Fortitude Mine

This is a story about a young geologist discovering a new, world-class orebody, and it happened because he was able to see things in a different way than those who came before. Thirty years ago, I was a newly hired mine geologist in a historic mining district in Nevada. As a mine geologist, part of my role in the organization was to replace every ton of ore mined with a fresh ton. My job was to find enough ore to keep the mine going. This is somewhat paradoxical, because an orebody is, by definition, bounded by rock that is not profitable to mine. How then, is one to find profitable rock when the limits of profitability are already known?

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