Story by Caitlin Switzer
Photo courtesy Pete Loncar

The industry that brought Pete Loncar to Montrose has all but vanished from the San Juans—but  Loncar himself remains active at eighty-six. [Ed. note: This article was written in 2006.]

“I have been with the Shrine Circus since I retired,” Loncar said on a recent Thursday. “I have been chairman ever since they started here. So I’ve been out selling tickets.” 

The lifelong mining professional was born in Goldfield, Nevada. “When we found the Carlin Gold Mine in Nevada, I did all of the initial work there, and found out there was a huge ore deposit,” Loncar recalled. “It is still going.” 

“Very interesting,” is the way he describes his career. “There was always something new and different,” he said. “I was in exploration for close to twenty years, doing prospecting all over the West.

I was with Newmont for thirty-eight years,” he said. “I got started in mining in Goldfield, and was transferred to Colorado.”

From 1971 to 1979, Loncar worked as manager at the Idarado Mine above Ouray. “It was kind of a demanding job, because there were all kinds of problems,” he said. “I was sent up there to either straighten it out and get it going again, or shut it down.” 

The manager was fired, and Loncar took over. “I had to revamp the place,” he recalled. “I had to hire some miners, and fire some that weren’t doing anything. I brought it back into production again.”

At that time, the mine was producing 1,800 tons of ore per day. “This was base metal—lead, copper, zinc, a little bit of silver, a little gold,” Loncar explained.