National Geographic

["Brian Keele" <bdkeele@HOTMAIL.COM>]

I found this interesting article in the January 2004 National Geographic.  Does anybody has any inside knowledge or interesting perspective?

 

Brian Keele

 

 

 

 

By Kira Salak

Photographs by Landon Nordeman Folks come from all over to sit in a Montana mine and inhale radioactive gas. Is it good for what ails them? Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt. People come to Basin looking for miracles: cures for rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, depression, cataracts. From the highway, though, the tiny Montana town doesn't seem to offer much. There's just one exit, and a single long look reveals all there is to the place: a collection of weathered houses and old miners' cabins huddling close to the interstate, caught between the high peaks of the Elkhorn range. Basin looks like a place left behind on a whim. Were it not for its radon "health mines," Basin, population 250, would probably vanish back into the mountains as quickly as it came, left only in the memories of the boomers, or prospectors, who first called this place home. Miners founded Basin in 1880, when it was nothing more than a collection of brothels, tents, and saloons in a Montana that hadn't even graduated to statehood. Law and ord! er! depended less on rules than on the strength of a man's fist. "They were a tough bunch of people, and they all liked to fight," says 68-year-old "Hap" Bullock. "There were cowboys on one side and miners on the other." Hap claims Basin roots that go back three generations. He settles himself in his chair in the Silver Saddle Bar and examines me with the patient stare of a man who's seen more than his share of newcomers. "Did you like to fight?" I ask him. He gives me a slow grin and winks. "A little," he says. "We were looking to make a fortune. What you did is, you hollowed out a mountain and walked through it. I shipped 35,000 tons (32,000 metric tons) of gold, silver, and other metals from my mines." You can still see evidence of Basin's late-19th-century mining heyday. Hike up in the hills and you practically stumble on tunnels abandoned during the gold fever search for big-ger and better. Graves of Chinese laborers lie in unmarked ! mo! unds along Basin Creek. Ghost towns stare down on Basin from the high hills. Why did the town survive? Local legend explains it this way: Someone once put up a small sign along the highway that said, "Basin—Heaven." If you saw the sign, you'd end up in Basin for life. "Every time someone crazy comes to live here," one resident says, "we say, 'Oh, they must have seen the sign.' " I look for the sign along the highway but only see ones advertising the Merry Widow and Earth Angel Health Mines, two of the world's handful of radon mines. Believers claim that ten days in the mines, breathing in radioactive gas and drinking radioactive water, will cure a whole host of ailments. The owner of Earth Angel, "Wild Bill" Remior, a disabled WWII veteran, goes into the mine every day with his dog, Mr. Stup. "Now I seen a dog go in that mine that couldn't hardly walk," he says, "and by about the second day he was chasin' rabbits. That was my rabbits that he was chasing.! " ! He's referring to his more than 120 pet rabbits that live on the mountainside around the mine. When he leaves his trailer, they flock around him like he's a latter-day St. Francis. "Lady, I seen miracles go through this mine here," he says, pointing to the 600-foot-long (200-meter-long) tunnel that cuts through the granite bowels of the mountain. "But what does it? I don't know. Now, I cannot see the radon in there, and I cannot smell it, and neither can I see the good Lord nor smell him neither, but there's something in there that does ya good." Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine. _____ Working moms: Find helpful tips here on managing kids, home, work — and yourself. ************************************************************************ You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/