Our Vision #17: Mill and Assayer’s Cabin

The unique and remarkably intact mill building could become the central historic attraction of the Ute Ulay site, as well as another source of revenue.  There may be potential for a partnership with the Hard Tack Mine, and with miner Matt Ingram, who could give tours or record an audio guide.  

Mill Building with Walkway Superstructure

Building walkways around and through the mill would solve the problem of a costly indoor restoration, allowing visitors to view the complex machinery and imagine the milling process. A sound artist could be invited to repurpose some of the machinery as kinetic sculptures, giving visitors a sense of the industrial cacophony inside a working ore mill.

The assayer’s office next to the mill might be reused as a workspace for a resident artist or writer or building administrator.

Our Vision #15: Trails

Interpretive trails are found in many parks, historical sites, and open-air museums. Designs range from simple signage to highly integrated benches, pavers, and design elements that display or provide information. At the Ute Ulay, a variety of options exist for self-guided tours. 

old flume path trail

One area that particularly stands out is the path of the old flume that transported tailings from the mill to a field west of the site. Cut into the hillside at a gentle slope, this is an ideal spot to situate an interpretive trail, leading casual walkers away from the Ute Ulay to a Bureau of Land Management reclamation site. The educational content found around the trails should employ natural materials as well as local poetry and anecdotes.

Our Vision #14: Transportation

Motorized transport including ATVs, jeeps, and dirt bikes dominate the Alpine Loop.  To encourage a slightly different kind of visitor to the hostel, the Hardrock Revision team wanted to consider options for those without a motor to propel them up to the site. 

Burro ride to the Ute Ulay anyone?

 Shuttle pick-ups scheduled from Lake City, in the form of car or burro, are two possibilities that would have the additional benefit of cutting down on the need for parking space.

Our Vision #13: Water Tank as Camera Obscura

The term camera obscura comes from the Latin for “dark vaulted chamber.” Popular in Victorian times, the camera obscura is an optical devise that projects an image of its surroundings onto a screen.  Also referred to as The Mirror of Life, camera obscuras were seen in many U.S. parks and public spaces from the 1870s to 1950s. The proposal to use the water tank at the Ute Ulay as a periscope camera obscura combines two methods of viewing the surroundings in one experience. Light is tunneled down a shaft (not unlike light filtering down a mine shaft) to project a moving image onto a concave dish. Inside the tower, viewers may manipulate the periscope themselves or with the help of a guide.

1880s Redwood Water Tank as Camera Obscura

 

Our Vision #7: Early Art Integration [3/4]

Shaft & Adit Periscope and Diorama

The head shaft and lower adit next to the mill site are connected deep underground.  Before shafts and adits are closed for safety, installation of a periscope or live video feed could draw visitors, generate revenue, and create a sense of the unseen connections underground.

adit periscope

Alternatively, adits could be closed several yards back so that visitors could enter the adit briefly and experience the space of the mine; rock walls could be painted iridescent gold or silver.

Another option might be to have an artist install a peephole tube from outside the adit or shaft into a diorama created just inside the mine. A visitor might see a tiny scene or collection of precious minerals inside. 

Our Vision #3: Art and Educational Programming

Art and Educational Programming Precedent

A wide variety of educational opportunities could be offered at the Ute Ulay. Toward this aim, a central building for staff, storage, and small group meetings could be located in a new structure behind the headframe.

The Ute Ulay holds the potential for educational programming for all ages and could include opportunities for school groups, workshops, and university research, as well as the casual tourist. Educational tools include creative signage, historically sensitive design, and tours. Text and images can be embedded throughout the site and sourced from an interdisciplinary array of poetry, diaries, maps, history, and science. 

Our Vision #2: Ground Stabilization and Grading

Ground stabilization and grading is key to both the town site and the mill site. Grading should facilitate walkways to all elements of the site. The layout and overall planning of the site should be considered before work commences. As much as possible the site should be fully accessible.

We strongly recommend that retaining walls are made with gabion walls instead of concrete or engineered block. Gabions should use on-site waste rock material. The rock may be sorted for color and size and placed in layers that reference site geology. An artist could be engaged to design the stratified gabions.

ground stabilization and grading

Thoughtfully expanded parking is a necessary part of a future vision for the Ute Ulay.  There are a few possible parking sites that are minimally visible from the road and will not significantly change a visitor’s first experience of the site.  Relative invisibility, as well as safety and convenience, is a priority.

expanded parking

A Three Stage Approach

There are many factors which affect the ordering of the different elements we are proposing for the Ute Ulay mine; legal, financial, physical etc. Many of these factors are as yet unknown, and so in the interests of clarity we decided to group our ideas into 3 stages. These stages are imperfect, but are flexible enough to respond to the creativity and resourcefulness of local Lake Citians, as well as external factors.  

Below is an outline of the stages.

Stage 1

STAGE 1: Immediate preservation & stabilization, art as community momentum

Identify key structures for stabilizing:

            Headframe

            Boardinghouse

            2 cabins

            Water tank

            Mill

            Assayer’s Office

            Flume Head  

Grading and stabilization of town site

            Gabion walls

Bio-remediation project instigated

Education

Website

            Outline function of website, webmaster etc.

Art Projects

            Roof Tarp art project

            Head frame clinic

            Shafts and adits before closure:

            Periscope

            Aeolian Harps 

Stage 2 

STAGE 2: Town site

Deep-energy retrofit hostel and cabins

            Winterized hostel

            Chickens or alpaca farm: producing on-site

Incinerating toilets

            Solar showers

            Interpretive resources and decoration

            Expansion

Development of head frame picnic area

Head frame restoration, picnic area, contemplation space

Water tank projects

Transportation

Trails

Tramway and zip-line, re-establish flume as slide

Stage 3

STAGE 3: Mill site expansion

Access to mill and assayer’s office

            Tours and outside walkways

            Audio tours

Underground passage to river

Tailings pile mountain remediated as monument

Gathering spot in ruins with movies

Ice rink and expanded ice climbing

Alternative energy development in Henson Creek

Sheds as extra hostel space/residency/workshop

Web presence expands/continues

Pika research center

All these ideas will be detailed here on the Hardrock Revision blog in forthcoming weeks...

Collaborative Vision

It's been a month now since the Artposium, and it seems about time to let you all know what we came up with. The results will be posted roughly in the order they were presented, to give those of you who couldn't make it, the chance to see what happened. It will begin with the more general, and become more specific with each new post.

To begin, here are a series of overarching statements we jointly came up with:

MISSION STATEMENT FOR THE UTE ULAY MINE HARDROCK REVISION PROJECT

The Ute Ulay will be a functional site.  It must be a habitable public space that is educational, environmentally conscious, and historically sensitive. 

Ute Ulay upper site

Project Summary

The Hardrock Revision team spent a month in Lake City, consulting with many scientists, mining historians, and an archaeologist to gain a fuller sense of the Ute Ulay site’s past functions and present conditions.  The group sought community involvement through formal and informal interviews, participation in local events, and regular consultations with a community advisory group.

The collaborative team included a poet, historian, sculptors, videographer, landscape architect, mixed-media artists, and two facilitators.  Working as a group, in smaller configurations, and independently, the team identified project priorities, a guiding approach to development, and a vision for the transformation of the site in three stages. 

Group meeting in 'The Moose' cabin. [image Bland Hoke]

Priorities

The five priorities of the project are 1) sustainability, 2) community, 3) a balance of preservation and innovation, 4) feasibility and flexibility, and 5) public education.

Sustainability: The Ute Ulay mine site should be both environmentally and economically sustainable.  Construction materials should be reused from the site or locally sourced whenever possible, and power needs generated on site.  Repurposed buildings should undergo deep energy retrofits.  At least one part of the complex should generate revenue to finance the site’s upkeep, and other areas require minimal staffing and maintenance.

Community: The Ute Ulay mine site should reflect the desires, values, and spirit of the local, seasonal, and wider communities.  The site’s function should fill community needs, such as expanding the tourist season, and will not replicate local amenities or other attractions on the Alpine Loop.  Community ownership at every stage of development will ensure the project’s success.  The site should reflect Hinsdale County’s pride of place and bridge cultural and environmental issues.  

  

Balancing preservation and innovation: Maintaining the Ute Ulay’s historic character, and creating new uses for the site are not necessarily in conflict.  The spirit of the site’s mining use -- repurposing structures, exploration, and nearly constant change -- should be followed, rather than the letter of conforming to a replication of antique mining at every turn. Putting buildings into current use will discourage vandalism.

Feasibility and Flexibility: The vision has multiple stages and multiple options.  Ideas are on a spectrum from simple maintenance to much more ambitious projects.  The community need not follow the plan in a linear fashion, and parts of the vision can be implemented immediately. 

Public Education: The mine site should be a public space with an educational mission, as a platform for mine remediation, experiments in phyto-remediation, and a model for low-impact resourcefulness, as well as interpretation and access to a historic mining landscape.  

Lake City downtown

Keep checking back for more details of what we proposed....