eland head is sitting on the floor, waiting to be hung up.

Livermore

Well, okay--

Swent

You were up meeting the president this weekend at Tahoe, weren't you?

Livermore

Oh, that is so current. That's not important, though.

Swent

Tahoe isn't important?

Livermore

Well, yes, but I mean, oh gosh, we can just go on and on and on.

Swent

I know. But you didn't say anything about Walker Lake or the Corona Mine.

Livermore

They're really separate. Talking about Public Resources, we talked about that, didn't we?

Swent

I didn't feel that you did enough.

Livermore

Didn't we talk about that and the mining laws, stuff like that?

Trying to Develop Public Support for Walker Lake, Nevada

Swent

You talked some about the mining law, but I thought you might want to talk a little more about what you're doing now at Walker Lake.

Livermore

It's a long process. It's a multi-year process. It's going, unfortunately, very slowly. [pause] Well, I think that covers it, really.

---

Swent

Do you really?

Livermore

There hasn't been too much going on lately. This fellow that we have hired, he's trying to develop some public support. They have a little organization now and newsletter, but it's a very slow process. I'm a little bit annoyed, really, because I'd like to see them-- They just make these endless studies--well, not us, but the university and the federal government, oh my God, they're all making all these studies. Nobody's buying any water, which is what we need to do. So we're just very lucky that we've had these good winters; we've had three years of respite. I'm a little discouraged how it's going along, actually.

Swent

Well, you need to get Senator Reid out there.

Livermore

Yes, well--that's right. But it hasn't attracted the attention that-- But he's going to get this going, I think. But we have to get some political backing. We're dealing with the ranchers, you see, and they're very strong politically. And they all say, "Sure, we want to solve the problem," but they're not willing to give up their water.

I think that covers it.

Swent

Well, maybe so.

Turning the Corona Mine into an Archaeological Site

Swent

Let's talk about the Corona mine a bit. Does this road here go to the Corona?

Livermore

No, no. This is a through road that goes all the way around. It's what they call Livermore Road; it goes by the Oat Hill Mine. The Corona is on a separate road, the Oat Hill Road, which is the old historic road that is being preserved. In fact, we've just given some land to the park, you know, for the Palisades.

The reason I bought the Corona Mine: being in the mining business, it's interesting archaeologically--this old Scott furnace. There are two ages of furnaces there: one is the turn of the century and the more recent one was in the sixties.

Swent

Just for the record, it's a mercury mine.

---

Livermore

Mercury mine, yes. I knew there was an environmental problem there because there's an acid water drainage problem there and the [mine] dumps [are] there. So one of my ideas was to clean up this pollution problem and try to restore the area, and fix up this Scott furnace, make a kind of archeological site out of it. That's what my objective is.

That's what I was in the process of doing until we got sued by this lawyer who's trying to force us to do what we were going to do anyway. So we hope we can avoid litigation, but we're in the preliminary stages; of course, he says he wants to clean up the pollution problem, but his past history is that what he really wants is to get some money. He's representing an environmental organization called United Anglers. He's representing them. We don't know that they are doing this, but what they have done in the past is, what they want you to do is instead of cleaning up the problem, is give some money--what they call to mitigate the problem--and they clean up some other stream in which they are more interested. So in a way, it's a kind of a shakedown. What we're telling them: we want to clean up the problem, which is logical.

Swent

What creek, what watercourse is it on?

Livermore

It's James Creek, which flows into Berryessa Lake. You see, all this mercury is going down into Berryessa Lake. It has been for a hundred years or, well, hundreds of years. And so all these drainages are-- And we're just one mine; there are a whole series of mines. Eventually, this whole drainage--there may be some bigger project to clean up the whole drainage, but I'm trying to solve just this one little problem there. We'll go over there and take a look at it.

Swent

Is there fishing in the creek? Or has there been?

Livermore

There used to be, before they drove this tunnel. But that was way back in 1900. There are fish in the creek, but I think you probably could not eat them because of the mercury content. You could catch them and put them back. The worst part of this acid mine drainage-- You know what that is, the oxidation of pyrite; the iron, as it comes out and hits the air, the iron becomes precipitated. That's what I have in those little beakers. It stains. This problem is more of a visual problem than anything.

Swent

It's not really toxic, is it?

Livermore

No. Well, it doesn't meet the clean water standards. It's got a little mercury in it, a little iron. It's not bad water.

---

Probably it wouldn't have attracted any attention at all if it hadn't been for this staining. That's one reason I want to get rid of it, because if we close off this tunnel, stop this water, hopefully over a period of time the winter rains and the rocks rolling around will grind away the staining and eliminate this very unpleasant visual problem.

Swent

Didn't you say that the tunnel had been closed and water had backed up inside?

Livermore

Yes. Well, that's another problem because there's a pool of water backed up in this tunnel. In order to get back in this tunnel and plug it, we have to open this portal. There's several hundred thousand gallons of water backed up in there which are all this acid water; so we can't just let that water run down the creek. The Fish and Game [California Division of Fish and Game] would not allow that.

We're trying to figure out some other way to do that and to get the Fish and Game to approve. One system would be to spray the water into the air, and in the summertime the water would just evaporate and it won't actually run down the creek. That's what we're trying to figure out, is how we can drain this tunnel without getting the Fish and Game down on us.

Swent

What was the original source of this acid drainage?

Livermore

Well, it's pyrite.

Swent

Underground?

Livermore

Underground, yes. It's pyrite. And this mine had a particularly lot of pyrite in it, more than most mercury mines, and that's what causing all this iron. The Oat Hill Mine, which is right next door, doesn't have that kind of problem.

Swent

It's in a different kind of rock.

Livermore

Different kind of rock, exactly. It's more sandstone and it doesn't have the same amount of pyrite, so there isn't an acid mine drainage problem. It's confined to the Corona. The Corona was not a big producer. That tunnel was driven in 1925, so that water has been pouring out of there ever since. Nothing has changed since 1925.

Swent

But the portal had been closed.

---

Livermore

Yes, it's been closed a long time. And the water just breaks out through the cave at the portal, about fifteen, twenty gallons per minute.

Swent

And the furnaces were used, then, for processing the mercury. They're still there in good condition?

Livermore

Well, that's what's interesting: the old Scott furnace, which was built around 1900, is still there. It's beautiful. Quite an imposing structure built out of volcanic tuff--blocks which they sawed out in those days; they sawed them into rectangular blocks and they built a lot of the structures like that. Nice. Beautiful white structure. You'll see it.

Swent

Isn't it the same as what they built Arequipa [Peru] out of?

Livermore

Yes, yes!

Swent

And that's all still there at the Corona.

Livermore

Still there. It needs to be cleaned up a lot.

Swent

Who did you buy it from?

Livermore

I bought it from Don Emerson, a partner in the Vallejo Quicksilver Mining Company. This property had been in this family for over a hundred years, since the mine was first opened up.

The portal to this tunnel is inaccessible; it's way down at the bottom of the creek. So what we're planning on doing, because we can't get material down there very readily, what we're planning on doing is drilling a hole up on the road, about four hundred feet above it and hitting the adit, and then pouring gravel and concrete down this drill hole. We hope that that will seal off the water. That's our plan. But in order to do that we have to get it opened up. We don't have a good survey. We have to open it up so we can get a survey and know exactly that. We have to hit that with a drill hole; it's only five feet wide, so it's kind of tricky to hit that with a drill hole.

Swent

And how far down is it?

Livermore

Four hundred feet. It's not very far.

Swent

Oh, but that's still a long hole.

Livermore

So that's the plan.

---

Swent

So you can't just undo the portal and go in.

Livermore

Well, we could; we could build a road down there. Actually, this is maybe a better way to do it anyway, because you put this stuff in the top. You could come in and haul stuff in there and just pump concrete in, but I think we can make a better seal by grouting.

Swent

How did the people get down there to mine?

Livermore

They had an incline track. They never mined any ore out of it, you see.

Swent

Oh, really?

Livermore

No, it was a bust. They drove into the vein and it was dead. So they never had to hoist any ore out of it. They just dumped the ore in the creek. And they had an incline, I think, for lowering supplies down there, but mainly I guess they just walked down there. It never was--

Swent

What were the furnaces processing?

Livermore

They did mine on the upper levels. You see, this was driven four hundred feet below the upper levels and they were hoping that it would all be ore. Of course it wasn't.

Swent

But the upper levels had ore.

Livermore

Oh, yes, they had ore.

Swent

Because I saw something from across the canyon that was on an upper level.

Livermore

You'll see them up there.

Swent

Well, that's quite a project that you're getting into there.

Livermore

Yes. And of course this lawsuit doesn't make anything easier.

Swent

And you're trying to get permits? Or you're delaying?

Livermore

I'm going to meet this fellow tomorrow, the state person. I'm just going to see what we have to do. Of course, he doesn't like this lawyer because this lawyer has kind of embarrassed the state agency. He's saying, "We're doing your job for you. You guys are supposed to be controlling this."

Swent

But if you're doing it anyway--

---

Livermore

Well, that's the thing. I hope there's a reasonable solution to it. I was talking to our lawyer and said, "It seems to me if we can go to a judge and say, 'Here. We're going to fix this problem ourselves. Why do we need a lawsuit?' and a reasonable judge should accept that."

Well, the lawyer said, "Most judges aren't reasonable." [laughs]

Swent

But you can prove that that's what you had started to do.

Livermore

Of course the judges, you see, all want settlement. They don't want these things to go to trial. So they tell you, "Why don't you guys settle?" The way to settle is to give them a chunk of money. And we don't want to do that. In a similar deal, they got four hundred thousand dollars from a company. You see, what they say is: you figure how much it's going to cost to fix this mess up--say it's going to cost a hundred thousand dollars; you just give us the hundred thousand and then you won't have to pay a fine.

Swent

Until somebody comes after you later.

Livermore

Oh, that's exactly right. You put your finger on it. How do you know somebody's not going to sue you later? That's not satisfactory. Of course, this is what is called a "citizen's suit," and theoretically, if you've got this thing settled, I think that you could not have another citizen's suit. But nothing can stop the state agency from suing you. But they've done that; in several cases, they've done that.

Swent

I don't understand this acid drainage thing because if the substance is there--mercury, pyrite, whatever--is there naturally in the earth, and with rain and just natural precipitation and percolation, it's going to be leaching out, isn't it, just naturally?

Livermore

That's true. The problem exists even before there's ever any mining. See, the trouble is you don't have what they call baseline measurements. If we'd had the measurements a hundred years ago to show that there was mercury in the sediments--but we have no way of proving that.

---

XIV Update, 2000

---

A Few Years out of Exploration in Nevada and the United States

Swent

I remember when we started this many years ago, you said that at that time you were reluctant because you thought the best part was still ahead of you, and I guess that has turned out to be true, in a way. You're off and running on an exciting new venture now, but when we stopped interviewing earlier, you had kind of withdrawn from field work, hadn't you?

Livermore

Yes.

Swent

You had this venture in Honduras.

Livermore

That's right, and earlier in Colombia and the property in New Mexico that I was working on. But I was not working in Nevada because I had turned over the Cordex Exploration Company to Andy Wallace, and I didn't really want to compete with him particularly, so I really sort of got out of exploration in Nevada and the United States, really. And I was occupied, had quite a bit going on at the ranch; I was the managing partner at the ranch, and that sort of occupied me, with the water and other things. The Public Resource Associates was going along smoothly; Susan Lynn was really running it. I didn't feel I had as much to do there, so I was really sort of--although I was busy, I was looking for something else to do.

Swent

You had the Corona Mine project.

Livermore

Well, I had the Corona, yes. So I was busy, but then Andy Wallace, who had been managing exploration ever since I turned it over to him--what happened was that Andy Wallace--the company, Rayrock, was taken over by Glamis Gold. Glamis wanted to hire Andy Wallace because he was an outstanding exploration person. He had a good organization, and outstanding files. Andy thought at the time that he might go to work with Glamis,

---

but they just couldn't work out a deal satisfactorily, so Andy decided that he would try to do really what I did in 1970, which was to go out on his own, which was really taking quite a risk as far as getting funding because of the present state of the mining industry.

So he talked to me about it and asked me if I wanted to join him on this new venture. [chuckles] It did appeal to me because my first love has always been field work, and this was an opportunity to get back into field work. He was going to do a lot of the administrative work. So I thought it over a while, and I decided I would do that.

So we have formed a partnership called the Cordilleran Exploration Company.

Cordilleran Exploration Company Formed with Andy Wallace

Swent

That was the original name of your first--

Livermore

It sort of went back--we have been going around in circles, actually. So then the next question is, how are we going to raise some funding. This is one of the poorest times to raise money for mining exploration there is, but of course Andy has a good track record and I have had a certain amount of success, so we were very lucky to get one company that we knew quite well, and they decided to participate. And then we--

Swent

Can you name them?

Livermore

This is Franc-Or Resources Corporation.

Swent

They're Canadian?

Livermore

It's a Canadian company based in Montreal.

Then we thought we should have at least two companies, so then the problem was to find a second company. That was more difficult. Actually, the president of Franc-Or helped quite a bit because he had a lot of good connections. He actually really was responsible for getting the second company that we knew something about, which is a company called Ranger Minerals, Ltd., quite a well-known company in Australia.

That took several months. In the meantime, we were already doing exploration and generating some projects. Just

---

toward the end of '99 we finally got this other funding, so now in the year 2000 we're ready to go ahead with the program. We have rehired a couple of the former Cordex employees. We have a small organization. So I'm looking forward to getting back in the field.

I'm kind of a junior partner now because Andy, who used to work for me for quite a few years, is going to really do the administrative work, which I don't like anyway, so I'll just be the field man, the prospector. [chuckles]

Swent

You bought yourself a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Livermore

A new four-wheel-drive vehicle. We have a young fellow that has been working for Cordex who's going to be my assistant, a very, very fine young fellow named Jon Vinson. We hired the old secretary that used to be with Cordex. She went with Glamis; now she is back with our new company, Cordilleran Exploration Comapny. We have several of the old people. We have some of the nucleus of the original organization. Including the same office. We're going to move right back in the same office. [laughs] So it's really kind of an interesting turnaround.

Building up Files and an Exploration Library

Swent

How do you go about building--you mentioned files.

Livermore

Well, that was a little bit of a problem. You see, we built up these files over--what?--almost thirty years. We had a wonderful set of files. Actually, the files really belonged to me. I made an arrangement with Rayrock--or they made an arrangement with me--they were concerned that if something would happen to me, what would happen to the files, so I did agree to turn the files over to them, but I would have the right of access to them.

Swent

These are mostly maps?

Livermore

These are lots of maps and books and publications and-- tremendous files. We have looked at hundreds of properties. So anyway, they had taken over the files and had physically moved them to another spot in Reno, but the agreement said that I had access to the files. In fact, they even have to provide me with an office to look at the files. But of course it's not like having it in the same building, so that was kind of

---

disappointing. I thought at one time we might be able to buy them, but who knows?

Swent

You mean buy the files or buy Glamis?

Livermore

No, no, buy the files. I made a mistake when I made the deal with Rayrock, because they were worried about something happening to me. See, I never thought that something would happen to Rayrock! [laughs]

I should have provided that if Rayrock went out of business, the files would revert back to me. But I still have access to them, so it's not too bad, but--

Swent

But it's not terribly convenient.

Livermore

But in the meantime, we bought another library, which is quite an extensive library and has actually replaced a lot of the things at the original Cordex. So we're actually in pretty good shape.

Swent

How did you happen to buy this library?

Livermore

Well, that was another company that went out of business here in town. Of course, a lot of these companies are folding up shop, you know, because the price of gold is so low. Exploration is way down. That's another thing, of course, you see, that we're looking at. See, when I started up Cordex, the price of gold was still $35 an ounce, so there was no gold activity in Nevada at all, so we really got in on the ground floor.

Now the cycle is down again, and there's not a lot of exploration activity. A lot of ground has become available now, and properties are being offered, so we think this is a good time to maybe get back into exploration and hit the next up cycle. Whether that works out or not, I don't know. [chuckles]

We have already several properties. We will be ready to drill a couple of them pretty soon. We're optimistic, but of course it's not as easy as it was thirty years ago because there has been an enormous amount of work done in Nevada in the meantime. A lot of the obvious prospects have already been tested. Now the targets often are some of these deeper ore bodies, which are harder to find, so we've got our work cut out for us, but anyway, we'll see what happens. [chuckles]

---

"You Still Have to Get out on the Ground and Do Geology"

Swent

How is it different from what it was thirty years ago? Are you using GPS [global positioning] devices and things like that?

Livermore

Yes. Of course, remote sensing is beginning to come in more. There's a great expert out at the university. There are some resources out there that we think will be useful. There are new techniques, but you still have to get out on the ground and do geology. Nothing replaces that. Which is what I like to do, of course, anyway. So we use geophysics; we try to develop new methods of down-the-hole borehole geophysics. But I wouldn't say there has been any tremendous breakthrough.

Swent

No?

Livermore

No, not making it that much easier to find gold mines. It's still a lot of work.

Swent

It's still not easy.

Livermore

Still not easy, no. Of course, there are a lot of ore bodies being found on the surface because of this invisible gold that the old-timers missed, but of course that has been--the surface has been pretty thoroughly gone over, so now we have to look at mostly covered areas and deeper areas, so that makes the job of course more difficult.

Nevada is a fascinating state. It's just unbelievable the amount of mineralization there is. As a matter of fact, we have a prospector working for us. He's out there all the time, panning. He comes up with stuff all the time. We think there are still things to be found.

Nevada, Still the Best Place to Work

Swent

What about the regulations?

Livermore

Well, Nevada is rated--you know, they made a survey of all the states in the United States and the provinces of Canada as far as favorability for regulations, economics, geology--and Nevada two years in a row has come out on top. It's got the best combination of favorable geology, very favorable access for exploration; it's easy to get around, and you get a lot for your money; and the regulations are still better here than

---

anywhere else. So the regulations are getting tougher, and of course they're closing off more and more land, but Nevada is still the best place to work, although we won't confine ourselves to Nevada necessarily; we'll work in other states, too; but only in the United States: California and Arizona and other states.

Working for Change in the Mining Law

Swent

When we talked last, a couple of years ago, you were still doing quite a lot of work with a group out of Denver that was working with legislators on the mining law.

Livermore

Oh, yes. Well, that--I really haven't done anything on that. I really got pretty discouraged on the mining law. We made a big effort, and we tried to develop some consensus legislation, but it has been a complete stalemate, the mining laws. The Republican control of Congress and then the environmentalist group--they're just at loggerheads. Nothing is going to move until--of course, if the Democrats gain control of Congress, then of course that will be a change, and the mining law will go through--maybe not too favorable for the industry, but--it keeps coming up every year, but the industry can't get what they want, and the environmentalists can't get what they want, and there's a stalemate.

Swent

But you're not doing so much?

Livermore

No, I have kind of given up on it, really. I might get back into it at some point, but no, I haven't really done anything on it lately.

Swent

You had developed a very good reputation as being a mediator.

Livermore

Well, I thought I could develop some consensus, but at least right at the moment, it doesn't seem possible--the industry, of course, has taken the position that they want only very minor changes, and they're not willing to really compromise. Of course, they've been successful so far. They've been holding off the environmentalists. But I don't think they can do it forever. Because there have been basically no changes in all these years. The only thing that will change, I think, they might bring in a royalty, which the industry has agreed to.

And then, of course, the Bureau of Land Management is trying to bring in new regulations. They're trying to go

---

around the mining law, and that's going to be a big issue now because a lot of people think that they're violating the mining law and I think there's going to be a lot of litigation on that because the industry says that they're trying to do an end run on the mining law with these regulations.

I did get involved with a review of a study by the National Academy of Sciences. They were brought in to try to analyze the regulations and how they should be changed. Well, that part of it is going forward, but I've only been very peripherally involved in that. The law will be changed. I don't know when, but I'm afraid it won't be for a few years, unless there's a major change in the Congress.

Reclamation Research Project at the Corona Mine

Swent

How are you getting along at the Corona?

Livermore

Well, it's going very slowly. We ran into a lot of problems there. I had just hoped we would get into some solid ground there, but it's very bad ground. We've got to do a lot of timbering. Hughie Ingle has been working hard on it, although we have shut down for the winter. But we're going to keep plugging away on it next year, but it's a much bigger problem than I thought it was going to be. Opening up these old mines is always difficult, but you always hope for the best! [chuckles]

Swent

Why are you opening it up?

Livermore

We have this water, this acid water, and we either have to treat the water or else plug the adit up completely. So what I'm trying to do is get into the source of the water, this bad water, and either--it's really kind of a research project--either devise some way of treating this water, which would be better because then the water could still flow out of the adit --for fish downstream--or else just plug the thing off. Of course, that's quite difficult. So I still don't know what the answer is until we get farther in the tunnel, technically an adit. So that's a slow process.

Then we're doing other reclamation, remediation around the Corona, trying to revegetate and recontour the dumps and things like that.

---

Coping with Frivolous Lawsuits

Swent

You were being sued.

Livermore

Well, we were being sued, but we finally got that settled. We had two lawsuits, one on the Corona and one on the Oat Hill, and we fortunately got--one of them, particularly the Oat Hill, was a completely frivolous lawsuit--there was no basis for it at all--but we finally got both of them settled, luckily. Unfortunately, it cost a fair amount of legal fees. So we got that out of the way.

Swent

Good.

Livermore

Now we're being sued for the spring water.

Swent

Oh, really?

Livermore

Yes, I don't know whether should get into that, but that's--

Swent

Well, it's all part of the same--

Livermore

Well, it's sort of another [frivolous] suit there. Somebody is saying, our sole competitor, is saying that--

Swent Your competitor?

Livermore

That's Cobb Mountain.

Swent

Oh, the spring water. This is not the water at the Corona.

Livermore

No, no, this is a whole different--this is spring water. They're saying that the water comes out of a borehole near a spring; it doesn't come out of a spring. So they're saying--accusing--we're not involved directly except peripherally, but the say that Perrier is mislabeling this water because they're calling it mountain spring water when it actually comes out of a borehole. Well, actually, most of the spring water in California actually comes out of boreholes close to a spring because that water is much purer--spring water on the surface usually has bacteria or something in it. But they're not going to get anywhere with this lawsuit; it's just another nuisance.

Swent

Meanwhile, you're producing a lot of water.

Livermore

Oh, yes, we're still producing water. It's just another headache for my brother [Putnam], who's the lawyer of the family.

---

Swent

Are you still managing the ranch? You're still the manager.

Livermore

I'm the managing partner, yes.

Swent

That must still take a lot of your time.

Livermore

But my brother, Put, is taking over. I'm going to be more busy here in Nevada; I won't be able to get over there quite as much as I have been, so--so that's bringing it up to date, pretty much.

The Future for Gold and Silver

Swent

Honduras.

Livermore

Nothing's doing down there. I'm trying to get people interested. It's a very difficult time to be raising money. We were just very fortunate to get some funding for Cordilleran. Also, I have this property in New Mexico, and the same situation there. They're not--neither of them are bonanza properties; they'll eventually become mines, I think, but we've had people interested up to a point and then somehow or other they can't raise the financing, so nothing is doing on either one of them. I think we just simply probably need better prices before anything will happen on either one of those two.

Swent

What do you think is the outlook for gold?

Livermore

Well, who knows? According to the so-called experts--no one is an expert on gold, of course--there's never been a time of greater uncertainty in the price of gold than there is right now. Tremendous amount of speculation, enormous amounts of paper gold out there. So it's very hard to say. Of course, with this economic boom we have--and of course the economic boom is not going to last forever, and this low inflation, low unemployment--that can't continue forever. So we don't want to see it happen, but of course if we have a slowdown in the economy, that probably will help gold, so I think gold will maybe work its way up next year.

Swent

Are you limiting your exploration activities to gold?

Livermore

Yes, gold and silver, gold and silver pretty much, yes. Because I think the price of silver is the one that's definitely going to go up. Just like we used to say about gold after the war. I remember old Don McLaughlin had a standard

---

speech to make back in the fifties. He would say, "Well, the price of gold is going to go up now; it's just a question of time." And you see--it took about twenty years!

Swent

Well, eventually he was right.

Livermore

He was right! [laughs] So that's what they have been saying about silver: it's got to go up. And it will, one of these days. It might take quite a bounce-up. So that's what we're sort of hoping for.

Swent

Well, it's an exciting business, John.

Livermore

Yes, I'm enjoying it. To get out in the hills, you're trying to figure out the geology, which is very complex here in Nevada. It's a puzzle. It's just a fascinating puzzle to try to unravel and try to figure out where an ore body might be. It's good exercise. And northern Nevada is just an ideal place to work. The weather on the whole is good. It never gets too hot. Kind of cold in the winter, but it's just a wonderful place to do field work.

Swent

You might tell what Andy said about your funders who are coming to visit you?

Livermore

[chuckles] Well, they said they were coming out to look at the program we had planned, which was of course very logical. But Andy said, sort of jokingly, really--he said he thinks that maybe one of the main reasons they want to come out here is to see whether John Livermore at eighty years old can still hike up and down these mountains! [laughter]

Swent

They'll find out that you certainly can. You said you're doing six and seven miles with no trouble.

Livermore

Well, the old legs are holding up pretty well so far.

Swent

You're still not using the elevator to your apartment?

Livermore

No, I still walk up. It's good exercise.

Swent

It certainly is.

Livermore

I don't say I do it every day, but I do it fairly often, yes.

Swent

That's wonderful.

What else?

---

Livermore

Well, that's about it, I think. I want to see what this will all lead to. I don't know of any other exciting new developments.

Swent

You mentioned that you're going to more meetings now. You went up to Spokane.

Livermore

Well, I have to get back into industry again, you see. And part of this is contacts. You have to make contacts. You have to kind of know what the other people are doing, and opportunities come along. You have to keep up with the literature, the new scientific techniques, so it's important to do that, so I am doing that more.

Good Work At the Ralph Roberts Research Institute

Livermore

There's some very interesting stuff coming out of the university. They have this research program out there.

Swent

At Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada-Reno.

Livermore

The Ralph Roberts Research Center for Economic Geology. They've got some graduate students now that are doing some very interesting things now. So we have to get up on all that. They came up with a new mineral out there that's very interesting. A mineral which is very closely related to the Carlin deposits. One of the things, they have never been able to date the Carlin deposits, and now they have found this mineral that they think is very closely related to the Carlin deposits in time, and it's a mineral that has rubidium in it, which they can date. And they're dating this rubidium at thirty-nine million years. There was always a big puzzle as to what was the age of the deposition of the Carlin type deposits; the ages would range anywhere from forty million to twenty million or older or younger, or even up to a hundred million. But now I think they have pinned down the age, thirty-nine million years--which is fairly recent, actually.

Swent

I guess! [laughs] Well, this must please you. I remember years ago you were saying that one of the problems was that nobody was doing any research.

Livermore

Now, it's interesting to me. For the first time industry had gotten together, and it's something that's never happened before. A woman out at the university was able to get this thing started. Mary Beth Gentry.

---

Mary Beth Gentry, Tommy Thompson, Jim Taranik at Mackay School of Mines

Swent

You helped a lot, too.

Livermore

Well, I helped some, but she was--I supported it, but she got these companies together, and they hired a man by the name of Tommy Thompson. That was the best thing they ever did. He's an outstanding man, and he has put this thing together now, and they have more graduate geologists working at the Mackay School of Mines than I think at any Western university right now, and they're all on these projects.

It shows you what good work they're doing because these very bad times in the industry right now, the industry is still supporting it--there have been a couple of companies that have dropped out, but it's getting funding, so it's really a very good program.

Now, of course, we've got the geophysical department that Jim Taranik is starting up there, with the Brant chair, which I had something to do with. He's building up that department. The Mackay School of Mines is really developing, I think--improving a lot in the last two or three years. So we're trying to get more students in there. We're trying to encourage more undergraduate scholarships, trying to get more students coming into the school, which is a problem for most of these schools, actually, is to get undergraduates.

People don't want to go into geology and mining engineering now. It's kind of an interesting shift. It used to be a popular field; it's not as popular as it used to be.

Swent

I thought it was kind of sad, and certainly indicative, that in the Wall Street Journal there was only a two-inch article about Cyprus-Amax being acquired by Phelps Dodge, and Asarco being acquired by Grupo Mexico. That whole thing just in the end sort of went by without any public comment at all.

Livermore

Yes. Well, that's a bad trend, I think. I'm glad at least Phelps Dodge didn't get all the companies. That would have been a very bad situation. To me, to have only one copper company--but of course, there's Kennecott also.

Swent

We talk about "the industry," but there are very few players left.

---

Livermore

It's true everywhere. It's a very bad trend. Everything is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The small operators in mining and the small farmers, the small businessmen--they're all having a difficult time. I don't know whether that will ever reverse.

Hugh Ingle, Independent Mine Operator, Last of a Breed?

Swent

Our friend, Hugh Ingle, may be the last of a breed.

Livermore

Yes, he was one of the last of a breed, all right.

Swent

It would be very difficult.

Livermore

I was talking to his son Hughie about, "How are you going to carry on after your father's death?" He had a little mine down there that he's been working. He said, "Well, I'm going to carry on." And he said, "We're going to carry on." So I said, "Who's the 'we'?" "Well," he said, "my mother's going to help."

Swent

Oh, my! Well, she worked hard at the Corona years ago.

Livermore

I guess she's going to run the hoist or something; I don't know.

Swent

Do you think she--

Livermore

No, I think he was sort of joking. But he kept saying "we." So I don't know. She's quite a gal. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I don't think he can continue to work now by himself.

Swent

It would be awfully hard. Well, he's pretty courageous to start out now.

Livermore

Yes, he's an amazing guy. So--

##

Livermore

But he's very independent. He's like his dad; he won't work for anybody else. He works alone up at the Corona, you know. I told him this time he's got to get a helper out there working underground. He wrestles that timber around all by himself.

Swent

Will OSHA allow that?

---

Livermore

Well, [chuckles] I think they don't know about it but no, I don't think they would. I don't know about that. He did have a helper for a while, but unfortunately the guy got hurt a little bit. Anyway, he likes to work alone. Of course, he's husky. But I'm going to insist when he goes back this spring that he'll have to get somebody--because working underground, something can always happen. The adit is getting quite a way back now.

Swent

If--I shouldn't say if--when you find another Carlin, a gold prospect out here in your exploration, is your plan to go into developing it?

Livermore

Well, it's the same thing we did with Pinson, of course, and Dee. Our backers would take over--see, this Ranger particularly is an operating company. They have a large mine in Africa, gold mine.

Swent

Not just Australia then.

Livermore

No, not just Australia. So they would be the logical one to step in and take over the operation, so it'll be the same group. They don't need outside financing. They shouldn't need outside financing, so they might borrow some money--no, the same group is perfectly capable--just as Pinson did and all the Cordex partners, when they went into production, they just formed a new partnership but of the same people and just went ahead into production.

Swent

You aren't planning on building up a development staff?

Livermore

Oh, no, I'm not interested in that. Never have been. Too many headaches.

Swent

You just want to find them.

Livermore

Find them, yes. That's what the interesting part is, yes. No, I wouldn't want to get into that.

Difficulties in Foreign Exploration

Swent

And you're limiting yourself, you said, just to North America. Just to the States.

Livermore

I think you can spread yourself too thin, you know. And foreign countries--I went into Honduras mainly because of this

---

partner I had who was already in there. He had been there for a number of years, a very nice fellow who happens to have the name of Wallis but is a different spelling, W-a-double l-i-s. He really had good connections down there, and he knew all the high muckamucks, including the president, actually, at that time.

But to go into a foreign country without really good connections, it's very difficult. You don't know who to trust and to get honest lawyers or--you have to hook up with somebody, local person that you can trust. It's just too complicated. There is plenty to keep us busy here in the United States.

Trip to Cuba, 1999-2000

Swent

Tell about your trip to Cuba. You just got back several days ago.

Livermore

Yes, I had a fascinating trip.

Swent

I want to hear about that.

Livermore

And, you know, you heard about this little boy [Elián Gonzalez].

Swent

Yes.

Livermore

Well, I was right in the middle of it because my hotel is--very close to the U.S. Interest building. We don't have an embassy. We have what they call the U.S. Interest. And that was a rallying point. Every day I was down there, they had 50,000 people demonstrating in front of our Interest Center. And they bused them all in there. Did you see it on TV?

Swent

No, I didn't.

Livermore

They all had T-shirts on that had a picture of little Eli n. There were speeches, and everybody said, "You ought to be careful. Don't go down there. They'll jump on you." Well, I didn't go right in the crowd, but I got down close by. But they were all very friendly. They're not mad at American individuals; they're just mad at Washington--and mad at those Cuban-Americans. God, it makes me so mad! The way they tell Washington what to do.

---

Of course, what they want is to come back to Cuba and just take it over like it was under Batista. They're not interested in democracy. They want to just be running Cuba with this group of people who will take over the whole country. Of course, the Cubans don't want them back. So they're kidding themselves. They're not going to get back to Cuba.

Swent

What did you get to see in Cuba? What did you do?

Livermore

Havana is a fascinating place. It's like an enormous museum. The Havana Vieja, the old--you know. They have these beautiful buildings. You don't realize that Havana was a tremendously wealthy country, starting off in the days of the Spanish galleons and then on into the 19th century, when they had this sugar boom for a while there. They made enormous fortunes off of sugar, till the price dropped. And they built these mansions. A lot of them were sort of crumbling, but now they're restoring them all, you know. And beautifully restoring them. They're making them into little hotels and museums. You see, Castro is putting a lot of money into it. Now he's really going after the tourist dollar. They're on a dollar economy now. Everywhere you go in Cuba, you don't use local currency at all; you can just spend dollars.

But when they open it up to Americans, it's going to be a very popular tourist place. It's got a beautiful climate, beaches--I wasn't interested in the beaches, but interesting old colonial towns.

Swent

Did you get out--

Livermore

I went out to two different places. One was a beautiful little town called Piñales. [chuckles] Of course, I had to see a mine while I was down there.

Swent

Sure [laughs]. What did you see?

Livermore

Well, I saw a famous--but it was sort of a joke, but there's nothing spectacular, just pyrite. But anyway, this is--[shows specimen]

Swent

A specimen that you got.

Livermore

This is a very famous copper mine called the Matahambre Copper Mine. It's not working now. It's worked out. But anyway, I just sort of--it's a souvenir. So I went out to this mine. I heard about it for years. It was a very profitable copper mine. American Metal Company operated it. But now, as I say, it's pretty well worked out, I think.

---

Swent

Is this specimen copper?

Livermore

No, that was pyrite. But it's the type of ore, but sometimes--this probably has some copper in it, but not much. No, this is just pyrite. That's all you can pick up on the dump there.

Swent

It's not operating now, you said.

Livermore

No, no. So it was funny. I went out to see this very beautiful country--you know what this karst topography is?

Swent

Oh, yes.

Livermore

You've seen pictures of Guelin in China, with all those hummocks--beautiful hummocks of limestone.

Swent

They have karst topography in Cuba too?

Livermore

Yes, and that's unusual for Cuba; that's right. It's the most spectacular part of Cuba. You have these hummocks of limestone, a beautiful valley, where they grow tobacco. So that's where I was going out and visiting. But it turned out that this copper mine was only about twenty, thirty miles away, so I couldn't figure out how I was going to go out there.

Near the hotel there was a guy who says, "I'll take care of that." He was one of these fast-talking guys I was a little bit suspicious of, you know. So he said, "I know a fellow down the road who's got a car." And so we went down there [laughs]. He had this 1949 Buick with broken windows [laughs]. It was all banged up.

So I said, God, I don't know what I'm getting in for here. Anyway, I hired these guys, and by gosh we were puttering along. We go up a little bit of hill, and just barely get to the top of the hill. And they had to stop, put in oil every few miles. [laughter] But by gosh--they didn't really know exactly where the place is, but we found it. And I got back all right!

Swent

Good! [laughter]

Livermore

Oh, that was really quite an adventure.

Swent

Did you get to San Juan Hill?

Livermore

No, I didn't.

Swent

You had said you might try to get there.

---

Livermore

Yes, but that's way out at the east end. They said there isn't much to see there, really. If I had more time, I would have gone. Santiago--but somebody said that Santiago is not that interesting. The place I went to is a town called Trinidad. It's a beautiful colonial town which has never been developed.

The other place I went to is a town called Piñales, and that's in the other direction. And that's where they have this karst topography. Beautiful area. Nice hotel. You're looking out over the valley. And caves--they had caves. You go down the cave. I've been in a lot of caves, but it was the first time I was in a cave where you get in a boat, going through the cave in a boat.

Of course, one reason I wanted to go to Cuba was to try to understand how the whole system worked. You know, we think it's so horrible; Communism is so terrible, you know. And you remember the Congress said you can't send that little boy back to slavery! I mean, those people there aren't slaves. It's a controlled economy, and they're poor, but they don't have slums like the South American cities do, horrible slums with the tin shacks. You don't see that there; their buildings are substantial. They're kind of rundown, very short of housing, but--they're all poor.

They're not as well off, of course, as when the Soviet Union was helping them. They were doing quite well then. So they're having really tough times, but compared with South American countries, they don't have unemployment because they keep people working; that's the Communist system, of course. And they have some kind of a safety net.

I don't know how repressive it is. Of course, he [Castro] didn't allow any opposition of the middle class, liquidating their holdings, and causing them to leave the country.

Swent

They went to Florida.

Livermore

Well, that's exactly right. They went to Florida. There was a little opposition to him in one area, but for the people, the poor people, my gosh, he was their hero. So he didn't have to do that sort of liquidation, like Stalin did, I don't think. And he has, of course, political prisoners, I'm sure. And he has executed one general down there who was in drugs, but--so I don't know how repressive it really is. Of course, they have police all over the place, naturally.

---

And you can't be getting up in the square and roasting Castro, of course. It's the fear that worries us. I don't know whether they have--you know, these guys that are always turning you in all the time, like in East Germany, the informers. I don't know whether they have that system, where you can't be sure that your neighbor isn't spying on you. That's, of course, not very pleasant.

But when you look at the poor people--it's one thing to look at the middle class, but you look from the poor people's point of view, they're a lot better off now than they were under Batista. They had no education, no health [care]. They have a very fine education system and very good medical system, although we don't let any medicines go in there. So stupid!

Swent

Yes, and shortsighted.

Livermore

I don't know what's going to happen, but to get rid of Castro, it could be chaotic.

Swent

Would be, probably.

Livermore

It would be chaotic. People in Washington don't think [...], "Gotta get rid of Castro." It could be much worse, because it's very possible that a dictator will rise, another dictator will arise right away, a right-wing dictator. Actually, it's much better off to provide services and to open the country up and let Castro sort of gradually phase out of the picture, and maybe some oppositional leader will develop. There are none now. I don't know why we don't seem to learn.

Swent

But there were a lot of American tourists there, were they?

Livermore

Not too many. It is illegal. It's illegal to go to Cuba, as an individual.

Swent

I know. You went--

Livermore

I went through Mexico, Cancun. There are a lot of tourists there, but they are mostly Canadians and Germans and British. There were a fair number--as a matter of fact, there was a group from Los Angeles that I hooked up with, and they were a special group of eighty that were arranged through Tom [Livermore, nephew] that I hooked up with from New Year's Eve, so there probably were a fair number of Americans. I didn't actually run into too many.

---

Swent

Were they there as journalists or something?

Livermore

No, no.

Swent

Just tourists.

Livermore

You don't have to be part of a professional group any more.

Swent

Oh, I see.

Livermore

See, they don't stamp your passport down there, so nobody knows you're there. [chuckles]

Swent

I see.

Livermore

And you're not supposed to spend--that's one problem, of course. You're not supposed to spend any money in Cuba. They can get you for that. I think they have actually stopped two or three people, but I think the State Department is looking at the whole thing.

Swent

They must be, yes.

Livermore

They're not going to worry about--it's going to gradually open up more and more.

Swent

You said you had a good time New Year's Eve.

Livermore

Oh, yes. Beautiful party out in the plaza in front of the cathedral. They had a beautiful dinner with favors and drinks. Swent: Wonderful music?

Livermore

Yes, wonderful. Dancing and music. They had a floor show. I left at two o'clock in the morning, and they were still going strong. They probably were there till five o'clock in the morning. And they have that music, you know, that's so rhythmic. And the people, you know, they're just moving all the time. The taxi driver's got the radio going, and they're all moving [laughs].

Swent

You said you saw "Buena Vista Social Club" [documentary film].

Livermore

I saw the movie. But, you know, I tried to figure out where it was. Nobody seemed to know where the original Buena Vista Social Club was. I don't know. I didn't try that hard. But anyway, actually, you sort of get a little bit tired of the music after a while because it's on everywhere. At every function, you have every little restaurant, every little bar,

---

in every--there's no place where any people get together that they don't have some kind of little group coming in, playing. But it's--in a certain sense they don't have a lot of variety to it. They sing these songs. I don't know what they're saying half the time because--of course, every so often they'll play, you know, "Cielito Lindo" and things like that. But a lot of it doesn't have much melody to it. It's just terrific rhythm, though. And it's great for dancing.

I remember there was a woman there, near our table. I'll bet she didn't stop for four hours. All she was doing was just moving like that [demonstrates], to the music. Really not dancing, but she just did that for--you'd think you'd get sort of tired of it after a while.

Swent

Good for your circulation.

Livermore

Something in their system: When that music is going, they just can't seem to be still [laughs].

Swent

It's good for them.

Livermore

Yes. Anyway, it will certainly be a very popular tourist place. There are some beautiful small hotels that are opening up in these old buildings.

Swent

It will be nice.

Livermore

Beautifully decorated. The food wasn't outstanding, really, but I guess in some of the fancy restaurants there are, but the normal Cuban food is nothing to brag about. It's beans and rice.

Swent

Plantains.

Livermore

Yes, plantains, yes.

Swent

Rum?

Livermore

Yes, sure, there's plenty of rum. I didn't partake of it too much. I did bring a few cigars back.

Swent

Could you find anybody who would smoke cigars?

Livermore

My niece's husband smokes, yes. And actually, Andy Wallace. I gave some to Andy Wallace. He smokes a cigar once in a while.

Swent

Does he? Not too many people do now.

---

Livermore

No. Well, these are sort of special. They're very good cigars, of course, and quite expensive. They kind of smoke them on special occasions. I don't know of any steady cigar smokers.

Swent

So where's your next trip?

Livermore

Oh, I have to be around here for a while. I have to stay close to home, get this exploration going.

Swent

Out in the field?

Livermore

Yes. Yes, I've taken my vacation now for a while. As I say, I've been wanting to go to Cuba for a long time. Too bad that George [Livermore, brother] didn't go. He would have really enjoyed it.

Swent

Yes.

Livermore

Well, he had just come back from Europe. He was a little bit worried about the complications of it. Of course, when I came back, if they had asked if I had been in Cuba, of course, I would have to say I've been in Cuba. They have, I think, stopped accusing people, but--so I thought they might ask me if I had any cigars or anything like that--and my passport didn't say anything, so the guy said, "Where have you been?" I said, "I've just come from Mexico." And he said, "Well, did you have a good time in Mexico?" I said, "Yes." (I was only there about two hours.)

Swent

[laughs]

Livermore

But I was there.

Swent

So your passport didn't even say Mexico on it.

Livermore

It's stupid because you have to clear customs in Mexico. You just go around the corner, and you have to go through the whole business even if you're only there just two hours. Yes, you can't just go right through to Havana. Your baggage has to be cleared and all that stuff, so--now I think it's a question of time because they'll have direct flights to Havana. In fact, I think there's already one now from New York direct to Havana. So it will be more readily available. So that's something you should think about maybe. You would enjoy it. This is the time to go down there. It gets pretty hot in the summer, I think.

Swent

Oh, I'm sure it does.

---

Livermore

And it rains a lot. It was humid even this time of year, but the humidity gets very high in the summertime, and it's warm. I thought it would be much hotter than it was. If you walk a lot, you perspire some, but of course there's a breeze coming off the ocean. In fact, I didn't even hardly turn on the air conditioning in my hotel room.

Swent

Really. That was very nice.

Livermore

Yes.

John Livermore's Office

Swent

Tell me what you've got on your walls, John. You've got a topographic map of Nevada, and you've got the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, and what's that there?

Livermore

Oh, that's the new--that's the Carlin gold trend.

Swent

That's the Carlin trend. And then you've got some beautiful photographs of specimens up here. What are all those?

Livermore

Susan [Lynn] got those. Beautiful mineral specimens.

Swent

Mineral specimens. And Virginia City. That's an old picture.

Livermore

That's my relative. Rice and Livermore, Druggists. Virginia City.

Swent

N.T., Nevada Territory.

Livermore

That was way back in the sixties, before it became a state. He was there for about three years, from about 1863 to '65. He's the one who later went over and was the manager of the Knoxville Mine--that was Charles Livermore. See, he and his brother were in the drug business in San Francisco, and he was sent up here to open a branch office. One of the things, of course, they were selling was mercury for the mines. But I have an ad out of the newspaper. They were selling all kinds of apothecary stuff. After this was taken--all these buildings burned down in the fire, but I'm anxious to go back and see the exact spot. I think I know about where it was. But the original building unfortunately is not there any more.

---

Developing a Historic Mine Park in Tonopah

Livermore

Now, one of the projects that I'm interested in is developing a historic park in the old town of Tonopah. One of the main features of Tonopah is all the original buildings and a lot of the machinery from back since 1905 still exist there. It has a fascinating potential to develop as a step into the past, just to see how all these mines looked pretty much at the boom of Tonopah back in 1905. So I've been involved in hiring a new manager for this park and to try to--it's still in the early stages, but to try to get funding for it.

I think it's going to be quite an interesting development because most of the mine plants, of course, have all been destroyed, but this has been preserved. We're right on the edge of Tonopah, actually, the original discovery. And you can see actually the veins where they were digging. The Jim Butler. The veins are still exposed on the surface there.

Swent

The Mizpah vein was one, wasn't it?

Livermore

The Mizpah vein and all those names there.

Swent

I've never been there, but I'm planning to go in June.

Livermore

You should go. Being a prospector, of course, I'm interested in spotting where the actual Jim Butler original discovery was. I don't think anybody knows exactly. It may be covered up now, but to see exactly where the first discovery was. They know about where it was, but--to see all these veins that they were digging. In the early days Butler had these leases working, you know, leases for every hundred feet, and he gave them a whole year, you know, and then they had to dig furiously to take all this high grade because they were all going to run out at the end of the year. Of course, he finally sold out to a company, but they were mining all this high grade. You can see the open cuts.

Swent

You still can?

Livermore

Oh, you see them. And next year is the--maybe you should put it on your calendar--August first is the hundredth anniversary of the discovery. And they're going to have a big celebration.

Swent

The Mining History Association is meeting there in June.

---

Livermore

You'll see it then, yes. Anyway, this is the big year in Tonopah, so we're trying to get things going.

Transcribed by Shannon Page, Estevan Sifuentes, Gary Varney, Lisa Vasquez, and Mim Eisenberg

Final Typed by Shannon Page

Appendix

Tape Guide--John Livermore

Interview 1: May 28, 1992

Interview 1: May 28, 1992
• Tape 1, Side A *
• Tape 1, Side B *
• Insert from Session 3 [8/31/92] *
• End Insert; Tape 2, Side A *
• Tape 2, Side B *
• Tape 3, Side A *
• Tape 3, Side B not recorded

Interview 2: June 7, 1992

Interview 2: June 7, 1992
• Tape 4, Side A *
• Tape 4, Side B not recorded

Interview 3: August 31, 1992

Interview 3: August 31, 1992
• Tape 5, Side A *
• Tape 5, Side B *
• Tape 6, Side A not noted
• Tape 6, Side B *

Interview 4: January 20, 1997

Interview 4: January 20, 1997
• Tape 7, Side A *
• Tape 7, Side B *
• Tape 8, Side A *
• Tape 8, Side B not recorded

Interview 5: April 12, 1997

Interview 5: April 12, 1997
• Tape 9, Side A *
• Tape 9, Side B *

Interview 6: July 29, 1997

Interview 6: July 29, 1997
• Tape 10, Side A *
• Tape 10, Side B not recorded
• Tape 11, Side A *
• Tape 11, Side B *

Interview 7: January 14, 2000

Interview 7: January 14, 2000
• Tape 12, Side A *
• Tape 12, Side B *

Index

• Alaska, oil exploration, 1938, 11, 165-166
• Algeria, political unrest, 1958-1960, 56-57
• Alligator Ridge Mine, NV, 98
• Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, 160
• Amax, geothermal exploration, 131
• Ambrosia Lake uranium mining, NM, 48-49
• Andacollo Mine, Chile, 52
• ASARCO, 38-40, 41
• Audubon Society, 114-115
• Austin, Greg, 93
• Basic Magnesium plant, Henderson, NV, 15-17
• beach sand mining, FL, 22-24
• bentonite mine, Death Valley, CA, 33
• Biddle, Margaret [Peggy], 52
• Bishop, Harry, 68
• Blake, Dr. ________, 7
• Blue Star Mine, NV, 68, 72
• Bootstrap Mine, NV, 72, 99
• Boy Scouts, 162
• Brant, Arthur, 34, 121-122, 172
• Byrne, Jerry, 87
• California Academy of Sciences, 165-167
• Calistoga spring water, 125-126, 132-133, 187
• Canada, mineral exploration, 77-86
• Cannon, Don, 79
• carbon-in-pulp process for processing gold ore, 136
• Carlin Mine, NV, 13, 30, 31, 51, 65-76, 88, 111
• Caterpillar Tractor Company, 119
• Cerro de Pasco Company, 37-38
• Chibougamau Mine, Quebec, 78, 80
• Chile, mineral exploration, 50, 51-52
• China, mineral exploration, 111-112
• Chisolm, Graham, 115-116
• chromite, exploration in WWII, 14-15
• Cobb Mountain water company, 187
• Colombia, mineral exploration, 105-109, 142-143
• Coope, Alan, 64, 66-69
• Cordex Exploration Company, 96-103, 124, 180
• Cordex Syndicate, 87-94, 182
• Cordilleran Exploration Company, 181-182
• Cordilleran Explorations Partnership, 87
• Corona Mine, CA, 129-130, 174-179, 186-187
• Cortez Mine, NV, 85
• Cox, John, 118-120
• Cripple Creek, CO, area mining, 21-22
• Crombie, Dave, 105
• Crowley, Joseph, 124
• Cuajone Mine, Peru, 37-40
• Cyprus Mining Company, 58, 60
• Damon School, San Francisco, 9, 151
• Davis, Phil, 99-102
• Dee Mine, NV, 99-103, 123, 140
• DeLaMare, Whit, 90, 94, 99, 100, 121, 122-124
• drilling program at Ruby Hill, NV, 58-63
• Drybrough, John, 83
• Dunsford, Sara Livermore [niece], 172
• El Paso Mine, CO, 21-22
• Emerson, Don, 177
• exploration:
  • financing, 181-182, 193
  • in foreign countries, 194
• Florida Canyon Mine, NV, 99
• Franc-Ore Company, 181-182
• Foundation for American Communications, 118-119
• Fuerstenau, Maurice, 132
• Fulton, Bob, 66-67, 71-72, 75, 76
• furnaces for treating mercury ores
  • Knox-Osborn, 4
  • Livermore, 3
  • Scott, 174, 177
• Galli, Pete, 73, 87-88, 90-96, 99, 122, 140
• Gentry, Jim, 119
• Gentry, Mary Beth, 191
• geothermal exploration at Montesol, 131
• Getchell Mine, NV, 13, 30, 65, 73, 89, 140
• Glamis Gold Company, 180, 182
• Gold Acres Mine, NV, 65, 73
• Gould, H.W. Company, 6, 128
• Green, Jim, 154
• groundwater, marketing of, 125-126, 132-133
• Hanna, G Dallas, 165-166
• Hasbrouck Mine, NV, 138-139
• Hecla Mining Company, 58, 60
• Hendricks, Bob, 60, 63
• hepatitis, 43-44, 46-47
• Hillebrand, Jim, 43
• Hochschild, Walter, 50, 52
• Homestake Mine, 136
• Homestake Mining Company, 48-49, 89
• Honduras, mineral exploration, 109-111
• Humphreys Gold Corporation, 22-24
• Humphreys spiral concentrator, 23
• Icon Syndicate, 77, 80, 87
• ilmenite mine, FL, 22
• incentive bonus, 94-95
• Ingle, Hugh, 129-130, 192-193
• Ingle, Hugh Calvin [Hughie], 186, 192-193
• Ingle, Janet (Mrs. Hugh), 192
• Iowa Gulch mine, CO, 41
• Iran, mineral exploration, 46
• Ireland, mineral exploration, 81
• Jerritt Canyon Mine, NV, 98
• Kazakhstan, travel in, 134-135
• Keck, 124
• Kildale, Mike, 10, 12
• Knox, Richard, 5-6
• Koenig, Robert, 38
• Kraft, Phil, 84
• Kritikos, William, 6, 128
• Krumb, Henry, 84
• Kuo, John, 111
• Kurzell, ________, 38
• Lacaze, L'Affaire de, 57
• Lake Mining Company, CA, 5
• Lindsley, Thayer, 68
• Livermore, Caroline Sealy [mother], 158, 163
• Livermore, Charles, 2-3, 6, 203
• Livermore, George [brother], 4, 150-151, 153-154, 156, 164, 172, 202
• Livermore, Horatio Gates [great-grandfather], 1-2
• Livermore, Horatio Putnam [grandfather], 2, 4-6
• Livermore, Norman B., Jr. [brother], 10, 31, 114, 148, 154, 156-157, 162, 172
• Livermore, Norman B., Sr. [father], 7-8, 19-20, 162, 163-164, 165, 172
• Livermore, Pari (Mrs. Putnam), 125
• Livermore, Putnam [brother], 113, 115, 132, 148, 153, 158, 166-167, 188
• Livermore, Robert [brother], 148, 151, 172
• Livermore, Robert [nephew], 148
• Livermore, Thomas [nephew], 198
• Lynn, Susan, 115, 180
• Lynn Window, NV, 69
• Mackay School of Mines [University of Nevada-Reno], 121-124, 190-191
• Magma Mine, AZ, 84
• magnesium, production in World War II, 15-17
• Malozemoff, Plato, 47, 51, 54, 75, 76, 84
• manganese, exploration in WWII, 14
• Mantos Blancos Mine, Chile, 52
• Marigold Mine, NV, 103
• Matahambre Mine, Cuba, 195
• McLaughlin, Donald, 189
• McNab, Ed, 84
• McQuiston, Frank, 53
• Miller, Glenn, environmentalist, 119
• mines
  • Alligator Ridge, NV, 98
  • Ambrosia Lake uranium mines, NM, 48-49
  • Andacollo, Chile, 52
  • bentonite, CA, 33
  • Blue Star, NV, 68, 72
  • Bootstrap, NV, 72, 99
  • Carlin, NV, 13, 30, 31, 51, 65-76
  • Chibougamau, Quebec, 78, 80
  • Corona, CA, 129-130, 174-179, 186-187
  • Cortez, NV, 85
  • Cuajone, Peru, 37-40
  • Dee, NV, 99-103, 123, 140
  • El Paso, CO, 21
  • Florida Canyon, NV, 99
  • Getchell, NV, 13, 30, 65, 73, 89, 140
  • Gold Acres, NV, 65, 73
  • Hasbrouck, NV, 138-139
  • Homestake, SD, 136
  • Humphreys beach sand, FL, 22-24
  • Iowa Gulch, CO, 41
  • Jerritt Canyon, NV, 98
  • Magma, AZ, 84
  • Mantos Blancos, Chile, 52
  • Marigold, NV, 103
  • Matahambre, Cuba, 195
  • Murentau, Uzbekistan, 134-135
  • Oat Hill, CA, 3-4, 6, 127-129
  • Ogee-Pinson Pit, NV, 89
  • O'Okiep, South Africa, 84
  • Palabora, South Africa, 136
  • Paradise Peak, NV, 98
  • perlite prospect, NV, 30
  • Pinson, NV, 89-90, 92, 98, 99, 136, 140
  • Preble, NV, 90-91, 123, 140
  • Quellaveco, Peru, 37, 40
  • Redington, CA, 2-6
  • Reed, CA, 130
  • Resurrection, CO, 34-36
  • Ruby Hill, NV, 58-63
  • San Luis, Mexico, 136-138
  • San Manuel, AZ, 84
  • Similkameen, BC, 79
  • Southern Peru Copper Co., Peru, 37
  • Standard, NV, 28-30, 65, 73
  • Sterling, NV, 91-93, 139-140
  • Toquepala, Peru, 37-40
  • Transito, Honduras, 109-111, 144-147
  • Tsumeb, South Africa, 84
  • West Coast, NV, 12
  • XLCR, CA, 2, 4-6
  • Zellidja, Morocco, 52-57
• Mining Law of 1872, efforts to amend, 113-115, 185-186
• Miss Paul's School, San Francisco, 9, 150-152
• monazite mine, FL, 22
• Monsanto Corporation, 129
• Montesol ranch, 7, 125-133, 148-149, 152-153
• Murentau Mine, Uzbekistan, 134-135
• National Academy of Sciences, study of mining law, 186
• National Wildlife Federation, 113-114
• Natomas Company, 8
• Natural Resources Defense Council, 114
• Nature Conservancy, 116
• Navy Civil Engineering Corps, 18-19
• Nevada's Women's Fund, 120
• New Yorker article, 90, 100
• Newmont Mining Company of Canada, 83-84
• Newmont Mining Corporation, 34-86, 128, 129
• Noranda Mining Company, 52
• Norman, G.W.H., 35, 41, 42
• Oat Hill Mine, CA, 3-4, 6, 127-129
• Ogee-Pinson Pit, NV, 89
• O'Okiep Mine, South Africa, 84
• Osborn, Charles, 5-6
• Page, Ben, 10
• Palabora Mine, South Africa, 136
• Paradise Peak Mine, NV, 98
• perlite prospect, NV, 30
• Perrier spring water, 187
• Pinson Mine, NV, 89-90, 92, 98, 99, 136, 140
• Placer Mining Company, 85
• platinum mining, 141
• Popovich Hill, NV, 72
• Potorti, Grace, 117
• Potter School, San Francisco, 151
• Preble Mine, NV, 90-91, 123, 140
• prospectors, importance of, 123
• Public Resource Associates, 104, 113-120, 180
• Quellaveco Mine, Peru, 37, 40
• Ralph Roberts Research Institute, University of Nevada-Reno, 190-191
• Rangers Minerals Company, 181, 193
• Rawlings, Stuart, 28-29, 30, 64, 137
• Rayrock Resources Limited (Rayrock-Yellowknife, Rayrock Mines), 87, 96, 103, 105, 109, 180, 182-183
• reclamation of Corona Mine, 174-179, 186
• Redington Drug Company, 1-3
• Redington Mine, CA, 2-6
• Reed Mine, CA, 130
• Reid, Harry, Senator, 116
• Resurrection Mine, CO, 34-36
• Rice, ________, partner in Virginia City apothecary shop, 6
• Roberts, Ralph, 65-66, 72, 190-191
• Ronkos, Charlie, 105-107
• Ruby Hill Mine, NV, 58-63
• Rural Alliance for Military Accountability, 117
• rutile mine, FL, 22-24
• St. Joseph Lead Company, 53
• San Juan Mountains, CO, 21
• San Luis Mine, Mexico, 136-138
• San Manuel Mine, AZ, 84
• Santini, James, NV Congressman, 115
• Scott furnace for treating mercury ore, 77
• Searls, Fred, 34, 35, 47-48, 50, 51, 53, 63, 66, 71, 72, 84
• Serajian, Tigran, 168-169
• Shoemaker, Robert, 84
• Sierra Club, 113-114
• Similkameen Mine, BC, 79
• Smith, W.T., 84
• South Africa, travel in, 135-136
• Southern Peru Copper Company, 39
• Spain, mineral exploration, 82
• Standard Oil of California, 11
• Standard Mine, NV, 28-30, 64, 65, 73
• Stanford University, 9-10, 12-13, 20, 159-162
• Sterling, Wallace, 10, 161-162
• Sterling Mine, NV, 91-93, 139-140
• Stoehr, Richard, 48-49
• strategic minerals program, USGS, World War II, 14-15
• Tamalpais School, San Rafael, CA, 9, 153, 159
• Taranik, James, 121, 191
• Thacher School, Ojai, CA, 9, 153-154, 159
• Thompson, "Tommy", 191
• Tidewater Associated Oil Company, 11
• titanium mine, FL, 22-24
• Tonopah, NV, historic mine park, 203
• Toquepala Mine, Peru, 37-40
• Transito Mine, Honduras, 109-111, 144-147
• Treweek, Harry, 70
• Troop, Andy, 77-78
• Truckee River, NV, improvement, 115
• Tsumeb Mine, South Africa, 84
• Turkey, geological exploration, 41-45
• Union Oil Company, 11
• Union Carbide Corporation, 88
• United Anglers, 175
• U.S. Bureau of Mines, 185-186
• U.S. Geological Survey [USGS], 14-15, 65-66
• U.S. Smelting & Refining Co., 60
• University of Nevada-Reno, 121-124, 190-191
• Uzbekistan, travel in, 134-135
• Vallejo Quicksilver Mining Company, 177
• Vanderburg, O.W., 65
• Venezuela, mineral exploration, 49
• Ventura oilfields, 1939, 11
• Vinson, John, 182
• Walker Lake, NV, improvement, 115-117, 173-174
• Wallace, Andy, 96, 103, 124, 180-182, 189, 201
• Wallis, Bruce, 109, 146-147
• Walter, Jacques, 52-53, 57
• water production at Montesol, 187-188
• Waters, Aaron, 9-10, 133
• West Coast Mine, NV, 12
• Wilderness society, 113-114
• XLCR Mine, CA, 2, 4-6
• Young, Desna, 115
• Zellidja Mine, Morocco, 52-57
• zircon mine, FL, 22

CV: Eleanor Herz Swent

Born in Lead, South Dakota, where her father became chief metallurgist for the Homestake Mining Company. Her mother was a high school geology teacher before marriage.

Attended schools in Lead, South Dakota, Dana Hall School, and Wellesley College, Massachusetts. Phi Beta Kappa. M.A. in English, University of Denver. Assistant to the President, Elmira College, New York. Married to Langan Waterman Swent, mining engineer.

Since marriage has lived in Tayoltita, Durango, Mexico; Lead, South Dakota; Grants, New Mexico; Piedmont, California.

Teacher of English as a Second Language to adults in the Oakland, California public schools. Author of an independent oral history project, Newcomers to the East Bay, interviews with Asian refugees and immigrants. Oral historian for the Oakland Neighborhood History Project.

Interviewer, Regional Oral History Office since 1985, specializing in mining history. In 1998, awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

About this text
Courtesy of Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley,
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt796nb3xp&brand=oac4
Title: Prospector, Geologist, Public Resource Advocate: Carlin Mine Discovery, 1961; Nevada Gold Rush, 1970s
By:  Eleanor Swent
Date: in 1992, 1997, and 2000 and by Maurice Fuerstenau in 199.
Contributing Institution: Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley,
Copyright Note: Copyright status unknown. Some materials in these collections may be - protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the - reproduction, and/or commercial use, of some materials may be restricted - by gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and - publicity rights, licensing agreements, and/or trademark rights. - Distribution or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond - that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the - copyright owners. To the extent that restrictions other than copyright - apply, permission for distribution or reproduction from the applicable - rights holder is also required. Responsibility for obtaining - permissions, and for any use rests exclusively with the user.