30 years ago – November 9, 1984
Sodium cyanide, a highly poisonous substance, was discovered this week in six leaking barrels near the Pittsburgh Mine south of Central City and Black Hawk. Near the barrels were six dead cows, one of them a calf. Where the barrels came from, when they were put there and by who is unknown. Willie Lee Phillips of Gilpin County discovered the barrels and cows last weekend. Once notified, numerous state and local agencies responded. Tuesday afternoon, security was tight at the scene since the barrels were unmarked and no one knew what sort of hazardous material was involved. Late Tuesday afternoon, it was decided to put the barrels in containment drums and cover the site with heavy plastic until the substance in the barrels could be identified, which they were on Wednesday. The State Board of Health analyzed the contents and found them to be sodium cyanide, a highly corrosive substance used in the mining industry for leaching.
By Esther Campbell: So this is Indian summer. In my column on October 12, I was heralding the fact that we were having Indian summer. Can we have two Indian summers? Not so says the Farmer’s Almanac, 1985. Indian summer is that time of weather condition in November which follows a good hard spell of cold weather. Almost all the vegetation around here has been frost killed, and that hike up Chase Gulch yesterday to Queen’s Chair through areas of hard snow reinforced the fact that we have had a taste of the cold. But why is Indian summer so named? Several reasons were given in the almanac. One reason is it is usually the time of the year that the deciduous trees are dressed as colorfully as the Indians. Then in the early days of our nation, the settles would welcome the cold wintery days of October because the Indian attacks would halt. The Indians didn’t like fighting in cold weather. Suddenly the weather would turn warm, and the Indians would attack again although it was not their normal raiding season. The settlers called it Indian summer. So in whatever time and place we live, the weather is vitally important.
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