Company aims to reopen four historic Baker County gold mines

Sumpter Development LLC says reopening four historic gold mines near Bourne could eventually add about $45 million a year to Baker County’s economy, but the plan now turns on permits, environmental review and whether local roads and land use can handle a modern mine.

The company wants to reopen the North Pole, Eureka, Excelsior and Columbia mines on private historical mining property about 19 miles west of Baker City and 6 miles north of Sumpter. In a state filing, Sumpter Development described the Sumpter Gold Project as covering about 1,575.32 acres of surface and mineral rights, while saying only about 35 acres would be disturbed on the surface, mostly for a mill. The proposal includes a 250-tonne gravity and flotation processing facility at the historic Columbia mill site, and the company said that plant would occupy less than 5 acres.

Michael Werner, the company’s chief operating officer and chief technical officer, joined chairman Markus Thuler and managing director Steve Wood for an open house in Sumpter on Tuesday evening, May 5, and spoke Wednesday morning about the project. Werner said the company hoped to begin digging ore within a year or two, depending on state permits, and planned to work with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries on the approvals. The filing said the mines and mill site lie in historically mined and disturbed areas, and the company said it would work with the Baker County Roads Department and county officials on permit changes as needed.

That matters because the project sits at the intersection of jobs, water use, surface disturbance and habitat protection. Sumpter Development says the operation could support close to 100 jobs over roughly a decade, and the company argues that reusing old underground tunnels and previously worked ground would limit new impacts. Wood said the company had no problem following the rules and would work with the state on environmental protections.

The project would also be the biggest gold-mining operation in Baker County since 1942, when Cornucopia Mines shut down after the United States entered World War II. Archival records show the Cornucopia Mines company of Oregon filed final liquidation papers that year. The Columbia mine, meanwhile, was first prospected by the Cable brothers in the early 1880s, and Oregon historical records show the Cornucopia district had industrial-scale mining by the 1880s, including a 20-stamp mill reported in 1889.

Werner said in January that the North Pole-Columbia lode runs for more than 5 miles on both sides of Cracker Creek near Bourne, and he said the project would likely be profitable if gold prices stayed above $1,500 an ounce. For Baker County, the decision now is whether that promise of revenue and payroll outweighs the oversight, infrastructure demands and environmental scrutiny that usually follow a new mine in a legacy gold district.