Mining History

Did you know that for a time, Questa's molybdenum mine did not sleep at all? After the old high-grade underground veins ran out and underground mining ceased in the late 1950s, years of drilling told a new story. By 1964, exploration begun in 1953 had outlined a large tonnage of low-grade ore just west of the underground workings, ore that could be mined from the surface. It was a completely different kind of mine from the one Questa's first miners had known, and it would reshape work, and the mountain, for a generation.

Wednesday, October 28, 2026

For nearly a century, the molybdenum mine shaped life in Questa as surely as the river and the mountains. Molybdenum, the hard-to-pronounce metal at the center of the story, gave generations of local families work, and gave the village an industrial chapter alongside its older farming and ranching roots.

Few great industries begin with a case of mistaken identity, but Questa's mining story does. In Sulphur Gulch, the ground held a soft black mineral and a yellow earth, and for a long time nobody knew what they really were. The black mineral was thought to be graphite, and the yellow earth was thought to be sulfur, the very substance that gave the gulch its name.

By 1941, the molybdenum workings above Questa had chased their high-grade veins deep into the mountain, about 260 meters down. Ore that deep is expensive to move, water down there is expensive to drain, and air is expensive to keep fresh. The mine's answer was ambitious: drive a tunnel a full mile long, north from Red River Canyon, straight to the deepest workings.