Range after rocky range, the mountains of northern Nevada soar above the arid flats. From the air their sagebrush cloaks seem as soft as crumpled velvet. Suddenly a series of gigantic holes looms below, so huge that if they were the size of anthills, the ore trucks and bulldozers scurrying over them would be the smallest of ants. "Some people see these holes and think they're hideous," muses John Livermore, a tall, lanky exploration geologist from Reno. "Others think how wonderful it is that man can do something so big."
The motive for these mountainous excavations: gold. In 1961 Livermore, then...
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