Sixty Years Ago This Week: Merrill E. Shoup, president of the Golden Cycle Corporation, testified in front of the state Senate Minerals subcommittee that “the Russians are stimulating their gold production and accumulating gold.”

Shoup represented 10 mining and milling operators in the Cripple Creek area with the goal of restoring gold and silver production in the U.S. following heavy declines in the country’s reserves, and was trying to drum up support for government subsidies for the gold mining industry.

Shoup told the Senate subcommittee that gold was just as important as uranium in the Cold War. 

But the committee’s chairman, Sen. John Carroll, D-CO, made clear “the  Treasury Department, State Department and Bureau of the Budget all oppose S.J.R. 44,” which would provide subsidies of up to $35 an ounce for domestic gold.

“Big subsidies could tend to unbalance the budget,” Carroll said. “But a stronger gold backing would tend to strengthen the U.S. dollar in world exchanges.”

Production in Colorado’s Cripple Creek area had been halted since the beginning of the year, but Shoup said that work could resume within 30 days with 500 put to work “to start with” if an incentive of $35-70 per ounce was enacted.

In other, unrelated news, two prominent federal judges were praising Carroll for his deportment at the nomination hearings for Luther Swygert of Indiana for U.S. Circuit Court.

Chief Judge John Hastings, 7th Circuit, spoke at a Washington D.C. meeting of the annual judiciary conference attended by Justice Early Warren and 30 other U.S. judges.

“No court would have been as patient as Sen. Carroll,” said Hastings, referencing the attacks on Swygert by a group of lawyers. “But when the time came to bring the matter to a close, he did so without hesitation. It was, for me, a most thrilling experience.”

Chief Judge Alfred Murrah, 10th Circuit, which includes Colorado, added, “In the 10th Circuit we owe Senator Carroll a lot for giving us a fine district judge, William Doyle, a man who works hard and clears the bench.”

Twenty-Five Years Ago: Club 20, the self-proclaimed Western Slope’s premier lobbying and promotional organization, handed out several awards at its annual banquet. Among those for longtime service was the “Exxon Award,” an unidentifiable slab of gunk, for “extreme insensitivity to the Western Slope.”

The award’s recipient was a matter of hot debate, swinging between three candidates. Rep. Norma Anderson, R-Lakewood, was nominated “for trying to raid GoCO funding from the whole state to build schools on the Front Range,” according to Club 20 President Greg Walcher.

Ohio Rep. John Kasich, chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, was nominated for trying to kill the Animas-La Plata Project by calling it “corporate welfare.”

But the ultimate prize went to U.S. Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-NY, said Walcher, “Who used his considerable clout as chairman of the Rules Committee to try to drain the Gunnison River.”

Walcher told The Colorado Statesman that Solomon, who was acting on a constituent-contributor request, had sent Navy Seals to search for the body of a young man who drowned in the river. 

“It was unsuccessful,” Walcher said. “But Solomon did pressure the Bureau of Reclamation to substantially lower the level of the river so the search could proceed. If he’d had his way entirely, the water flow would have been stopped entirely.”

Club 20’s Exxon Award was so named because it was one of the largest contributors to the 1980s oil shale bust due to the company’s promise being so grandiose. 

Since Solomon was not present at the banquet to take possession, the Exxon Award would be displayed at the Club 20 office until the following year, Walcher said.

“It’ll go to whoever screws us the worst,” he added.

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.