The

By J. MADELEINE NASH

Range after rocky range, the mountains of northern Nevada soar above the arid flats. From the air their sagebrush cloaks seem as soft as crumpled velvet. Suddenly a series of gigantic holes looms below, so huge that if they were the size of anthills, the ore trucks and bulldozers scurrying over them would be the smallest of ants. "Some people see these holes and think they're hideous," muses John Livermore, a tall, lanky exploration geologist from Reno. "Others think how wonderful it is that man can do something so big."

The motive for these mountainous excavations: gold. In 1961 Livermore, then working for the Newmont Mining Corp., made a seminal discovery. He looked for gold in the "windows" of a geological feature known as the Carlin Trend. Windows occur where obscuring layers of rock, displaced by an uplift, have eroded to expose the rock below. When Livermore cut into a window on the Carlin Trend, he hit what nongeologists took to calling invisible gold.

Millions of years ago, hot springs laden with flecks of gold boiled up through deep fractures in the earth's crust. But the golden residue did not accumulate in rich veins. Instead, in geologists' lingo, it "disseminated" throughout the siltstone and limestone laid down by an ancient ocean. Small wonder, then, that old-time prospectors overlooked it. "This gold," marvels Livermore, "is so fine you just can't pan it. You can't even see it under an ordinary microscope."

To extract gold from such low-grade deposits, miners must crush tons and tons of rock, which is piled into mammoth heaps and irrigated with cyanide. The cyanide percolates through the heap, extracting the gold. In the early days of the invisible-gold rush, a ton of ore might contain a few tenths of an ounce of gold. Today that minuscule amount would be considered high grade. Says Livermore: "They're mining deposits that we would have considered waste rock back in 1961." Nevada mines are now digging up a ton of rock to get back as little as 0.025 oz. of gold.

About a dozen large open-pit gold mines using such techniques are now strung out along the Carlin Trend. The Dee. Maggie Creek. Gold Quarry. Goldstrike. Blue Star. The Rain. The Bootstrap. American Barrick Resources Corp., a Canadian company, recently announced plans to excavate a billion tons of rock to get at 12 million oz. of gold -- worth about $4.4 billion at current prices. In the process, the mine will bequeath to posterity a hole 1,500 ft. deep, 4,000 ft. wide and 7,000 ft. long.

If gold mining in Nevada were confined to the Carlin Trend, environmentalists like Glenn Miller, a biochemist at the University of Nevada- Reno, would not be so concerned. But Carlin is not the only area in Nevada where mining companies are digging up the land. Hundreds of geologists continue to roam the state, creating new networks of rutted roads. Exploration rigs continue to punch holes into the earth a thousand feet deep. In the mining boom towns along Interstate 80, schools are overflowing, crime has increased and business is good. "Ultimately," predicts Miller, "there could be one continuous hole in the ground that extends tens of miles along the Carlin Trend."

In many cases, the gold mines are located in remote, desolate regions. But some impinge on popular campsites, and one, ominous as a shark with wide-open jaws, is poised right on the edge of the tiny town of Tuscarora (permanent pop. 12). Julie Parks, wife of the local potter, fears that the mine is getting ready to swallow the town. First to disappear was the town swimming hole, a water-filled shaft left over from an earlier mining boom. "It's a crazy thing that's going on here," she exclaims. "I'm living in a place that may be gobbled up by a mine."

Not far from Tuscarora, rancher Robin Van Norman drives a visitor into a verdant canyon sited down by U.S. Forest Service land in the Independence Mountains. Until gold was discovered, the Van Normans owned the rights to graze their cattle there. Now, on the very fence they built to control their herd, the Freeport-McMoRan Gold Co. has posted a big KEEP OUT sign. Waste rock from the mining operation has begun pushing toward the canyon like a moraine advancing at the prow of a glacier.

Van Norman complains that his own land is not safe. Exploration crews have combed his family's 40,000-acre spread. Where the Van Normans hold only surface rights, the crews have staked white plastic plumbing pipes as claim to the minerals below. Van Norman sneeringly refers to the claim stakes as "toilet-paper pipes." The zigzagging roads left by the exploration crews he doesn't like much either. "These terrible Zorro roads," he says, "are everywhere." What riles Van Norman most is the insult to the land. "We grew up with the belief that if you took care of the land, it would take care of you," he sermonizes. "In this world, there is only one crop of land."

Three miles down the road is Robin Van Norman's nearest neighbor, Jim Wright. From his house Wright can gaze up at a rugged outcropping where Freeport has found a modest ore body. If the site is mined, Wright worries, what will happen to a gurgling, gushing spring that forms the headwaters of Niagara Creek, which in turn fills a large reservoir Wright uses to irrigate a wide green hay meadow?

Nevada, by disposition, is a freewheeling state where almost anything goes. But lately Nevadans have begun to talk limits. This summer the state legislature passed the first mining-reclamation bill in its history. Already the more progressive companies have embarked on efforts to ameliorate the eyesores their mining operations have created. The Pinson Mine on the Getchell Trend, in which Livermore has an interest, is actively transforming waste-rock dumps into gently rolling hills planted with sagebrush, bitterbrush and crested wheat. Freeport-McMoRan, for its part, has hired a wildlife biologist to take charge of its reclamation activities. It has laid ambitious plans to hide its footprints by recontouring and reseeding old exploration roads, waste dumps and leaching heaps.

But the holes are another matter. Many of them are so large it would cost more than $100 million to fill them, which could, in some cases, wipe out the profits made from the mine. "Some people think the holes should be filled in," acknowledges Livermore. "But as a matter of public policy, what's the rationale for it? The only real reason to fill in a hole is that people don't like the looks of it."

Unfilled, the holes will become geological features persisting for thousands of years until the slow hand of nature grinds the very mountains down. At some future date, speculates biochemist Miller, the holes will turn into tourist attractions. Placards will explain why they were dug. "For future generations, gaping into these holes will be an interesting experience," he imagines. "It will be like looking into the Grand Canyon. Only these holes will be man-made."