Jeremiah Etherington had been warned at least twice. But the prospecting spirit that made Gold Rush speculators believe their pans would fill with riches got the contemporary explorer killed in the end.
Lust for wealth and adventure lures the experienced and the naive into thousands of abandoned mines each year. State crews working on a shoestring budget scramble for literal and figurative ways to stop them.Nationwide, public land agencies and parks administrators trumpet warnings about mine dangers. They tally deaths and injuries attributed to cave-ins, collapsed beams and accidental falls into deep shafts where the present and past collide.
And as officials try to scrape together money to protect adventure seekers from themselves, 19-year-old Cory Burningham pays tribute to the buddy whose battered body he pulled out of an abandoned silver mine eight months ago:
Whenever he can, he walks away from daylight and into the dark of the rocky abandoned tunnels where he and Etherington once looked for cold and quiet and other treasures.
Go West
The legendary call to go West, young man, was often answered by those who ended up out here in the belly of a mine shaft extracting riches for someone else and wages for themselves. Their work punched holes in the notion of a westward expansion that was designed to tame the frontier with farming.
Farmers settled the West, but mining was here first. Farmers moved fast, but mining moved faster, scattering workers, merchants, camps, towns, trails and roads throughout the region.
As one Western historian puts it: Miners didn't form settlements, they picked up the West and gave it a good shaking.
Those reverberations haven't stopped yet.
Deadly mines
The mining law of 1866 declares: "The mineral lands of the public domain, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are hereby declared free and open to exploration and occupation by all citizens of the United States."
And explore they did.
Utah's economic backbone was formed in mines where hard-working natives and migrants harvested gold and silver, uranium, coal, copper and other minerals.
In the last century, as the economy diversified and the state reprioritized its resources, all but the heartiest mining companies have closed their doors. What remains after this exodus are thousands of abandoned mines and miles in a labyrinth of treacherous tunnels, shafts and corridors.
Etherington's death in January and the well-publicized search that preceded it renewed public and political interest in the issue. But for workers who know the hazards and the potential for disaster, the threat looms continually.
This week, the Labor Department's Mine and Safety Department in Denver issued a written warning about trespassing in abandoned mines.
On the same day Etherington died, a Grand Junction, Colo., hiker was overcome by toxic gases inside an abandoned coal mine and died, the warning stated.
"These tragic deaths underscore the danger of entering abandoned mines and quarries," said J. Davitt McAteer, assistant labor secretary for mine safety and health.
About 8,600 abandoned mines exist across U.S. National Park Service land. An additional 3 million acres just acquired by the service likely include hundreds more, spokesman John Burghardt said this week from his Denver office.
But funding to pay for mine closures has been tough.
"We've made a very strong plea to get these things covered up," Burghardt said. "But so far, we haven't hit the pot of gold."
It's also hard to get local attention for the problem, he said. In Lake Mead, a boy on a motorbike died when he fell into an abandoned mine shaft while riding with his father in a restricted area.
While the accident is tragic, local officials told Burghardt that, in comparison, Lake Mead has 25 to 30 water-related deaths per year.
So people get creative. They cooperate. In Canyonlands National Park, the park service will work with Utah's Division of Oil, Gas and Mining to close several abandoned uranium mines. The Utah State Prison Conservation Crew will do the on-site work.
"There are few things more dangerous than an old mine," said Canyonlands spokesman Bruce Rogers. "None of these mines were too sturdy to begin with. Now they're old and falling down, too."
Ignored warnings
Melissa Peckham warned her son and his friends not to go into the Honorene Mine last January, two weeks into the new year. She had a bad feeling about it, she says. A premonition.
She'd been fighting her oldest son, Cory, about his forays into abandoned mines for years. Cory Burningham had the mining bug bad. That much she knew. And Cory's best friend, Jeremiah Etherington, had it, too.
That Friday night, as Etherington, Burningham and two friends traced maps of the old silver mine in the hills east of Stockton and south of Tooele, Peckham warned her son again.
"I kicked him in the butt and I told him not to go. `One day you guys aren't going to come out,' I said. `You're going to be dead.' "
The next day, 18-year-old Jeremiah fell 420 feet down a shaft as deep as Utah's tallest building is high.
While Etherington lay covered in rubble at the bottom of the shaft - a vertical corridor miners call a winze - rescuers fretted about how to search for the young man. A side wall crumbled when they tried to shore it up to go in. Officials called off the search two days later.
Tom Adams wishes Etherington would've listened to him, too. Adams, the chief deputy of the Tooele County Sheriff's Office, got a call last fall from a property owner complaining about kids trespassing near a mine.
Adams went up the mountain near Ophir and busted Etherington coming out of a mine entrance. "He told me there was no way we were going to keep him out," Adams said.
The deputy appealed to Jeremiah's mother, Connie, who said she'd talk to her son. But the young man seemed too deep into the hobby, and Adams wasn't surprised to hear about the accident a few months later.
In the end, when formal rescue teams deemed conditions too dangerous to continue the search, a tight contingency of family and friends skirted police officials, went into the mine and retrieved Jeremiah's body.
Burningham was so distraught afterward that he sobbed for nearly two weeks. During this time, he did not explore a single mine.
`Seriously crazy people'
It's been eight months since Burningham lost his best friend.
Sitting beside a table full of stuff he's pulled from mines through the years, Burningham shows pictures of Jeremiah and tells visitors why he still risks his life in mines.
"There are only about 10 of us that do it as seriously as I do," he said. "We must be some seriously crazy people."
The reward is the old stuff: pick axes and blasting tins, ancient bottles half full of the linseed oil or whisky some miner bought way back when. There is a carbide lamp, a rusty canteen, an Arabic or Hebrew Bible dated 1832. There are pieces of quartz, tobacco tins and a "Good for Life" original 6 1/2-ounce Dr Pepper bottle.
Burningham also cherishes the treasures that stay in the mines - cartoons and messages from miners printed with carbon from their head lamps sometime way back in history.
Burningham, who works full time in a fast-food restaurant, knows some people might think he's a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.
"But that's how you find the good stuff, you have to go where most people won't go."
Even now? Even after seeing Jeremiah die? Burningham barely understands the question.
"You watch a football game on TV, so you want to play, too. If your friend dies playing football, does that mean you quit playing football?"
He prepares himself well for exploration. He gets maps from the University of Utah's Marriott Library and from other state agencies. He talks to geologists. He scopes things out.
He says he's got a good sense about toxic gas - the carbon methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide that can knock a person out in minutes. "I can tell if the air's bad. You start to feel it. You start to get dizzy. That's when you have to turn around and start running."
Jon Rush, 35, explores mines with Burningham. He's lived in Tooele all his life and has been going into mines since he was a little boy. "Everybody has. You live here and you're going to do it."
But Rush isn't after historical memorabilia, he's after big bucks.
"Who's to say I couldn't be as big as Kennecott? It all depends on how lucky I am."
He's worked out arrangements with landowners and says he always gets permission to go into a mine. If he strikes it rich, if he finds a vein or a chunk of something valuable, the landowner will get 6 percent of profits. Rush gets the rest.
"It's a big money game."
But he's aware of the risk that tracks him like a shadow through the miles of tunnels, down rickety ladders and into the depths of Utah's underworld.
If something happens, he won't rely on the police or sheriff's office to get him out. "They'll come in looking for you, but if they don't find you in four or five days they're going to bury your butt in there."
He wants Cory Burningham or Dan Etherington, Jeremiah's father, on the job.
Rush was one of those who went after Jeremiah's body. They said a prayer together beforehand.
"I felt really bad about it. The kids shouldn't have been in there."
Burningham's mother, Melissa Peckham, said she's proud of her son for orchestrating the retrieval of Jeremiah's body with the boy's uncle, firefighter Keith Fivas. "He followed through on his promise that even if it took their life, they'd each get the other out," she said. "That was their vow to each other."
But Peckham does worry about the glamorous image Burningham portrays for his younger brother, 13-year-old Chad. Chad sneaked out with Cory one night a couple of weeks ago, and both boys were dusted in mine grit when their mother caught them coming home late.
Cory got chewed out, and Chad was forbidden to go again. But Cory didn't really apologize. "He said it was an easy one - he called it a girl's mine," Peckham said.
Her only hope is that the experience scared Chad. "I hope it's not in his blood."
Peckham has spent years "screaming and hollering and trying to make (Cory) feel guilty." Nothing seems to work, and after all, he's an adult. Peckham isn't sure her son could quit going in if he wanted to. He gets depressed when he hasn't been out for awhile; he sits in his room and mopes.
"He's addicted."
Stay out, stay alive
Ninety percent of the hands shot up when Mark Mesch asked a classroom full of school kids how many had been inside an abandoned mine.
Mesch, a project manager for the state's Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program, periodically visits schools to encourage students to turn away from the lure of abandoned mine shafts.
Experts aren't surprised by evidence that youngsters are trooping around in mines. They do hope to parlay the interest into education for parents and kids, Mesch said.
Like many behavior-related social problems, education is the key, said Mary Ann Wright, who supervises the mine closure program.
"Our effort is twofold. One, to close them, and then to educate kids starting at the fourth-grade level."
For seven years, Wright's program has published a mining workbook that includes Utah's mining history, what we mine, how mined products are used and the dangers of abandoned mines. More recently, the program also teamed with the Bureau of Land Management to publish a video called "Stay Out and Stay Alive."
The video is designed to be shown as part of spring curriculum, just before the season for camping trips and outdoor outings begins.
The approach seems to work, said Debbie Parry, a fourth-grade teacher at Beehive Elementary in Kearns. With its close proximity to Kennecott Copper Mine, many Kearns students have grown up in the industry.
"Many of them thought it would be a cool thing to go in and explore. But after seeing the video, they realized the beams are rotted and it's really unsafe - they have second thoughts."
Parry ponied news articles about Etherington's fall and death with the workbook and video. The news event last January brought home the subject for her young students.
She's laminated those articles and displays them. In this way, the event has become a valuable educational tool.
"It's sad that someone had to lose their life, but it's important to impress upon them that this is serious; that even the experienced get into trouble."
Although he knows of no mine-related incidents or injuries involving schoolchildren, Paul Skyles, superintendent of the Tooele School District, said the abandoned mines scattered through the nearby Oquirrh hillsides present a constant worry.
"There are so many mine shafts up there it's unbelievable."
But education must happen outside the schools, said Robert Kroff, the district's curriculum director. Classroom solutions for social problems get inappropriately piled on a teacher's plate of responsibilities, he said.
"Should we be doing it? Yes, probably. But what this does is really hammer the teacher. Elementary school teachers are so busy already they don't have time to go to the bathroom."
Close 'em up
Next month, state work crews will go to three areas of the state to continue efforts to block abandoned mine openings.
Workers will push bulldozers full of dirt and boulders into the openings. In some cases, they will plug the openings with thick, concrete seals. They will gate some with iron bars; chain and lock others.
Although publicity and education have increased awareness about mine dangers, state workers from the division of Oil, Gas and Mining's Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program will do the job with less money than in years past. A $3 million budget has dwindled to $1.5 million over time, said Wright, the program's director.
"The more we encourage people to come in and recreate on our land, the more we invite interaction between people and our mines," Wright said. "It's a real deadly combination."
As the state closes mines, it must consider what closures do to the habitat of eight bat species that rest, hibernate and raise their young in old mines.
Bats more closely resemble humans than rodents, Mesch says. They have one baby at a time and are invested in the care of their offspring. Slight disturbances to bat habitat can damage the population.
Biologists indicate that bat populations are dwindling in areas where humans intrude. And bats matter. They eat a variety of insects and play an important role in the biological system.
Consequently, the division is completing bat-friendly closures, placing bars like those on a jail cell in places where it is appropriate for bats to fly in and out. Some mines with less stable openings can't hold up the heavy steel bars, so crews effectively move the bats, excluding them from their cave before plugging it.
Meanwhile, Wright continues efforts to educate children and adults about perilous conditions of the holes many people mistake for recreational opportunities. "There's a perception that if they're there and they're not closed, then they must be safe."
Last year, in the weeks after Etherington died in the Honorene Mine, a Price legislator introduced a bill that would have guaranteed $2 million in state funds for mine closures. It passed the House but died on the Senate floor.
Landowners, grateful for the state's help in decreasing their liability, generally cooperate with closures.
But the state's actions enrage some mine explorers like Cory Burningham. "(The mines) are a part of Utah history. They might as well close the doors to the museums," he said.
Vandals
Vandals are the nemesis of Wright and her staff. Mine explorers have spent hour after laborious hour sawing through iron bars, hauling out backpacks full of rocks and digging around concrete seals to get back in.
Burningham admits to digging through mine closures, cutting through locks, getting into the mines any way he can. Mines are dangerous, Burningham knows, but potential historic and material riches that lie within the earth's bowels shouldn't be off limits to everyone.
The state could lock the mines, Burningham suggests, but allow mineral experts and experienced mine explorers like himself to go in.
Officials say they are not considering this option. Instead, they will try to beef up trespassing laws to increase penalties for those caught snooping around on private property.
A draft of trespassing legislation will be considered in an upcoming interim meeting of Utah State Legislature, said Dave Lauriski, chairman of the Board of the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining.
Lauriski is general manager of the Energy West Mining Co., the coal mining subsidiary of PacifiCorp. He supervises operation of two large underground coal mines in Emery County and two company rescue teams formed by mandate under federal law.
Lauriski and his rescue teams were called to the Honorene Mine shortly after Etherington fell down the deep winze.
He has two words for adventure seekers: "Stay out." People don't respect the mines or appreciate their dangers, he said.
Dynamite creates a mine with blasts that explode rock in on itself, loosening it enough for workers to remove. Mines are, by their very manmade nature, unstable. Their beams are rotted by years and weather. Walls crumble without warning. Roofs cave in.
A mine is different from a cave. Mother Nature has taken eons in geological time to form a cave. They're sturdy for the most part.
"I realize mines have an allure about them," Lauriski said. "Even I get lured by them, but I don't go in."
People like Burningham think they're experts, but they're not, Lauriski said. "He really doesn't realize what he's dealing with."
But again, Burningham's actions the night he and his friends went to get Jeremiah's body weren't unexpected. "No, I wasn't surprised. I was disappointed," Lauriski said.
He'd had conversations with family members.
"I begged them to keep people out of there - not to jeopardize any more lives. I understand that they wanted to get her son out, but I'm disappointed that after everything, the professional wisdom wasn't taken to heart."