“This mountain has a lot of secrets to give up still,” Robert Congdon remarked, approaching the entrance to Mystic Eagle Quarry with his canine companion, ZuZu. After ceasing operations in 2003 to resolve legal disputes, the mine is slowly returning to action behind large tan metal doors, tucked uphill of a cabin visible from Avalanche Creek Road, less than a mile off Highway 133.
Mystic Eagle Quarry, also known as White Banks Mine and Freedom Eagle Quarry, has been in a years-long process to resume extracting alabaster from a vein on the south side of Mt. Sopris. Previously, the mine opened seasonally for nearly a decade beginning in 1992. After being leased to Elbram Stone Company, the operation failed to secure permission for a year-round plan of operation that, according to the Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association (CVEPA), would have allowed “up to 10 tractor shipments per day, with up to 500 pallets stored onsite weighing 4,000 pounds each.”
CVEPA fought the proposal, citing impacts on neighbors, including residents of the Swiss Village subdivision, as well as the local bighorn sheep herd which winters between Filoha Meadows and Avalanche Creek. The Forest Service withheld approval of Elbram’s plan of operations, finding it inconsistent with winter closures to protect the sheep.
In 2015, Congdon received tentative approval to resume work with limited winter operations. However, in 2019, he was forced to remove his equipment from inside the mine. When the legal dust settled out of court in 2021, with Congdon filing a lawsuit against the Forest Service claiming he still holds a valid permit, Mystic Eagle Quarry began to see the light.
“That’s a long tortured past,” explained Congdon. “We’ve sort of been in limp-mode.” Mystic Eagle Quarry now has permission from the Forest Service to work through the winters until 2035. He estimates this vein of multicolored alabaster and a parallel vein of brown and black marble could produce sculpture-quality blocks for hundreds of years.
During the winters, production will be slowed to three truck trips per day for only two days a week, limited between 11am and 3pm, White River National Forest District Ranger Kevin Warner explained. During the summer months, more ample work will be allowed, along with camping for employees. Initially, Congdon expects to have five to six people working, all underground. Eventually, the team could expand to as many as 15 workers, he said, split between two shifts. Because underground conditions don’t change when night falls, he envisions having workers there 24/7, mining and maintaining the equipment.
Congdon is a former coal miner and well-known rock hound. He moved to the Roaring Fork Valley from New York at age 18 with his wife in 1978. With a baby on the way, he overcame his claustrophobia to work in the coal mines. It was dangerous and unpleasant work and he much prefers digging for other stones.
“When I got out here, I knew I was home,” said Congdon, who was born in Massachusetts.
One day, in 1982, while working at the coal mines, he came across a small outcrop of alabaster while walking near Avalanche Creek. Using a hammer and chisel, he removed a piece weighing around 200 pounds. This was purchased by a sculptor friend and carved into a river otter. At the time, Congdon had no idea what he had stumbled upon. “It took years and years to figure out the extent of this whole thing,” he said. Studies by geologists determined that the vein is around 250 feet thick, three-quarters of a mile wide and 1,600 feet deep.
With the help of a mule named Dolly, who was faithfully fed donuts, Congdon began pulling out more pieces to sell. “My love of life is finding rocks,” he said. By 1991, Congdon found enough demand for the alabaster and rare black marble to attract investors. The first plan of operations was approved in 1993 and he got to work, producing mostly between 1998 and 2003. He’s made use of the General Mining Law of 1872, “the most underutilized law for the working man,” Congdon said.
Now, he’s elated to return to the work, assuring locals the impacts will be minimal. “I think we need more small, environmentally-friendly operations,” he said. With the invention of expanding cement, the use of dynamite is obsolete. And with most of the operation occurring inside the mine, noise impacts will be limited to shipping trucks and a fan exchanging air with the outside.
Already, Congdon has brought one Pitkin County commissioner to tour the place, and he plans to invite them all, as well as Carbondale representatives. “We’re going to be very transparent,” he said. According to Pitkin County, Congdon’s special use permit approved in 1998 was issued for a 25-year duration and expired in 2022. Warner stipulated that Mystic Eagle Quarry must “obtain all other required local, state and federal permits and comply with all local, state and federal laws and regulations” before resuming work.
Congdon doesn’t anticipate ramping up until the spring. “So much has to happen between now and then,” he said. “I don’t want to be up here in the wintertime when we’re not ready for it.” For now, he’s doing sampling and preparing the machinery.
At the forefront of Congdon’s dream is art. His friend, Jeremy Russell, hopes to soon return to finish a giant eagle carved directly into a wall inside the mine. With a 55-foot wingspan, “The Cost of Freedom” took Russell eight years to progress this far — and he’s determined to finish the piece.
Russell, now living in Grand Junction, suffered a bad car accident in 1996 which broke his back, took his right leg and erased 13 years of memory. Because of the accident, Russell couldn’t serve as a soldier, “so this gave me a way to serve my country,” he explained. He began carving the eagle in 2000. “I don’t know how I was doing what I was doing,” he said. “I was completely outside my body,” unable to see a foot past the dust. When he stepped back, he was amazed. “It’s really not me carving, it’s a spiritual thing,” he said.
Alabaster is a soft stone composed of calcium sulfate, a gem-quality gypsum. It has been used for thousands of years in art and architecture and is revered for its translucent qualities and ease of carving. This vein was formed around 34 million years ago, when the magma which uplifted Mt. Sopris interacted with layers of the Eagle Valley Evaporite, heating up the sedimentary rock without fully metamorphosing it.
Congdon said residual dust produced will be made available as an organic soil conditioner to local farms, such as the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute. Alabaster also has industrial and architectural uses.
Mystic Eagle Quarry, however, will focus on small-scale mining for artistic purposes. Each pound will cost between 50 cents and a dollar, Congdon said, estimating 50 million tons of alabaster inside the mountain, and even more black and brown marble.
He would eventually like to host a seasonal artist colony, similar to the MARBLE/marble Stone Carving Symposium. He cited places in Italy where they have mined alabaster for hundreds of years and the communities that formed around that.
“This isn’t about the money, this is about a legacy and my grandkids running this. It’s a family operation,” Congdon explained. “Everybody thinks they have to have billions of dollars to be comfortable. I’m comfortable with much less than that. It’s about the doing. I think society has become too infatuated with money. I don’t want to rip anything out of here; it’s home.”
Inside the mine, he envisions creating rooms for offices, tool sheds and artist studios, as well as an amphitheater. He’d like to commission relief carvings on the walls depicting the history of the Roaring Fork Valley, including dinosaurs.
“It’s all out-of-the-box thinking,” he said, “but that’s how history is made.”
Eventually, the mine may be open to the public, but it’ll take creative permitting. For now, it’s not a possibility. The Mine Safety and Health Administration has strict requirements, so the mine would have to be shut down to allow for visits. Congdon hopes to eventually install a secondary entryway further down the road, perhaps a decade in the future. This would allow them to block off a section of the mine and allow people inside without halting operations.
“I wake up every morning with a smile on my face. I’m here and I get to still do it,” he concluded.”